At last on the Shroppie

On Saturday after a good night on the old red stuff (only a glass or two of course) we pulled pins at 07.30 and left Tixll wide behind us and headed down The Staffordshire and Worcester canal.

                                                                    A bit of a windy day but we did have a lovely sunny start.

After a short while we came across yet another sunken plastic boat. It even has a Canal and River Trust enforcement notice on it, but I'm not sure how you would get aboard to read it.

                                                         Nearly all the locks in this area have these knitted flowers on them . We are not sure why.

                                                                           And there are one or two very leaky lock gates.

        After over 7 hours of cruising on Saturday in very blustery and sometimes wet conditions we picked up this mooring just after Boggs lock.

                                   On Sunday we had a bit of a lie in and didn't pull pins until 08.30. The lock at Gailey is just the other side of this bridge.

                                      This is how close the lock is to the bridge.It has to have angled beams to allow it to operate.

 

                                                                      It was a good couple of days for boat names..

                                                           Not sure what this is about..But you do see some strange sights out on the cut.

                                    On Sunday morning we had a few heavy showers of rain, but that wasn't going to put us off cruising.

We later passed through a place called Coven, I did ask Carolyn if she would like to stop so she could go and visit some of her friends ………………    (OOPS!! AM I IN TROUBLE)

We soon arrived at Pendeford Rockin which is the old boatmen's name for a shallow and narrow cutting, and it certainly is narrow. There are a couple of passing places but i am glad we never met another boat coming towards us.

This is Autherley Junction where we come off the Staffs and Worcs canal and join the Shropshire Union Canal ,we have heard so many good things about the Shroppie we just couldn't wait to get here… Typical just as i turned and got my bow into the junction another boat appeared coming out of it. Funny how you can go for hours and never pass another boat then when you have an awkward manoeuvre to carry out or you are entering a bridge ole you meet someone coming the other way.

           This is the lock that separates the two canals. It is a stop lock and is only six inches deep. It was used to protect the two canals water supply.

Not long after coming onto the Shroppie we came across this lot. This is the view we get when we are passing through a fishing match. The Anglers wait until the last second before moving their poles out of the way. This lot were sort of friendly with nearly half of them saying hello or giving us some type of a grunt as we passed them.

We moored up just after 13.30 about a mile before Brewood. We are going to try and slow down a bit over the next week or two and have some shorter cruising days. After all we are not in a hurry to get anywhere..

                                                                Happy days