Adderley Below Locks to Market Drayton - Shropshire Union Canal

 

Saturday 31^st October to Sunday 1^st November

Saturday we stayed put and didn’t do much as the weather was not too good, lots of wind and rain.  There was a full moon and I managed to get a few pictures through the trees.

Sunday – when we got up the wind had dropped a bit and although it was overcast it was dry so we untied and set off from our mooring.

  

  

We have the five Adderley locks to go up and as the bottom lock was not far from where we were moored, I walked down to the lock to get it ready.

The lock was empty so I opened the gates and Kev came in.  We timed it right for once as a few minutes later a boat came behind us, usually it’s us following a boat up the locks but today it’s the other way around.  The lady from that boat came up to the lock and said she would go and set the next one for us, not sure why she wanted to do 

that perhaps they were in a hurry and wanted to make us go faster but we didn’t argue.

We were soon up the lock so I opened the gate and out we went and onto the next one where the lady had opened the gates for us so Kev went straight in.  We have a little system on these narrow locks in that I get both gates open then Kev brings the boat into the lock and steps off the boat and up the steps onto the offside and takes a rope with him and pulls the boat into the lock, then he shuts one gate and I shut the other, it saves me having to go from one side to the other.

  

    

I then opened the paddles and the lock filled up, they aren’t very deep locks so they don’t take long to fill.  We were then onto the third lock. 

We were lucky as all the locks were empty today so in our favour.  We got through this lock then onto the fourth one and then we were heading to the top lock.

    

A boat had just arrived at the top lock waiting to come down and the lady came down to the lock.  Kev had just pulled the boat into the lock and we shut the gates and I saw that she was going to open the paddle.  I called to her to wait a minute until Kev had stopped the boat going forward as if she opened the paddles fully then the boat would surge forward and smash into the top gate.  She obviously didn’t like me saying as she muttered something and wasn’t very friendly after that but it’s our boat and if it had surged forward things inside could have fallen and broke.

I tried to chat to her but she wasn’t very forthcoming, still never mind you can’t win them all!

We left the gates open for them and went on our way.

    We went under a few bridges and in a few open spots the wind was quite strong and it rocked the boat a bit. We carried on along the canal and after a few miles we were approaching Market Drayton, we went past a long line of moored boats and under a couple more bridges and stopped at the services.

There are two moorings just past the services but they are usually always full but today we were really surprised to see one was empty so we took that space which is great as it means we don’t have to move the boat to get water or carry it along the towpath, our hose will reach the tap from this space.

In the afternoon we walked up to the Lidl and B&M to get a few things and both were quiet.

We are now going to stay here in Market Drayton for the month lockdown as we have boat services and the town is about a 15 minute walk away with three supermarkets and other shops like Wilko and Savers so it should be fine.

This will be our last blog for now although I may do one every now and again during the Winter if we are able to move around again. It has been a strange year for all of us and it was going to be our first year of proper trading doing several markets and festivals but Covid put paid to that. 

We did manage to do some trading during the Summer when things opened back up and it went really well and we are selling a few things online so hopefully next year things will start to get back to normal and we can experience trading at some organised events, fingers crossed. Kev will be busy over the Winter making stock and we will try and do some trading during the lockdown and hopefully make a few pennies!

This year since the first lockdown we have only managed 139 miles and 96 locks and travelled through three counties, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire.  We spent the first lockdown near the small village of Brewood in Staffordshire which worked out well.

We were booked to have Harry the Jack Russell to stay for two weeks in September but only got him for a few days as Jane and Malcolm's holiday abroad was cancelled and they only managed a few days away in Cornwall but we did get to spend several weeks in and around Audlem and got to spend time with our Audlem family so that was great.

Thank you to you all for reading our blog, take care and keep safe and let’s hope that next year we can all get back to some kind of normal.

Sheila & Kev