Shropshire (wind)lass: Day 6

Another sunny start to the day, it’s it become really warm.  At around 8am we moved forward to the water point to top up the tank.  We could see a lock keeper doing things down at the locks, but it wasn’t really clear what.  When we were ready to go down I walked up to set the staircase, and the lockie said there was something stopping a gate from closing, which he was trying to flush off.  Eventually, whatever it was had gone and we could start going down.

When the boat was in the bottom of the staircase locks, I went down to set the first of the individual locks.  It just needed topping up, and before I could get back to the staircase the lockie had opened the gates and Adrian was coming round the corner.

A boat had come up the middle lock, so that just needed topping up, and I went and opened the bottom one so Adrian could go straight in.

As we were almost ready to leave, a boat arrived at the bottom.  I went to check there was nothing coming through the tunnel.

At the next few locks, boats had recently come up but not recently enough to have seen us and left the gate open.  None of the locks is particularly deep, but because of the open countryside you feel high up when you enter them.

At Marbury Lock, there’s a railing along the offside, in front of the cottage, presumably to demarcate their property.

Below Marbury we passed numerous boats going the other way.  On one hire boat, two little boys were sat on the edge of the cruiser stern deck with their feet dangling in the water.  I was gearing up to say something, when Adrian popped up on the well deck and told them it was really dangerous.  If they’d slipped in, they could easily have been dragged through the propeller.  A little further on there’s a field with a number of camping pods.  It seems you can rent out the whole lot for an off-grid adventure.

We went through the lift bridge by the nursery, and had already decided we’d moor this side of the electric lift bridge, just in case it was busy the other side.  We picked a nice open spot with a straight edge — and we’d finished for the day even earlier than yesterday.  When lunchtime came around, we walked back to the lift bridge and went to have a look at the nursery, before going into the cafe.

Toasted sandwiches again, which were a bit bigger than yesterday but not quite as nice.  After lunch we walked back past the boat and the electric lift bridge.  Wrenbury Mill is an ABC hire boat base, but today there were no hire boats in at all.

We walked up the canal to the next lift bridge, then took the path across the field and through the church yard.

Wrenbury village store is quite well stocked, but we only needed some milk — although a couple of ice creams somehow got added to the shopping.  For the rest of the afternoon, we’ve just been trying to keep cool.

6 miles, 10 locks.  (51 miles, 25 locks)