20 in a day

We have had some brilliant weather over the last few days and have really enjoyed our stay at Market Drayton.The Town only has a population of just over 11000 but it has a very good mix of shops (Carolyn told me that).

                                                                       They still have a market every Wednesday in the main street…..We missed it.

                                            Apart from all the new shops there are plenty of shops in the old part of the town and we have never seen so many card shops and hair Salons in one place.

                                                                  Yet again the best type of shopping is window shopping.

On Friday night after we went to bed Carolyn heard some funny noises on the back of Inca, So of course muggings had to get out of bed and go and see what it was. And there was a black cat that had somehow got on the boat and then went to sleep and started snoring. He soon woke up when the flash of the camera went off and scarpered.

With the weather getting warmer by the day we decided to give the Morsal Squirrel stove a good clean and sweep the chimney. I haven't swept the chimney for a couple of months and you can see how blocked it has become from this picture looking down the pipe.It is probably only a third of the diameter it should be no wonder it wasn’t drawing very well.

          After 2 days at Market Drayton we pulled pins at 08.20 on Sunday morning and soon passed this chap guarding his boat. We had 20 locks in front of us , there was the Adderley flight of 5 locks and the Audlem flight of 15 locks. Carolyn decided we would do them all in one day and then pick up a mooring out in the country for a nice peaceful Sunday evening.

                                                                                                It can be sometimes…

                               The side wash coming off some of the locks really pushed us to the side and it was difficult at times to control Inca when exiting some of the locks.

                                                            This boat had trouble entering one of the locks.

                                                                    On one of the locks there was a stall set up selling homemade cakes……Well sometimes you just have to..Yum Yum.

                                                                               Don’t these trees look really good ????    I love trees at this time of year..

Nearly at the bottom of the Audlem flight and we came across the Ice cream boat. Every time a kid walked by they set off their bubble machine to entice them into buying one. And yes we did have one.

                                          I think Canal and River Trust should start giving their employees English lessons……..Or maybe they ran out of paint !!!

We finally picked up this mooring out in the country past Overwater marina. We travelled for nearly 7 hours today and as I write this Carolyn is soundo on the sofa. We are now only 3 or 4 hours away from the LLangollen canal, so tomorrow or Tuesday we should be back on the canal where we had our first narrow boat holiday many years ago and which started the dream of a life afloat  .

 

                                                                                                                             Happy Days