It's Over

Friday 18^th September 2020 

The mooring below Big Lock proved very successful. It was nice and quiet – just a few dog walkers early on, but less traffic than a normal towpath mooring. And of course there was nice open green space close by in both directions. The other benefit was that with the Middlewich locks all behind us there was no pressure to get moving early, so we took our time.

In the end we got moving about ten. As we were approaching Croxton Aqueduct I saw a boat coming the other way towards us. This aqueduct is very narrow, just a few inches either side of a narrowboat, so I swerved over to the left to let them past. As they came by I recognised them – the Tiller People, regular vloggers based at the Overwater Marina on the Shroppie.

Tired crew on the final leg

Trent and Mersey jungle north of Middlewich

Bridge 213 - last one on the T&M

After that we were following a well-trodden path back through the wilds north of Middlewich, then through Wincham and Marston, past Marbury and Anderton, then through the tunnels. Loulie took the dogs off for a walk after Barnton, and we got back to the marina at about five, and our adventure was over.

It has been a great trip, with a strange hiatus in the middle. We have reached two landmark points on the network – Shardlow and Birmingham - as well as a number of other memorable spots; the Trent crossroads, Fradley and Fazeley Junctions, Dudley Museum and the tunnels, and the Wolverhampton flight. Given the strange year and the constraints of lockdown it’s good that we have managed to get away for a significant length of time. We have not had as many nights on board as we had planned, but something is better than nothing.

TODAY: 7:00 HOURS. 19 MILES. 1 LOCK.

Voyage: 94:25 HOURS. 176.7 MILES. 138 LOCKS.

Getting back on the grid

 Thursday 17^th September 2020

We needed to find a mooring with good mobile signal for the evening, because I had a Parish Council meeting to attend. However we needed to make a reasonable mileage, so that we would be in position to get home tomorrow (Friday). The signal is fairly poor all the way along the Middlewich Branch, until you reach the eponymous town itself, but we were unsure how slow we would find things through the locks. We didn’t make an early start – I went down into town to get a plant pot from M&S, because Loulie wanted to give it to a lady at NNC who has been very helpful to us over the years. In the end it was about 10 when we set off. 

These are very familiar waters to us by now, and we headed up to Barbridge Junction, then along the Branch. After our worries about queues at the locks, in the event we went straight into the first three; at Cholmondeston a man from the marina was working the lock as people passed through, and at the other two we got lucky by arriving just as boats were coming out, going the other way. Loulie got off with the dogs for a good walk around the middle of the Branch – it is very rural and quiet, with very few busy roads or other hazards in the way of dog walking. 

As we left Stanthorne lock another boat pulled out from the bank ahead of us, and we followed them down through Middlewich, with things becoming much slower. There was another boat waiting at Wardle lock, and others coming up, then on the triple flight we again encountered slow boaters who generally held things up.

Once down those locks we moored near the centre of town, so I could get on the bike and go to Morrisons for food. We then debated whether to go on down Big Lock, and I went ahead for a recce. It looked as though there was space in a spot we have noticed before, on the offside just below Big Lock, so we carried on and moored there. Although it is on the off side it is a CRT public mooring, beside some open green space, and we were able to squeeze on the end. It was great for walking the dogs, and since we were still inside the town boundaries the signal was great for my meeting.

 

TODAY: 7:00 HOURS. 14 MILES. 8 LOCKS.

Voyage: 87:25 HOURS. 157.7 MILES. 137 LOCKS.

Back to Base

Wednesday 16^th September 2020

The main business of the day was the Audlem flight, fifteen locks, which was only about a mile from where we were moored. We didn’t want to get caught in a queue, as we had at Tyrley yesterday, so we got up fairly early, gave the dogs breakfast, and got onto the canal by about nine.

As it turned out there was no queue at the top of the flight, but as we worked our way down the locks we encountered a fair amount of minor annoyances, mostly from boats going the other way. Nothing very major, but people not knowing what they were doing, or going very slowly. In normal years it is easier to step in and “help out” to put them back on the right track, but social distancing makes everyone keep apart. I don’t suppose it really held us up very much.

We had intended to stop at Audlem Mill, above lock 13 (three from the bottom). However in the event there wasn’t anywhere to moor right outside, and while we could have stopped below the lock and walked back, we decided just to push on.

There were only two locks left for the day, the isolated pair at Hack Green, 2-3 miles further on from Audlem. Here, however, we did encounter significant delays, as one of the locks had a leaky paddle and was filling very slowly indeed. There wasn’t much we could do about this, so we just had to wait and help out where we could. In fact only a few weeks later this lock got so bad that they closed it for a day or two in order to replace the offending paddle.

It’s only a couple of miles from Hack Green before you come to the outskirts of Nantwich, and we began to think about mooring. We didn’t want to go past the town, because there isn’t really anywhere good to moor beyond that, all the way up to Barbridge – very bad shelves where mooring is possible at all. So we were looking for a good spot all the way into town and along the aqueduct, but with no success – the public moorings were pretty much occupied. In the end we found a space right opposite the entrance to the NNC marina, where Eileen was built. We had to squeeze into a gap, and I spent a long time shuffling back and forward trying to find a place where we could get nicely in to the bank. I got it done to my satisfaction in the end, and even then another smaller boat managed to squeeze in ahead of us.

We had stopped at about 3pm, so even after tidying up the mooring there was plenty left of the day. I went for a run, two miles up the canal towards Hack Green, and then back again. After that I cycled across town to Sainsburys to get food for a couple of days. However tonight we had decided to have fish and chips, which I got from a shop on Welsh Row, which is nice and close to the canal.

Relaxed Mabel

TODAY: 6:00 HOURS. 8.5 MILES. 17 LOCKS.

Voyage: 80:25 HOURS. 143.7 MILES. 129 LOCKS.

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.