Tuesday 25th May
We moved up from the bottom of the locks on Saturday to the moorings below lock 13 and the Shroppie Fly pub, we only had to do two locks so didn’t take too long and we managed to do it in between showers. John and Sharon moved up as well but they moored above lock 13. They were going to go on but it kept raining, so they decided to stay another night. In the evening we all went to The Lord Combermere for a meal and the food was so good, it really is an excellent place to eat, we had a lovely evening.
Sunday – we had breakfast at the cafe in the marina with Jane, Malcolm, Sheila and Tony, it was great to be all together again as we haven’t been able to do that since last year and the breakfast was delicious as always. Jane and Malcolm dropped us back at the boat and we just chilled out for the rest of the day. Our friend Bill and his little dog Peanut were moored further up the locks and came to see us in the afternoon for a cuppa and a catchup, it was nice to see them as we haven’t met up since last year. Peanut came and sat on my lap and had a cuddle for a while then he went and had a cuddle with Kev so as not to leave him out!
Yesterday (Monday), we were going for lunch with Jane at the Shroppie Fly but decided to do the washing before we went but that didn’t happen as when we switched on the inverter and the engine alarms started going off and the batteries wouldn’t charge. We thought the alternator had died so we rang the marina and a chap whose number we were given but they couldn’t help. We were then given the number of another electrical engineer who lived not far away and he said he would come out Tuesday morning. We were lucky the sun came out in the evening so the solar panels charged up the batteries and kept the fridge going.
This morning before 10am Barney turned up and had a look and at first thought it was the alternator and ordered us a new one but when he went to remove the old one something didn’t seem quite right so he tested something else and found his hunch was correct, it wasn’t the alternator at all it was the isolator switch that goes to the batteries it had overheated over time and melted and so wasn’t working. Luckily he had a new one in his van so after a while it was all fixed and we were up and running again. He was a really nice friendly chap and certainly knew his stuff so glad we found him as you never know when we may need help again and we would definitely recommend him.
The sun was actually shining for a change so we decided to go up 11 locks and moor before lock 2. We untied and went up one lock then moored outside the Shroppie Fly to use the services. Bill and Peanut were just coming down so we left the lock open for them. We said our goodbyes as Bill was going the opposite way to us and making his way to Llangollen so our paths won’t cross again for a while but I expect we will see him in a couple of months when he is on his way back.
Once all that was done, we set off up the locks. A boat has just come out of the next lock and left the gates open for us. The by-wash was very strong today at the entrance to the lock so Kev had to run the gauntlet to get in the lock, but he managed it okay.
It was a lovely sunny afternoon and we worked our way up the locks, we like these locks as they are close together, not very deep and set in lovely countryside.
We were about three locks from lock 3 and I said to Kev we need two more boats to come down one in each lock to make it easy for us and guess what there was a boat in those two locks coming down so that made our passage even easier and before we knew it, we were in lock no. 3.
Once through that lock, we moored up in the moorings before lock no. 2.
Then on Thursday we will be making our way to Market Drayton to attend the floating market there over the bank holiday weekend so we are looking forward to that and also going back to Market Drayton to see the people we made friends with during our lockdown stay there.
No comments:
Post a Comment