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.

Run Aground and a Haunted Cutting

We had set the alarm for 8am, but the dogs thought differently and we were up at 7:15. We had moored in deep countryside, no houses or traffic in sight, so I let the dogs loose out of the boat. However the Labradors all shot straight through the hedge and, looking through, I could see that what had been an empty field now had a herd of cows in the distance. I immediately called the dogs back; Minnie and Posie came right away, but there were some nervous moments while Bridget gazed at these strange beasts like a lioness assessing a herd of wildebeest. Fortunately in the end the lure of a tin of dog food for breakfast proved more powerful than her curiosity about these new creatures.

Girls in the front cabin in the morning

 We set off about half nine, but within the hour we moored on a water point in Market Drayton. We topped up the water, and I walked down into the town to buy a few things. It really is the land that time forgot – apart from the smallish Asda, I don’t suppose there is a building in the high street that wasn’t there before the war. There’s even a pill box overlooking one of the bridges – if the German had tried to invade by canal they would have been sorely disappointed.

After our lock marathon yesterday we only had the five-high flight at Tyrley today. The locks are close together with very short pounds, and at one a notice tells you not to moor in the pound because of a rock shelf, but to set the next lock and sail straight into it. At the fourth lock Loulie met some people, got chatting and forgot to drop the paddles on the lower gates. That meant when she opened the upper paddles the water was running into the top of the lock and straight out the bottom. Happily after a while an old gent who had been watching came over and asked diffidently if we would like him to lower the paddles so that the lock would fill.

Tyrley Locks

 Eventually, having figured out the modern technology, we reached the top of the flight and set out on a long flat stretch - we would not encounter another lock until tomorrow. However all was still not plain sailing, mostly because of the wide shallow shelf which protrudes several feet out from the towpath side along most of this canal. I put Loulie ashore with the dogs for a walk, and a little later moored again to pick them up. However I became stuck on the shelf and could not get off – even if you angle the bows right out, you have the stern stuck in the shallows, and the propeller just sucks you sideways back into the shore – it’s called the bank effect. The answer is to pull the bows back in, and then use reverse gear to pull yourself out and off. I should have known that, but I was stuck in a mindset which said a bit more power would push us off, and it took someone shouting from another boat to give me a pointer.

This whole stretch of canal was built by Thomas Telford in about 1830, and it has a series of high embankments, and narrow cuttings blasted through solid rock. The cuttings are very odd with high rock sides, lots of vegetation in the damp conditions, and occasionally a strange high bridge taking a lane across high above. Many of the cuttings are reputedly haunted, and I wouldn’t fancy walking through one at night. This canal was shockingly new to the Shropshire of pre-Victorian times and it changed their world as much as the internet has changed ours. The roads were hopeless, so all goods in and out came by canal, before the advent of the railways and even after. We passed the site of a factory built by Cadburys to gather milk by canal from all the farmers around and turn it into chocolate. The last boatload left there for Bournville in 1961.

Views from the deepest of the cuttings - Woodselves

After our experiences with the shelving banks we decided to find a proper public mooring for tonight. On these you have clean vertical banks and mooring rings or bollards. In the end we stopped at Gnosall, a couple of miles short of our target, but looking ahead on the map there were no more public moorings for a very long way. We were very pleased with the spot in the end – we are in a bit of a cutting a little out of the village, under a canopy of trees high above, which we can see through our glass roof (brag brag). Even better we have a good mobile signal, so I will be able to post yesterday’s blog as well as this one. I think this is because we have crossed into Staffordshire – clearly Shropshire was so traumatised by the coming of the canals that they have resisted every advance ever since.

The view upwards from the saloon tonight

The wine cellar

Today: 8 hours. 15.9 miles. 5 locks.

Voyage: 15.5 hours. 25.9 miles. 27 locks.