Four Counties Ring
aboard Stolen Time

Page Published: 4 March 2026

Introduction

In August 2002 I took a trip around the Four Counties Ring aboard nb Stolen Time with Liz. You can read a little of how we acquired our share in the boat in my report of my First Solo Trip aboard her and about my thoughts on Owning Shares in a narrowboat elsewhere on the site.

All this happened some twenty five years ago but, at last, I've found the time to dig out the photos and pull together what memories I have. I do have help with the first few days of the trip in the form of some posts I made at the time to an Internet Newsgroup, the "social media" of the day. Here's a quote from one:

Liz and I will be taking Stolen Time for our first cruise together, starting tomorrow. It's our first ever fortnight's holiday together. Normally we just take a few days at a time, but we inherited this booking when we bought our share in the boat. When Liz told her doctor that we were going on a fortnight's boating holiday all he said was "Oh, S**t!". Could this be a bad omen - only the trip report will reveal. After 25 years and 170 days, according to a rough Excel calculation, of marriage, you never can tell.

The post concluded:

Live trips reports are in extreme doubt. Liz's view is that laptops are for work and this is a holiday. I don't think that playing the "But Darling, it's my birthday (54) today" card will work, as my birthday is, indeed, today and we're not on board yet, so you may have to wait for a trip summary when we get back!

Little did I realise the full trip report would be delayed almost a quarter century. As you read you'll discover, there's a reason for the inevitable vagueness and guesswork that occurs later in this report. You may want to read about the digital camera I used then and the state of what might be described as "social media", although the term didn't exist in 2002. (Page to be created and linked from here.)

Friday 2 August 2002

So it was that the following afternoon we arrived at Heritage Marina on the Macclesfield Canal. That evening I did manage to post my first trip report. It contained this observation:

Liz is a great planner. I am not. Please let me know if this is the usual state of affairs for man and wife. It might save her some expensive legal bills! The planning had led to an enormous spending spree in the weeks before the holiday. I shouldn't need to buy any more T-shirts, shorts, or jeans for about 20 years. And here's a tip for those who dabble on the Stock Exchange. Marks and Sparks should see a huge jump in profits in the next quarter! I did try to tell her that they do have launderettes west of Kings Lynn but to no avail.

How true some of that was. I still wear some of the clothes bought for that trip. We had our two English Setters, Zena and Charlie, with us so that meant there was as much dog food to find a home for as there was stuff for us.

My trip report reveals we arrived at Heritage Marina at 15:30, half an hour after our route planner had said we would, but that is not as good as it sounds as we had left half an hour before our planned time. Note that I said "route planner" not satnav. Back then 2G phones were not smart, but young trendies like me used "Autoroute", a software package that would produce a printed set of instructions and map, in much the same way that you used to be able to ask the Automobile Association to produce for you.

Once at Heritage Marina my task was to remove from the boat anything not likely to be needed. So I was packing the car as fast as Liz was stowing everything on the boat. After two hours Liz had achieved a home for virtually everything and finally stopped cursing and moaning about how there was nowhere for anything to go.

By this time the car contained the stove chimney and its tools, two stools, as we wouldn't have surplus diners aboard, the 1ft extension for the fixed double mattress, we planned to survive the fortnight on a four foot bed, all the spare bedding, quilts, double quilts and pillows galore. After we had set out we realised I had managed to leave the coal scuttle, with coal on board.

I did find time to sneak into the reception area of the boatyard and pick up the latest MCS guide to the Macclesfield and Upper Peak Forest Canal, which I still have in my collection of canal documentation.

We Set Out

In 2000 we had hired a boat, setting out from Stone, and completed a cruise to Froghall on the Caldon Canal. I managed to forget to pack my camera so I have no photographs of that trip. Back then the tunnel at Froghall was impassable so we had a little spare time and explored the first few miles of the Macclesfield Canal before returning to Stone. This time I decided we'd have enough spare time on a cruise around the Four Counties Ring to start by retracing steps along the first part of the Macclesfield Canal.

My trip report records that we stopped for a cup of tea just after Bridge 86, passing a liveaboard's mooring that we had seen two years earlier just before the bridge. Current photographs of the area show there are a number of moorings on the off-side and it doesn't look as remote as the photos I took then.

My first night's trip report records:

While sipping the tea, I realise that one of the things not transferred from the car to boat was my mobile phone charger!

