We spent the day in Chester looking around, first we went to the trip boats to find out when the 2 hour cruise was, we had missed the morning cruise, but they are running two a day at the moment, and the next one was in two hours at 2:30pm. I asked when local high tide was to have a look at the situation when the level makes at the weir - that was an hour later at 1:20pm. We decided to walk back into town along the wall, after an extensive weir photographing session. A small section was closed, and diverted us through one of the shopping centres. This was handy because it took us past the first of two mobile phone shops I wanted to visit.
I've been looking at get mobile broadband for sometime, but Orange have been hiding a lot of information under wraps, and I've been trying to find out their actual setup for sometime. The other option was Three, which do a very good broadband package, their cheapest HSPDA offering was a USB dongle but on a steel boat it does mean you are trapped at a window. I had a look at some of their phones, and the cheapest that did HSDPA was the Sony Ericsson K660i at £110 which was cheaper than any other offering I'd seen from elsewhere. We had a walk down the street to the Orange store, but they didn't really have any good information on display, and we couldn't find a spare salesman. Since we needed to get back to the weir, we decided to leave and walked back to the river. It could have been a completely different place, now that the tide had covered the weir. Where it was noisy before, it was peaceful and quiet. We looked at marks on the weir, and nearby jetties to get an idea of the depth, I think we could have managed it without problems, not even needing to use the water gate which gives about another 2 foot of depth. I know the TNC had no problems getting over when the water was level to one of the jetties further up, but there is a low jetty, and a high jetty and I couldn't remember which one they were on. In the end it stopped just short of going over the lower jetty, looking at the tides it didn't look very likely, and we didn't want to get stuck on the river for the next two weeks (or more). Later one of the captains off the tripboat said that the locks down to the river were closed, and so we couldn't have done it anyway - though I can't see anything on the BW Stoppages site. We were getting hungry by this time, and we didn't know what we wanted, but Dad seemed to want MacDonald's so we then had to try and find it. We walked back up to the main shopping street again, and asked someone. Thankfully it wasn't too far, and I had a Sweet and Sour Spicy Chicken sandwich which was nice. Getting back to the river (again, for the 3rd time!) we went aboard one of the trip boats, and after a couple of late entries we were off. The Dee is a nice river, and there are some nice villages and houses along it's banks. There was a good flow on the river thanks mostly to the tidal water pushing up, but also there was a bit of fresh on as well. We motored up to the Iron Bridge, and then turned. Some points of interest were pointed out by the captain as we returned. At Heron Bridge Corner, there was an usual site of a heron (first they've seen here), even though there has also never been a bridge here - but it is a corner! While cruising I had another look at the Three pamphlet and was impressed by the new 6220, with GPS. I've been thinking about GPS phones, but they've been quite expensive and so ruled them out. 3 was doing this at £219 (on pay and go), and since you can pay £100 for a GPS then it seemed like an interesting idea. We returned to the store, and had a play with one (since it was on operational display), and then noticed another phone, the E71 with a full size keyboard, and only a little bit more. The salesman came over, and we had a good chat. He was quite knowledgeable, and could answer even my more difficult questions. I was worried about the data coverage side of Three's 3g, but they have an agreement with Orange for 2g data (and apparently they use t-mobile for 2g audio). Well with that I was sold, and since they don't have a returns policy I thought I might as well go for the better phone, so ended up with the E71. We wanted to get down to Ellesmere port for tomorrow, and after a shop at Tesco's, we set off down the canal at 6:30pm. It was nearly dark when we stopped somewhere near Butter Hill. Cheers, Mike -- Michael Askin http://shoestring_DOT_zapto_DOT_org/
