Cheshire, eventually: Day 13

Finally, we have arrived in Cheshire, having started the day in Staffordshire and crossed Shropshire.  We knew we had quite a journey to do today if we wanted to get back on schedule, so with lots of miles before the first locks I got up first and got us going.  We set off at 7.15 and they were already moving the day boats about at Norbury Wharf.

At Grub Street cutting, I took the photo which has to be taken.

The former Cadbury works at Knighton was looking much neater than we’ve seen it recently, and the boat moored outside says the owners are ‘profiteers in all things decent!’.

We crossed the border into Shropshire, but the weather was so different from yesterday that The Wrekin was only a vague outline on the western horizon.  The sun hasn’t really come out at all today, and it’s around ten Celsius cooler.  Before Goldstone Wharf, there are a collection of camping pods, which don’t yet appear on Google maps.

Woodseaves cutting is deep, narrow, and very green.  There are also the remains of several land slips.

We hadn’t seen many boats all day, but when we got to Tyrley Locks, a boat coming up the top one said we had four boats in front of us.  The cottage by the lock now has flowers all over it, rather than UKIP banners.

Adrian was working these locks, and discovered that the boat in front of us was a single hander who didn’t want any sort of help from anyone.  Even when he’d left a lock he would rather faff about with a pole than let someone else close the gates.  Consequently, our progress was slowed quite a bit, although the five locks still took only just over an hour.  At the bottom of the locks, the tree stump man has had a makeover.

Fortunately, the single hander had stopped for water in Market Drayton, so we slipped by.  We had lunch on the move, then arrived at Adderley Locks which I was working.  There was a boat coming out of the top lock, and the second one was full and the gate had swung open.  There was a boat going down in front, but we also passed two more boats going up.

Between Adderley Locks and the top of the Audlem flight we crossed from Shropshire to Cheshire.  At the locks, we still had the boat in front, but there’s always the stand of goodies to choose from by the top lock.  We ended up with some flapjack and a pork pie for lunch tomorrow.

Below the top lock, one of the local cows was having a paddle.

We followed the boat down the top two locks, and we both wanted to moor in the next pound.  The other boat had had a look at what was available, and opted to stop before the official moorings, but thought we’d fit into a space a couple of boats ahead.  Fortunately, we did.  We’d been on the move for more than seven hours, which is the sort of day we’re not really supposed to be doing these days!  Just along from us was another Braidbar boat, Hollingworth, so we went to say hello to Alex and Alan and their four miniature dachshunds.

When we had the share boat, Debdale, it was based at Norbury Junction for a while so we did the Shroppie a lot.  But looking back at our journeys on this boat, we’ve realised this is the first time we’ve done the canal heading north.  The previous four occasions have all been southbound as we seem to have used the Shroppie as the way back from places.

16 miles, 12 locks.  (104 miles, 120 locks)