Welsh waters: Day 7

We had a lovely evening with Helen and Andy last night, and Whitchurch turns out to be a good place for a visit.  The roads leading here are pretty good, and there’s a little canal and country park car park just beyond the end of the arm.

This morning we timed things exactly right.  We had looked at the weather forecast, and decided to get up in good time — so we were pulling out of our mooring at 8.20, first going up the arm to turn around.

Back on the mainline, we carried on upstream in rather dark overcast conditions.  There were a couple of lift bridges; this one is just someone’s drive.

It was a full hour before we saw another moving boat, and we didn’t see another until after we’d moored.  You’d struggle to believe this is one of the busiest canals in the country, especially at the moment.  Our planned stop was the moorings at Welsh End, and the whole length was free when we arrived.  We moored in exactly the same spot last time we were here.  Then about two minutes after we’d tied up the rain started — light at first, but then really heavy at times.  It rained for a good couple of hours, and all but one of the boats that went past was a hire boat, on a schedule.

After lunch we had a lovely video call catch-up with my cousin Catherine and Nigel, and it looks as though we’ll see them next month.  By then the rain had stopped, so we headed out for a walk, and ended up along the canal by the lift bridge, and following the orange route round part of Whixall Moss.

The whole area, which is restored peatland, has a sort of other-worldly quality about it.  It reminds me of an inland Dungeness.

The sun even came out while we were walking back to the boat.  Now we have a chicken roasting in the oven.  The other nice thing that happened today was that The Water Road had a nice review in the weekly Podcast Rex newsletter.

4 miles, 0 locks.  (25 miles, 19 locks)

Shropshire (wind)lass: Day 2

It rained quite a bit yesterday evening and was also very windy.  The trees at the Marbury moorings kept dropping pine cones onto the roof!  We woke up to a much better day than forecast, and set off about 8.15.  Through the first bridge was a long straight section with big skies.

The first three locks of the day were all spaced out.  The middle one, Willey More, has a pub right alongside, although closed this early in the day.

A bit further on, the canal crosses into Shropshire and goes through a large bridge, almost a tunnel really, which used to carry a railway line.  It’s on a blind bend, and leads straight to Grindley Brook Locks.

A boat was coming out the bottom lock, so I held well back because I knew the bywash would push the boat into us if I was too far forward.  The bywashes really make life tricky.

The second lock is round another corner and has another fierce bywash, so I was pleased Adrian had got it ready and there wasn’t a boat to try to pass.  Grindley Brook has three individual locks and then a staircase of three, and it’s busy so there are often queues.  We could see boats waiting to go up the staircase — and there’s only really room for two boats there, and the landing is on another right angle bend.  Adrian went to see what was going on, and found that in spite of it being a Saturday in July, there were no lock keepers on duty.  There was one boat coming down with another two to follow, so we decided it was best if we waited between locks two and three while the downhill boats came down.  Adrian helped reset the lock for them.  Meanwhile, a boat had come up behind us, and as the first downhill boats came down went down another one came up — meaning the pound was getting very full.  By the time the third boat came down, it was a bit chaotic, but at last I was able to go into the lock, and then eventually follow two other boats up the staircase.

The six locks had taken about an hour and 20 minutes, thanks to all the waiting.  By then there were three boats to come down (three in each direction seems to be normal), so the people behind us would have had another wait.  The boat immediately behind us was Tilda, which I did a boat test on years ago.  We stopped on the water point to fill the tank, and decided to get some washing going too.

We’d been aiming to stop at Whitchurch, but the moorings before the lift bridge were full so we went through the bridge.  But the arm also looked to be full of boats.  Then a boat moored on the mainline after the bridge set off (and Adrian kept the bridge up for them) so we slotted into their space.  However, it was on a bend so the stern was well out, and we thought we were quite vulnerable to boats using the bridge landing — we we decided to carry on for a bit, and have lunch on the move.  In the end we’ve come much further than intended, because lots of the next stretch is in the trees and all fees a bit enclosed.  We eventually stopped on the Welsh End visitor moorings.

9 miles, 9 locks.  (17 miles, 15 locks)