It’s a thrill-a-minute life on the cut, if by thrill-a-minute you mean that something out of the ordinary happens every few days. This morning’s excitement was a blocked lock gate, the second in a flight of fifteen. By the time we got to the top of the flight, the Canal and River Trust had been summoned, and their man in a van set to work with a giant extendible rake, closely monitored by the skippers of the three or four boats that were being delayed.

Success! After a couple of minutes of scraping, he fished out the sunken plank that was preventing the lock gate from opening, and we were on our way again.

After excitement like that, it’s hard to know how the rest of the day could compete.

We did pass the “secret” nuclear bunker.

Look, if it has signs up showing the way to it, it’s not a secret any more, is it? Speaking of which, why was the first number in the telephone directory (remember those) the Secret Service? If everyone has their number, they can’t be much of a secret. Then there’s those books called Unpublished Poems.

You can order them from Amazon, but they’re still friggin’ unpublished, are they?

Most of the way down the flight we stopped for elevenses in the village of Audlem. (Elevenses is a meal, snack and/or hot drink taken around eleven AM, after second breakfast and before luncheon. Sorry, I’m sure most of you knew that but we had to explain it to Sherri, so I thought I would throw in the explanation for other people who speak eating as a second language.) Audlem is a sinister place. One or more union jacks fly from every building, a display of nationalism that feels decidedly un-British. If you know you’re the best, you don’t need to wave flags to show it.

Here’s the center of town, a triangular junction between three roads, with a war memorial flying far too many union jacks.

Guess what it is called?

Either the entire village is geometrically challenged of they are trying to gaslight the tourists. “Everyone in this town thinks a square has three sides, so you must be the crazy one.”

Paula was complaining the other day that hairdressers and opticians often had cute names, but other businesses did not. Here’s a butcher with a cute name.

According to our canal guide the butcher in Audlem used to be called George’s Pork and Poultry, but it’s now Oxtail and Trotter. Civilization marches on, or perhaps the whole village was taken over by space aliens, who are trying to act human but not getting it quite right.

We moored up for the night in Nantwich. Here is Peter with a horse sculpture.

After years of experience with sailboats, Peter is really good at steering boats and bounces off the lock entrances a lot less than I do, so I have been having fun sitting at the front of the front of the boat and watching the countryside go by. Life is good.