Familiar waterways

When we find ourselves travelling over familiar routes travelled before and especially as recently as a month ago, I find it hard to see our journey with fresh eyes and capture so many pictures for the blog.
Don't misunderstand me, there's something good about knowing what's around the corner and how many locks or whether to walk or ride between locks instead of listening to Ian's "it's just around the corner" (sometimes it's a very long corner!) It's nice to feel we know a stretch of canal.

So yesterday as we left Castlefield, climbing up the Rochdale 9 then onto the Ashton and up the locks to Portland Basin, I thought to myself I'd set a challenge to photo some different things on the way. With camera in my pocket, I set off working the first locks, anyway I was so enjoying the sun (rain had been forecast), chatting to others on the way, I forgot to take any pictures at all! 

Then it was my turn to steer Tacet and again I was away with my thoughts and dreams, still no pictures.

At the top of Clayton locks the heaven's opened and from then on we had heavy showers every little while. So no photos there either.

I failed, not much good at challenges, even ones I set myself.

We'll be enjoying lots of these soon.

Saturday
6 miles, 27 locks, 1 swingbridge.

Sunday
7 miles, 0 locks, 1 bridge, 2 tunnels.