Real reflection(s) ... and a near death 23 years go

Yesterday my retirement calculator clicked over to three years. I’m a lucky sod for sure, being able to enjoy/ afford my retirement in the way I live it. There was some planning hard work, study etc of course.

Another reflection was on our boating ‘career’. We think about 23 years ago we did our first ever lock on this canal - Marbury lock. We hired our first canal boat with our two lads out of Wrenbury Mill. Today when we passed the base there were no boats in the basin... do they still have a hire fleet I wonder, if they do they were all out. 

Rachel bringing Percy through the electric lift bridge that gives the boater power to stop the traffic !!

Now here is the scene of the near fatality.... ok some poetic license for sure but the memory was thus.... By the time we were on our way back on our first trip I had relaxed enough to allow Tom my eldest to drive the boat while Rachel was in the boat reading and Callum my youngest and me were walking ahead to lift the lift bridges (winding the pneumatic pumps on the bridges to lift them) we got to the last bridge before returning the boat and Callum was playing the game of seeing how long he could stand up on the bridge while being raised .... ( pre parental H&S) only Tom decided it would be fun to see how quick I could wind the bridge up as he put the boat in warp drive at the bridge... result was to prevent a major crash I had to wind the bridge up as fast as I could resulting in youngest son  literally hanging off the hand rail, which Rachel saw as the boat thundered under the bridge with me yelling at the top of my voice to Tom To slow down who was laughing his young head off ! What an end to the holiday ! How I laughed, not ! 

Here is the first lock we ever  did in our canal boat career 

We had a very good run to our scheduled overnight stop at Povey lock, so we took lunch and a siesta then carried on to clear the Grindley six Which I did not like too much as the by-washes were really fierce making lock entering a real challenge. We climbed the flight and thankfully emptied the two rather full cassettes, disposed of the rubbish and watered up. 

A long day but we are ahead of our schedule so may explore the Whitchurch arm in the morning.