Turning for home, and a narrow squeeze

The dogs didn’t waken us at 7:15 this morning, because they had already woken us at 6:30. I took them out for a tiddle and then tried to get back to sleep, but they were thoroughly awake by this point and we had no chance of sleeping through the racket coming from the saloon. When someone started to try to scratch through the door we bowed to the inevitable.

An aqueduct carrying the canal over the A5 Watling Street

At least this meant that we could have a leisurely breakfast and still get away at about nine. The first “challenge” was Cowley Tunnel – no challenge at all in fact, as it is about 80 yards long, wide enough for two boats to pass if needed, and resembling a long bridge. It was about five miles to the first lock, indeed the only real lock of the day, at Wheaton Aston. The lower sections of the Shropshire Union resemble a Roman Road, with vast long stretches as straight as a die. It was built by Thomas Telford about 1830, one of the last major canals, and he used cuttings and embankments to maintain a straight line without locks up or down. The older canals achieved the same effect by following the contours around, resulting in a very winding track in places. The Staffs & Worcs, which we joined later today, is a prime example of this.

Having said that, the Shropshire is still very irritating with a shelf sticking out from the towpath side along most of its length, which makes mooring to let the dogs on and off a challenge. Today we solved this by dropping them off in a bridge, where the banks pinch together and there is no shelf. I sailed on about a mile and tied up at a 48 hour mooring, which is the one place you are guaranteed a bit of deep water.

Bridge 10 - the Chillington Hall Carriage Drive

We pressed on down the lower reaches, with more embankments and cuttings. In one there was an ornate bridge built by the canal company for a local landowner to carry his drive over the cut – his price for giving them permission to cross his land. We got down to the bottom of the Shroppie at Autherley, and before we went through the stop lock we tied up at the water point to replenish our tanks, and buy the ingredients for supper from the local Morrisons – we have not really gone that far from civilisation.

Not long after turning north on the Staffs & Worcs we came to a genuine challenge, a long narrow section known as “Pendeford Rockin”. This is about half a mile which is barely wider than the boat, certainly you would have no chance of passing, except at three spots which are just wide enough. The towpath is on one side and the other is a sheer rough stone wall/cliff. The problem is that narrowboats reverse very poorly, so you really don’t want to meet someone head on. So Loulie took a walkie-talkie and set off ahead on foot. When she reached the first passing place she called me forward, then kept going, ready to warn any boat she might meet that I was on my way, so they should wait in the passing spot. As it happens we met no one, either there or in the next two stretches, so I picked her up at the end of the narrows and we went on our merry way.

As I mentioned earlier this canal is very windy, with many bends of ninety degrees or more, and we were headed north, south, east and west all within the space of a couple of miles. Despite that we are now definitely past the extreme southerly point of the trip, and our general direction is homeward bound.

Yesterday we stopped a couple of miles short of our target for the day, but today’s run caught up all the backlog and we eventually moored slightly past our third night target, which was Hatherton Junction. Out in the real world we are less than a mile from the M6, just where the toll road heads off south of J12. But we have moored in a little bend with no-one else in sight, fields and woods all around, and the dogs can just jump out of the boat with no risks to worry about – a perfect holiday for them as well as us.

Dogs On Holiday

Captain Minnie in command

Today: 7.5 hours. 19.1 miles. 2 locks.

Voyage: 23 hours. 45.0 miles. 29 locks.