Alone again

Our plan to hang back has worked a treat and we have travelled today to the foot of the Bosley flight in more or less glorious isolation. Before we set out this morning I took this picture

Er, some railings...

Actually, these railings form part of what is known as a ha-ha wall for the residents of Ramsdell Hall and run for some 500m. It was the addition of these railings that, in part, persuaded the then owners of the hall to accept the presence of the "new" canal running across the foot of their premises. The alternative was a one and a half mile detour including a tunnel so the railings, which were renovated in 2005, were certainly money well spent.
We set off this morning in bright sunshine but there is no escaping the chill in the air these days (we have had the fire lit for the last two nights) as we turn towards Autumn. The Macc would , I'm sure, look splendid as the trees start to change colour and, boy, are there a lot of trees to look at!

Bridges proliferate also, many of them not carrying a road but simply linking farm fields. Here's a rather special one called a roving bridge

These ingenious bridges allowed the towing horse to remain tied to its boat as the towpath changed from one side of the canal to the other. The horse would walk up the ramp to the left, cross the bridge, then walk back towards the boat before ducking back under the bridge, thereby transferring itself from left to right without unhitching.
We stopped briefly in Congleton for supplies, finding the perfect gap between moored boats

Got room for a small one?

Leaving Congleton behind us, the scenery improved dramatically, with hills and valleys opening up to us, we on aqueducts, the trains on viaducts, of course

A hill known as The Cloud next hove into view as there was no escaping the fact that we were getting ever closer to the southern foothills of the Pennines

From our mooring point we can see the quarry workings on The Cloud which produced the stone for the locks of the Bosley flight.
To stretch our legs, we walked the flight before heading back to discover our phones had no signal but our router had, which is a first let me tell you! So, up the flight tomorrow, overnight in Macclesfield then meet up with daughter Charlotte and friends Tony and Louise for a meal on Sunday. Sounds like a plan!