More Christmas Boating Adventures

After Christmas, we spent a couple more days pottering along the Macclesfield Canal.  Because it was quite dull and misty, we bears stayed in the cabin, either reading our new books and nibbling Christmas treats, or watching from our hammock in the window as we travelled south again.

We decided that the Macclesfield Canal was very pretty and that we would have to ask Polar and Grizzly to bring us back in the spring, to see it when the trees were in leaf and the flowers in bloom.

One night, we moored opposite a big house called Ramsdell Hall.  When the canal was being built, the owner only gave his permission for it to run through his land on condition that fancy railings be installed along the towpath, so the view from the hall across the countryside wasn't spoiled by an ugly wall or fence.  They are still there and were carefully restored a few years ago.

 On the morning we got back to Kidsgrove, Polar told us we would be going through the Harecastle Tunnel.

'Wrap up warm, bears,' she said.  'I have to make sure the fire is out before we go in.'

'Boo!' we said, because we liked sitting on the settee in the warmth from the little black stove.

'It can't be helped,' she told us, as she raked the ashes through to make sure there was nothing still glowing.  'There is a risk of natural gas pockets in such a long tunnel and we don't want to blow up Uppie, or you bears!'

She wrapped our hammock scarf around us and tucked us up snugly ready for the journey, then turned on all the lights in the boat, to help illuminate the tunnel walls so Grizzly could see where they are slightly wobbly and the roof is low.  

Grizzly almost always steers through the tunnel, because he is much shorter than Polar and less likely to bump his head.  He always puts his life-jacket on in the tunnel, in case of accidents.  Hanley Bear asked if he could help but Grizzly said it was safer if he stayed below with me and Endon.

'You'll get dripped on if you stay out here,' Grizzly told him.  'There are lots of leaks through the roof.  That's why I wear my waterproof in here, even on sunny days.'

I didn't know whether Endon might be scared in the tunnel, so I sat with him, reading to him from our Ladybird canals book, while Hanley helped Polar check our food supplies.

'We've run out of rice pudding!' he warned her.

'Don't worry, Hanley,' she said.  'We'll do some shopping when we get to Etruria.'

'Is that where we're going today?' I asked.

'We'll stop at Westport Lake first, so we can have a walk and get the fire lit again,' she said.  'Then we'll go to Etruria tomorrow, and down to Stone on Sunday.'

'And back to the Stoke City ground for the match on New Year's Day?' asked Hanley excitedly.

'That's the plan.'

'Yay!'  Hanley waved his football scarf in the air.

I was pleased too, because we were stopping at Westport Lake, which is one of my favourite places.  Harecastle Tunnel is one of my least favourite places, because it is long, dark and drippy, but Grizzly is used to steering our boat through it, and soon we were out the other side and on our way to Westport Lake.  There are really nice moorings here - it's one of the places where you can often find the Oatcake Boat too.

While Grizzly moored the boat and Polar got the fire lit again, we bears climbed up the grassy bank to see what wildfowl were on the lake.  We saw great-crested grebes, swans, Canada geese and greylag geese, as well as our favourites, the tufted ducks.

Polar and Grizzly joined us for a walk right around the lake, then we had a big bowl of tasty soup.  That made us so warm and sleepy that we curled up under Polar's scarf and had a long nap.  We didn't wake up until it was almost dinner-time but that's one of the nice things about being a boat bear - sometimes, you don't have to do anything at all!

We still had several days of winter boating fun to come, so I will tell you all about that in my next blog post.