Horrors!
In spite of what was related in news:uk.rec.waterways about Liz thinking that LapTops are strictly for work, she had relented and the laptop was aboard, but with no charger, not only would I not be able to make those "Reports from the Cut" to jealous friends and family, but I would not be able to give everyone live newsgroup and e-mail postings! This was indeed a tragedy. After debate about whether to attempt to buy a new one in Macclesfield, eventually the decision was made to press on to Congleton, where we could spend the night, wind, and return to pick up the charger next morning.

So we press on to Congleton where that evening's trip report reads:

I stowed the tiller and lifted the aft deck board to get to the stern tub greaser. "Arghh!", I cried, "We're sinking!". That was a bit over dramatic, I know, but the water was coming in a continuous stream rather than a drip. I turned down the greaser, but felt no resistance. Neither did the water stop flowing. I made a number of turns, stopping briefly after each one. Still the water poured. After about half a dozen turns the water went to a drip and then stopped, but not before a huge glob of grease had appeared at the end of the tube. At least we seemed safe for the night. It was also the clincher. It confirmed we had a good reason to return to the boat yard for some further advice.

There's more to discover in the first day's trip report that was posted on the news:uk.rec.waterways newsgroup, especially about our dogs and the CutWeb Logo, which I am surprised to find is, these days, more of a formal club with a £10 annual membership fee.

Saturday 3 August 2002

As you'll read in the full trip report for day two of our cruise, there are difficulties in getting an elderly dog ashore from an OwnerShips narrowboat. We are moored just east of Bridge 76 in the centre of Congleton. At 06:30 I pull on just enough clothes not to get arrested should the good citizens of Congleton rise earlier than I, and fetch dog leads and a set of little grey bags to collect whatever emerges during our stroll down the tow path. Charlie, needed to be carried up the aft cabin steps to the cockpit. Eventually, I worked out that I couldn't afford to put my camera in my anorak pocket and that I must take the leads separately up into the cockpit. After a series of attempts with Charlie in my arms I was ready for a rest, and Charlie was beginning to lose his patience, but we did get ashore. By the time I return the kettle is whistling, though I am instructed to make the tea, as Liz is back in bed engrossed in a book she was lent for the holiday by a colleague at work.

It's summer, so we are not running the Alde gas fired boiler, so we do as I have done on hire boats in the past and put a couple of miles under our belts and heat in the calorifier, then shower, breakfast and make ourselves ready for the rest of the Day. We wind after passing through Bridge 72 and make it back to yesterday's tea time stop at Bridge 86 for Breakfast.

Back at Heritage I quickly retrieve the charging cord from the car and am greeted by Mike, the boss, curious at our return so soon. I tell him why and mention the bilge pump concerns of the previous night. I was surprised by his immediate desire to get it fixed. Within a matter of moments, we had instructions to proceed to Red Bull where "Tony" was now expecting us.

It was around mid-day when we found Tony at Red Bull Services. He waved us onto the water point. Initially coming with the wrong tool, he spent over an hour unscrewing and screwing the fittings at the end of the stern tube, forcing as far as they would go, what I took to be split rubber rings. Feeling guilty about sitting on a water point, we did indeed take advantage of the facility while he did it, so I wasn't taking too much notice of what he was doing, but he did say that there was about 4mm of play in the stern tube, when there should be under 1mm, adding that while Stolen Time may only be four years old, when compared with the average cruising time per year of a private boat you could say our stern tube was 40 years old. At the end of it all we were ready to proceed down Heartbreak Hill.

Most of the locks on the flight are doubled. However, many of the extra locks tend to be added in short bays to one side of the line of the canal, making both entry and exit tricky as tight turns are needed. Foolishly, I chose to use the "extra" lock at what I think was Lock 46. It had just been vacated by a boat coming up. Emerging from the lock, with no one to push off at the bow, I couldn't make the required sharp right turn as there was no water to my left.

A brute of a hawthorn bush managed to sweep a pole and broom off their usual perch and pushing them along the roof of the boat towards me like a pair of lances in some medieval joust. A second longer pole and the plank were swept off the roof altogether. Ducking down, I retrieved the pole from the water as it passed by. But the bush had a sudden change in mood. It turned from being a threat and, instead, became a gallant knight rescuing the plank from a ducking, holding it by its most slender twigs, bouncing it like some doting father would bounce his baby on his knee. I take a certain pride in my deft spell of reverse and nifty tiller work which allowed me to retrieve the plank before it found its way to the water. All that suffered was my pride and a lost place in the queue to the next lock as the following boat had managed to pass through the main lock and was on its way before I picked up Liz and set off again.

