Coole Pilate to Hurleston Junction - Shropshire Union Canal

 Sunday 16^th May

We are on the move today and the sun was shining and it was dry which was nice to see after the heavy downpours we had yesterday.

We decided to leave quite early, well it was for us and so just after 8.30am we untied and set off along the canal.

             

We went under a couple of bridges and met a couple of boats but the canal was quite quiet.  As a hire boat was coming towards us, a swan came flying right past them and us.

We soon came to Hack Green locks, there are just two in this flight.  The top lock was full so I was able to open the gate and let Kev in. We were soon down the lock and Kev said a boat was coming up the second lock, so I left the gates open for them and walked to the next lock.

                                                     

                                                                                                          

There was a boat waiting to come up and about four people from that boat came up to the lock so I asked them if I could get on as they were going to work the lock and they said yes so I did.  We were soon down the lock and they opened the gates and we went out and on our way again.

                                   

                                                                 

We chugged on and then was approaching Nantwich aqueduct, we went over there, past several moored boats and stopped at the services.

We filled up our water tank and got rid of rubbish.  In one of the skips, there was a fold up table in really good condition and from a quick look, it seemed a bolt was missing holding the top together and easily fixable so that went on the roof! Not sure why you would throw away a perfectly good table and not just get a bolt and mend it, but I suppose we live in a throw away society and it’s in our favour as we now have a handy table.  Hopefully Kev can fix it, you can never have too many fold up small tables.

                  

                                  

We then went on our way, on along the canal which is very quiet, not many boats moving.

We went under several bridges then we were at Hurleston Reservoir where we moored up just before the bridge and the junction with the Llangollen canal.

          

In the afternoon as the sun was still shining and it was quite warm, we walked up the locks at the start of the Llangollen canal to Bridge 1 and walked off the canal to the road and along there to Snugburys Ice-cream farm.

                                       

Ii was very busy with lots of cars and people.  We saw a long line of cars and then realised it was a drive thru for ice cream, we hoped they would have a queue for walkers as well otherwise we would have to pretend we were in a car and get in the drive thru queue, that would have been fun!  Fortunately the shop they usually sell the ice cream was open so we joined that queue.

They were only letting in one in, one out but it didn’t take long and soon we were sat on a bench in the sunshine enjoying our ice creams, I had sea salt caramel and raspberry ripple and Kev had mint choc chip and rum and raisin, well we had to have two scoops, can’t go there and just have one, it’s too good.

                             

                                        

We then walked back along the road to the canal and sat on a bench by the locks watching boats go through.  In the distance we could see a large satellite dish, which we haven’t seen from there before. We thought it might be Jodrell Bank Observatory at Macclesfield, but wasn’t sure so we asked the volunteer lock keeper and he confirmed it was.  We said we had looked across there many times but never seen it before and he said that it’s not often you can see it like today as it depends what angle the satellite dish is at.

We walked on down the locks and back to the boat.

We are staying here tonight then heading on to Calveley in the morning so fingers crossed the sun is shining again and we don’t get wet!