13th - 15th of August. A beautiful clean boat.

We spent the weekend tidying up Harold. Robin re-blacked the bottom down to the waterline, covering up the rust and knock marks. Then in a joint effort we washed him all over and gave him his first polish since being painted. We even moved across to the other side of the canal to do the other side!

He was much admired and the captain had a beer to celebrate.

On Saturday evening, as promised, we had a nice meal at The Windmill. We are making the most of the good food up here before we get back to the Shroppie which, while very lovely with nice narrow  locks, had dodgy food and limited Gs.
After a late night watching the Olympics Jo woke up on Monday morning with a nasty eye infection.  After a visit to the local GP, we eventually set off about 1pm.
Before leaving, we lent our anchor to Lynne and Jenny on Noga Louise who were moored next to us. They had also been our neighbours in Salthouse dock and now had passage booked across the Ribble Link, where an anchor is required equipment. They are also overwintering further south and will return it to us at Warwick later in the year. This means there will be no more rivers for us this season, we'll have to stick to canals, preferably narrow friendly ones!
The day was mostly sunny and warm and we covered just a few miles, including two locks, and moored at Crooke. We'll get through Wigan tomorrow and aim for Plank Bridge which is currently broken and only open at 2pm.