Downhill all the way

Tuesday 15^th September 2020

We wanted to get down the Tyrley and Adderley flights today, to put us in position to tackle Audlem tomorrow, and we also needed to take on water, so we made a reasonably early start, leaving the mooring at about half nine. We sailed for about an hour, through fairly featureless country, before coming to a water point at Goldstone Bridge. With the locks likely to occupy much of the afternoon we decided that Loulie would give the dogs their walk by going forward along the towpath; I would fill up then follow and pick them up when they turned back.

It was a pleasant spot on the water point, opposite the Wharf Tavern which has a widening of the canal in front of it, presumably the site of the eponymous wharf in the old days. I had a bit of a chat about our sliding roof with some boaters moored nearby – they remembered seeing it in the magazine article back when it was built.

After half an hour or so the tank was full, and I unmoored and set off after the rest of the crew. Before very long the canal went into Woodseaves Cutting, a long, deep cutting with a lot of narrow spots. I spent a lot of time waiting, first at a bridge and then at a pinch point, hovering on the off side while boats went slowly through in the other direction. I kept expecting to see Loulie and the pack coming the other way, but they did not appear. We passed a spot where a landslip had left rocks blocking the whole towpath – I found later that Loulie had had to lift Mabel over this, and encourage the others to clamber over, and she had decided after that not to go back over it.

Fallen tree and landslide in Woodseaves Cutting

Further along there was another landslip, this time on the off side, which had left a tree, earth and rocks in the canal, making the passage even narrower. I passed a work party improving parts of the towpath, and then emerged from the cutting, now close to Tyrley. There is a bridge some way short of the top lock, and as I approached I could see a boat stopped in the bridge hole, with others visible beyond, and I thought for a while that we were queuing all the way to the lock. In the event it turned out that some of the boats ahead were moored up, or had stopped for lunch, so the queue wasn’t as bad as I feared, though there were still several waiting. At this point I was also reunited with the others, who had reached the locks and decided to wait there for me, rather than going back into the rather dismal cutting. Loulie told me that Minnie had found – and eaten – a large dead eel on the bank; happily she showed no subsequent ill effects.

Things moved very slowly as we started to go through the locks. We discovered one reason when we finally got into the top lock. When it was nearly full I closed the offside paddle, so that I could go over and open the gate without having to subsequently go back and close the paddle. However I couldn’t get the gate open, and in the end I had to go back and open the paddle again, to allow the lock to fill completely. Going down to the bottom gate the reason was clear – there was so much water pouring out that a single open paddle at the top was not enough to keep pace, and the lock had started to empty again.

Top lock at Tyrley

Even after clearing the top lock we still had a slow passage through the remaining four. One issue was the final pound, where people were saying you had to be careful and not go near the sides. In the event it didn’t give Loulie any problems, but everything took extra time.

Once we were out of the flight we quickly reached Market Drayton, but unlike our last trip we did not stop this time. A couple of miles further on was the Adderley flight, and we had some concern that this would be as slow as Tyrley. However in the event there were no holdups, and we descended the five locks in good time. There isn’t much of a gap between this flight and Audlem, which we had no intention of starting, so we were looking to moor straight away – it was after five by now. There is a visitor mooring below the bottom lock at Adderley, which had a few boats already. In previous years we would have avoided this and looked for somewhere we could moor in solitude, but now we have become used to keeping the dogs away from the neighbours so we found a nice spot and tied up for the night.

Relaxing at Adderley

TODAY: 8:00 HOURS. 12.3 MILES. 10 LOCKS.

Voyage: 74:25 HOURS. 135.2 MILES. 112 LOCKS.