Ellesmere Port

We left our moorings near the zoo yesterday and set off for Ellesmere Port, the first section of the four miles is quiet pleasant through countryside, it then gets more industrial as we expected, not too bad though.  We had heard mixed reports about Ellesmere Port so went with open minds, this section of the canal has quiet a lot of weed in it, floating around in great clumps.  As we approached the top basin at Ellesmere, not only was there lots of weed there was also green algae covering a lot of the basin and lots of rubbish.  To enable us to moor against the bank I had to pull out clumps of weed, a huge piece of plastic and a fence post/sleeper.  The trip boat was against one of the locks and the other lock had two boats moored in it.  They were not letting anyone down into the lower basin, no-one seemed to know why though, a guy we moored by said he had phoned ahead and been told he could go down, then why he arrived the day before they said he couldn’t.  We went for a walk around the Boat Museum, it is not expensive to go in £6 each and that allows as many return visits in a year.  We felt the museum was disappointing, some bits of it are very well done and it would be really good for children but even taking into account the work in progress a lot of it is tired.  We had lunch, walked to B&Q for a few bits and returned to our moorings by the zoo. 

It has been very windy and we had heavy rain overnight and throughout today so we decided to stay put.  We will move back tomorrow to Christleton as Ali’s sister and brother in law are coming to visit for a few days on Thursday.  

This is what I pulled out of the basin so we could moor up

 

Just above my shadow is the chunk of wood

Green algae

Monday 8 miles