Sunday 4 August 2002

After our second night I knew the ropes and no further step aerobics were required as I arose to do my usual duties with Zena and Charlie. There had been some heavy showers, but the day looked as if it would turn out to be another hot one. It turned out we had moored right beside a gap in the towpath fence which provided access to a large field that swept down the hill to an attractive babbling brook at the bottom. It was clearly used by locals for dog walking as it was complete with a number of the necessary bins both on the towpath and at the entrance to the field.

We'd spent the night opposite the first of the terraces of modern cottages in the village. It faces sideways onto the canal and the one on the end has a conservatory that overlooks the water and the open land beyond. Unusually, we had breakfast on our overnight mooring, and by the time we were ready to cast off the owner of the cottage was in her garden.

If you want to have strangers start a conversation with you, get a dog. It's so much easier for them to find some compliment to pay and no pet owner will pass up the opportunity to agree. And there you are! Before you know it the sun is high in the sky and you'll never make it to Middlewich by nightfall!

It was the lady in the cottage with the conservatory who caught us. She lost her husband the previous year, and although she enjoyed the view of the canal and the passing boats, she was more used to cruise liners, on which she had been several times when her husband was alive. It was almost a shame to leave her, but we needed to get on. Had we realised that the lock was only just out of sight at the other end of the housing development, we probably wouldn't have moved but carried on chatting until there was space in the lock. However, move off we did, to join a slow run down the rest of Heartbreak Hill.

My trip report tells me that for most of the day it was burning hot and that we stopped for a light salad roll lunch at Malkin's Bank. It also said I'd noted how there were many more opportunities to wind in these parts than is indicated in Nicholsons. That's something I was always concerned about as, until 2004, I maintained a site at waterwaysguides.co.uk that provided updates to Nicholson's, Pearson's and other waterway guide books. The report continues saying "by the time we reached Lock 68 it was getting windier and clouds were coming up fast. Indeed, rain fell."

This was the last day for which I posted a trip report on the newsgroup. I only realised that they were not live reports posted on the day they were recording as I began to work on preparing the text for this page. I now see that the report for the 2 August was posted on the 22nd. The report for the 3 August was posted on 3 September and the report for 4 August was posted on the 18 September. This increasing delay in recording the passing days may have been part of the reason that there are no more reports after today's but read on and you may well conclude there was another reason.

The newsgroup report concludes:

Now the trouble with boating with Liz is that she hates water. She refuses to be left alone, in charge of a boat, and will not stay on board in locks, which terrify her. That leaves her with just one choice. She does all the lock work. When not engaged in that, she spends most of the day walking the towpath exercising the dogs. And this day had been hot and increasingly humid as it wore on. Liz spends most of the year at a desk, so after a day like this the muscles all over the body announce to her in a most unpleasant way that they do, indeed exist. This had not been an easy day for her.

So when the rain came and I put on my anorak and got the dogs down into the cabin, but failed to get Liz her anorak and join her and her new companion working a boat up through Lock 68, I got wrong. I got very wrong. I got more than very wrong. There was screaming and shouting. There was sobbing. There was, in fact, utter and total exhaustion. I should have realised just what the day would have done to her, but with what some would say is typical male lack of consideration, I was oblivious to all this until it was too late. When I was writing up the log, in the diary used by all the boat's owners, Liz took the pen from me and etched in bold capitals across the centre of the page:

THIS IS THE FIRST AND LAST TIME I COME ON THIS BOAT

As you can tell, all was not well with the crew. It remained not well all that evening, especially, when with light fading we had reached 100 yards short of King's Lock in Middlewich. Even on a Sunday night the road, running along side the canal was busy. We got some sleep, in spite of the noise, but only after I negotiated a deal where I'd get a taxi back to Heritage marina and collect the car so we could get her home.

I hereby rename the Cheshire Locks "Lizbreak Hill".....

and stop here for added dramatic effect!

Whether that final sentence was intended just to close that days report or the account of the entire holiday, I cannot tell, but as we will see, the taxi was not called and Liz continued aboard until our return to Heritage Marina

Monday 5 August 2002

Morning came, and following the admittedly interrupted sleep, Liz was a little recovered and prepared to carry on. It seems we took things as easily as we could. By the time we travel the 100 yards from our overnight mooring, down King's Lock and through the bridge onto the Wardle Canal the shadows suggest it was close to midday.

From now on I'm relying on an extremely hazy memory and what I see in my photographs. The memory is hazy because I have more recently travelled part of the way around the Four Counties Ring and it is entirely possible I'm recalling events that happened more than ten years later.

