Made it to Middlewich

​Saturday, 2 April - Sunday, 3 April

We have an 11:20 AM train to catch to Crewe.  From there we catch a bus to Middlewich.  We were able to sleep in some and ate our leftover lunch (pizza) for breakfast before packing up and walking the 15 minutes to the train station.  Here I am, waiting for the train, with my new acquisition…wellies.  Two years ago, when we did 2 weeks on a narrowboat, our feet were always wet and cold.  We decided to both by a pair of welies…aka rubber boots.  Our plan is to use the wellies on the narrowboat and then get rid of them.

My cool new wellies

We made it to Crewe in just under 2 hours.  The bus to Middlewich is supposed to be right outside the train station, but arrives in about 5 minutes.  If we miss the bus we have to wait 1 hour for the next one.  As luck would have it, the bus was a bit late and we actually made it.  45 minutes later we arrived in Middlewich, where conveniently, our AirBnB was just 500 feet from the bus stop.

After unpacking a bit, we head straight out to check in with Andersen Boats to let them know that we have arrived in town and determine our meeting time on Monday (noon).  We then continued into town and saw Fjord Princess, our narrowboat starting Monday.

We decided to do some grocery shopping.  We knew that the amount of groceries we need, we would have to do two trips since we are on foot and have to carry everything.  We will do one trip today and another tomorrow.  On the way to the market, we stopped at a pub to make a dinner reservation for my birthday.  Oh yeah…today is my 52nd birthday!

After shopping, we returned to the AirBnB and then headed out to dinner.  We ate at The Kinderton.  I ordered the smoked fish pie and Tim had the steak and ale pie.  Of course we washed it down with a real ale.  a real ale is a beer that is drawn, versus on draft, making it a flatter, warmer beer than the beer us North Americans are used to.  And for dessert, to finish off my perfect English dinner, I ordered sticky toffee pudding.  My English birthday dinner was great!

Birthday Dinner

Sticky Toffee Pudding instead of Birthday Cake

After dinner, thoroughly stuffed, we returned to the AirBnB, watched some TV, and called it a night.

The next day, we slept in, I made breakfast (scrambled eggs, potatoes, mushroom, spinach, & toast), then headed back to the supermarket to finish our shopping.  After returning to the AirBnB, we relaxed for a bit before heading out for dinner.  We picked up some Indian food, took it to a local pub, and ate it with a pint, on tap this time since they didn’t have any real ales.  On our way back to the AirBnB, we decided to stop at the Kings Lock Inn, a pub right across form our AirBnB, since they had real ale.  We both had a 1/2 pint then headed back to the AirBnB.

Tomorrow we pick up our narrowboat and start our 3-week adventure on the canals.