Coming Home from the Weaver

We bears had a wonderful holiday on the River Weaver but we knew it would be time to leave Uppie and come home soon. 

After our visit to The Danny, we decided Uppie's brasswork needed shining, so we helped Grizzly and Polar to clean the brasses and bells and put up some plaques in the cratch showing where we had been. 

'We will have to keep these polished too,' I told the other bears.

Travelling up river was easy, as there was very little current against us, although we did have to watch out for the big dredgers and their tugs and barges.  There were lots of water birds to see, including the big grey herons and pretty great-crested grebes.  

They have stripy chicks, which came very close to the boat if we were quiet bears and didn't frighten them.

In the evening, we moored near the big boat lift at Anderton.  Polar and Grizzly agreed to let us sit on the roof while we were in the lift, if we promised to be sensible bears and if it stayed dry, but there were heavy showers the next morning, so we had to watch from the cratch again.  It was not as scary going up, because we knew what was happening this time. 

Soon we were back out on the Trent and Mersey Canal.  Polar and Grizzly decided to stop at one of the flashes again, so we could look for kingfishers, but all we saw and heard this time were noisy geese.  Polar put on our CD of Paddington stories while we waited for our tea and gave us rice pudding, which cheered us up as we had been feeling sad that our holiday was almost at an end.

The next day was showery too, so Polar and Grizzly took it in turns to steer the boat and we stayed indoors, either helping the human who wasn't steering to do boat chores or reading our books.  We shared the Big Lock at Middlewich with another crew, then started up the narrow Cheshire Locks, stopping near a place called Wheelock.  We saw one of our Inland Waterways friend's boats moored there and went to say 'hello', but there was no-one at home.

We were lucky that the next day was fine and sunny, so Polar and Grizzly didn't get wet working up the locks.  We stopped for the night only a little way from home but with ten locks still to do.

'We are going to have a short trip on the Macclefield Canal in the morning,' Grizzly explained.  'We're going to a boatyard to get Uppie some fuel and to get the sewerage tank pumped out.'

'Poo!' went Hanley Bear.

'We'll go back over this canal on an aqueduct,' added Polar.  'Watch out for kingfishers near there.'

We all like to see new waterways and love seeing kingfishers, so we were very excited by the time we reached the top lock.  We could just see our usual mooring but Polar steered us right at the junction and soon we had gone round in a loop and, just as she said, went over the top of the Trent and Mersey, two locks below us.

Polar and Grizzly say the Macclesfield Canal is one of their favourites but we will have to wait to do a proper journey on it until there has been enough rain to fill up the reservoirs.  This time, we only went a little way, through an odd little stop lock, before turning at the marina and getting the end-of-cruise jobs done.  Then we came back down the canal to Hardingswood Junction and turned right towards Uppie's moorings.

We had enjoyed an excellent small bear boating adventure.  Although this trip was over, we had other autumn adventures to come, as you will soon see.