Having studied all the photographs, I've identified almost all the locations you see with a high degree of certainty, by comparing my images with those found on Google Maps or the Geograph site. I've looked at shadows to see which of the photos may have been taken in the morning or afternoon. Using such techniques where memory fails me I have made some guesses about where overnight moorings may have been made.

I say all this as I cannot be certain that we traversed the entire Middlewich Branch during the rest of Monday, but it is highly probable as with just 14 lock-miles before you reach Barbridge Junction that should be achievable in less than four hours.

In case you're wondering about "lock-miles", I should explain a formula that I was introduced to on my First Canal Holiday. To calculate travel time on a canal work on the basis that it takes 15 minutes to negotiate a lock and be aware that the normal speed limit on the canals is 4mph. Put those two things together and you realise that a lock is the equivalent of a mile, so just add the number of locks to the mileage and divide by four for a journey time in hours.

Tuesday 6 August 2002

I have a memory of having a very leisurely morning at Barbridge, before we continued our journey. We crossed the main road to some sort of Farm Shop Café where we either had a coffee or a late breakfast. I can find no trace of such a place now and, it seems that since 2002, the main road has been diverted away from the canal. I did wonder if the incident has been transferred in my mind from a trip in 2015 past this point, but I am certain my memory pre-dates the new by-pass.

Hurleston Junction took me a little by surprise. I had no memory of what it looked like. Although I had cruised the Llangollen Canal in 1963 and 1970, I took no photos of it on either trip. In 2002 it was still early days for the Internet and the sources I rely on these days that might have reminded me of its appearance didn't exist.

I believe we moored next, perhaps for lunch, on the embankment just after Nantwich Aqueduct, but it may have been in the hope that we could venture into town to shop for supplies there. However, my memory says we deemed such things seemed to be too far away.

South of Nantwich there are just two locks, at Hack Green, before you reach the flight at Audlem. These days you'll likely find numbers of boats moored a little south of the locks, their crews visiting the "Secret Nuclear Bunker", a leftover from the cold war of the 50s and 60s. By the time you reach the old crane outside the busy "Shroppie Fly" pub you've already passed through three of the locks on the Audlem flight.

If Liz was not to be exhausted again there was no chance of managing the entire Audlem flight before nightfall. I believe we opted to moor part way up the flight which I think would have been between Locks #12 and #11 as there's a longer gap between those two than any of the other locks.

Wednesday 7 August 2002

There is an almost complete lack of photographs covering what I believe is the next day's cruise. It took some time to find a lock with exactly the right arrangement of concrete blocks and paving slabs near the top gate's paddles. Eventually, I concluded it was the Top Lock of the Audlem flight, but to do that I needed to considerably lighten the images I found on Google Maps as the way ahead beyond the lock was completely cloaked in shadow. One of the confusing factors was the lack of hedge around the garden of the bungalow on the far side of the lock. I have to assume that there's been a change of occupier in there and the new one has stripped it out.

I'd like to think that the reason for the lack of photos is that I was trying to be more helpful with the locks. By the time we'd reached the top lock we would have already passed through the eleven left to do in the Audlem Flight and there was a further five to climb a little over a mile ahead at the Adderley Flight

Thursday 8 August 2002

I recall that the picture of the ducks was taken soon after we rose at the location of our stop on Wednesday night. Research suggests this was just north of Bridge #67, Betton Coppice Bridge. It's the only place on this part of the canal that, these days, has uninterrupted views to the west across fields with a clear concrete bank on the off-side of the canal. I suspect the view was much the same in 2002. This conclusion is also supported by the fact that it's the last picture taken before those in Market Drayton and we definitely arrived there late morning.

It's quite clear that we arrived in Market Drayton in the late morning, perhaps even at lunch time. What happened between arrival and departure is much more of a mystery. I suspect we may have had a coffee, or in my case tea, and made a plan. It might even have been long enough since breakfast that we had lunch and made a plan.

Certainly, we needed supplies and the plan involved going shopping. The photographs suggest that it was decided that I'd stay aboard and look after the dogs while Liz went shopping. I'm sure it would have taken a while to come to that conclusion as Liz was not the best navigator around strange places. Not that I'm suggesting Market Drayton is strange, just unfamiliar to both of us.

I do remember, with certainty, that Liz was gone a long time. Long enough for me to roam the town to try and find her. What is not clear is whether the photograph I took before going to look for her meant I had left the dogs on Stolen Time and walked to the water point to see if it was clear, or had actually moved the boat there.

