Lyra's Travels

Friday, Saturday 20th, 21st. April 2012
Having provisioned at the Morrison's in Nelson yesterday we set off this morning in occasional sunshine, punctuated with large cauliflower clouds which promised showers to come.
The countryside alternated from industrial to open views over the valleys. As we approached Burnley one of the showers turned quite nasty with a good pounding of hailstones. We had intended to moor on the embankment overlooking the town but the hail made us change our minds and we headed for the mooring at the town wharf. Here we stopped for short time while I went into town to get a couple of magazines. There's a large Tesco Extra here and I expected to find them in there. Alas, no. They had every imaginable knitting magazine except the one Cath wanted, and also Waterway's World when I wanted Canal Boat. I went off further down the hill into the town centre and found a Smith's which of course stocks everything.
Deciding not to stop here overnight we continued on our way as far as the next BW services. By now it was pouring again. Just as we manoeuvred to come alongside we picked something up on the prop which made life difficult. I decided to leave diving into the weed hatch until this morning.
Already moored up here was a boat we have seen a few times moored up in Stanley Ferry and was intrigued by its name "Jar Jar Binks" with a graphic of the Star Wars character. Why did they call their boat that? Turns out that the family name is Binks, and the grand children insisted on the name. No better reason I suppose.
This morning looked about the same as yesterday, and the results were very much as expected, showers of rain and hail. 
I took a dive into the weed hatch and came up with loads of heavy plastic and string.Just after we set off, not having gone more than a few feet, something else caught round the prop and we had to stop to remove it.
The industrial scenery continued, but open views were still aplenty and we've now stopped for the night at Church where there is a lovely single mooring, except that some kids have just turned up and thrown a cushion at us, which they picked up amongst the general canal-side rubbish. Luckily it didn't have any stones in it.