Narrowboat Holiday Day 19 - Ellesmere to Grindley Brook (5.33 hours; 13 miles; 9 locks; 5 bridges)

We woke up and I quickly got dressed and headed out to the delicatessen and bakery to guy from the Black Swan told me to go to.  I picked up a baguette and a couple of fillets of pickled herring with dill and returned to the boat.  Tim was happy about the bread and had some with jam, but the pickled herring was all mine.  I went outside to eat is since I didn't want to stink up the boat.  It was SO GOOD.  I gobbled down the 2 fillet and was very tempted to go back to the delicatessen and get more, but we were ready to go, so I will just have to savor and remember the awesome two little pickled herring fillets I ate.

By the way...here is nice shot of Ellesmere Wharf where we spent last night.  Our boat is the red one.

Ellesmere Wharf

We took off right at 9 AM and headed out of the wharf and turned left at the end back onto the Llangollen Canal.  Today is another beautiful day on the Llangollen Canal.

Here are some nice old buildings along the canal.  We see these kinds of buildings regularly while travel on the canals.

Oh...here is an interesting story...not long after these photos there is a one mile stretch of the canal that is straighter and wider than anyone part we have seen.  A few days ago, on our way out to Llangollen we actually caught up to another narrowboat here and was able to overtake on this section since this section was so long, straight, and wide.  Well..what are the chances that we caught up to a narrowboat on this same stretch today?  It was 100% since we did catch and overtake another narrowboat in this same stretch of canal.  By the way...in all of the 3 weeks on the canal, we overtook only 3 narrowboats total, so this was quite a coincidence.

Anyway...since Tim enjoyed working some locks yesterday, we thought it would be a good idea for him to work some of the bridges as well.

That was so nice watching Tim do all the work, so we decided to let him continue by working the locks today as well.  He got lucky many times having other people there to help him out.  These people are waiting for us to go down the lock so they can come back up.

Tim wasn't quite as lucky this time.  He has to work the lock alone.

It is nice to be captain of the boat and sit back and relax while Tim does all the work.

Even though we had 9 locks and 5 bridges today, we made pretty good time to Grindley Brook at 2:20 PM.  We actually stayed close to here on the way to Llangollen, but the highly recommended pub wasn't open on Monday, so here we are again to ensure we visit the pub.  After last nights late pub visits and late dinner, we decided to head to the pub earlier and arrived at Horse & Jockey just after 3 PM.  

People were right...they had 4 excellent, fresh cask ales available.  

Horse & Jockey fresh ales.

After our 4 half pints we headed back to the boat to relax a bit before eating mussels in butter & garlic sauce, fresh backed rolls, and a nice Belgium blonde.

We watched some TV, blogged, and went to bed...this time after an appropriate amount of time to digest dinner. Tomorrow we make to back to the Shropshire Union Canal and will be only 1 day out of Middlewich, the end of the journey.  But, we still have time to smell the roses, which we plan on doing tomorrow.  Until then...