That Liz had got lost there is no doubt. Trawling through Google's Street View I finally identified the picture as taken on Stafford Street. In front of me is the western entrance to Grove Gardens, a crescent that rejoins Stafford Street further east. What makes this strange is that she is carrying the shopping but actually walking away from the canal.

How far, I wonder, had my search taken me? The shopping bags seem to have come from Safeway, the chain since taken over by Morrison, and not one we regularly frequented. We're well south of where Morrisons now stands, although my research says that the local Safeway stood on the site now occupied by Lidl, opposite the current Morrison store. When I quizzed Liz for her memories she said:

I look very pleased to see you, and I recall thinking that one should never use a trolley in a supermarket if you were planning to carry things home!

I’m sure I was pleased to see you but maybe I had also forgotten my way back? That wouldn’t surprise me at all! The fact that you didn’t have the dogs with you also gave me a flashback. Was it the occasion when the pleasure of seeing you turned instantly to concern when you said you had left the kettle on and the dogs on the boat? That is an event I do remember!

And in a further response, saying:

I can remember being very worried about the kettle on and the dogs, expecting to reach the canal and see flames coming from the boat.

Now, I hadn't remembered some of that. I can't believe I would really have left the kettle on, certainly not with the dogs aboard as I'm sure it would have been a whistling one. More likely, I had boiled it for a cup of tea then decided I really did need to go and search for her, perhaps because I had moved the boat?. However, I do remember Liz's initial pleasure at seeing me instantly turning to anger that I left the dogs on board.

However, once back at the boat things calmed down and we cast off to continue our cruise with the next obstacle being the Tyrley Flight

It must have been mid to late afternoon when we set off from Market Drayton. You soon reach the Tyrley Flight of five locks. They are in a pleasantly wooded cutting with rocky outcrops and we found ourselves in a queue of perhaps four or five boats, all waiting for those in the queue on the other side of the lock who were descending the flight. It was still a hot day and I have a vague memory of striking up conversations with the crews of other boats in the queue and being amused by the antics of some of the crews coming down. I believe that included a crew that was as concerned about their water pistol shooting match as they were about getting through the lock ahead of us.

I know we spent the night on a mooring just north of The Wharf Tavern. I think it may have been relatively late by the time we got there and we weren't able to eat there as we had hoped to at one stage.

Friday 9 August 2002

After a night spent close to the Wharf Tavern it seems I rose early as the sun is low and there are no people about. I walked down to the bridge to take a photograph of the scene. Perhaps I even walked up to the inn to see what we'd missed. I don't remember. There's no sign that I had the dogs with me and that's quite likely as keeping two dogs under control while also messing with a camera takes some doing. You might have thought that I would have taken a picture of The Wharf Tavern. The reason I didn't is probably because the side facing the canal would have been in deep shadow at this time of day.

On the way back I did take a picture of our boat. I remember always being interested in turbines for charging boat batteries. That's a hangover from when I was considering the practicalities of becoming a live aboard. At the time solar panels were considerably more expensive than they are these days and back then turbines were a viable alternative.

The plan for the day was to push on towards Autherley Junction and this we did. At some point the weather worsened from that which we had had so far. That may have been part of the reason for taking fewer photos. Another might have been that I was becoming concerned about the engine and that distracted me. Certainly, the following day it collapsed completely and we needed to be taken in tow. At least I did manage to take photos of the two best known landmarks we passed.

After the Tyrley Flight there is a long pound which, if you are to believe Nicholson's Guides has various points of interest. I did manage to take photos of one of these, the High Bridge (#39), which carries the A519 between Eccleshall and Newport. Next comes Norbury Junction, but these days it's not so much a junction as what a Broadsman would describe as a short dyke, used for moorings.

The big puzzle is where we ended the day and spent the night. At first, I thought it might have been between Norbury Wharf and Gnosall, but the picture above seems to have been taken in the afternoon, which must have been Friday afternoon and not the Saturday morning. I say that because the sun seems to be illuminating the left bank ahead of us, rather than the right. My research suggests the scene is found a little south of Little Onn Bridge (#24) and that means we probably spent the night moored between it and Wheaton Aston Lock.

Part Two

Please continue by reading Part Two of this log which records our second week aboard Stolen Time. You'll learn about two more breakdowns, our journey up the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, then the Trent and Mersey, which includes passage through the Harecastle Tunnel, before another little trip up part of the Macclesfield Canal.