Best ever mooring

 

We pulled ropes through the mooring rings above the Audlem flight of locks at 07.45 and followed another boat down the flight of locks. Of course the problem then is that all the locks were against us. Never mind as you can never moan about going slow on the canals. We used the services at The Shroppie Fly before continuing down the last few locks .

At the bottom of the flight we came across this boat. It’s not very often that you see a wooden boat of this quality on the canals. I take my hat off to the owner as it was in immaculate condition which obviously meant an enormous amount of work.

A couple of miles and we arrived at some of our favourite moorings on The Shroppie . There is probably room for about 15 boats and there seems to be a bench and a BBQ stand for each mooring . This is all provided by The Shropshire Union Canal Society who do some great work on this canal.

After a good night we pulled ropes yet again through rings at 07.35 and headed off towards Chester. After a good few hours cruising we got to the Bunbury staircase of two locks. It is now back to double locks on this section of The Shroppie. We were going down with another boat and there was a single boat coming up, so the Lockie asked us to do The Bunbury shuffle. As we dropped down the other boat came up and we all passed in the middle,and it worked a treat..

A lot of the locks up here on the Northern end of The Shroppie have these strange round buildings next to the locks. It seems that they were storage buildings for the old Lenghtsmen to store their tools. I guess by the chimney in the roof of this one they probably cooked their lunch and kept warm in them as well.

It was then another first for us when we passed through Beeston Iron lock . It was built of Iron plate by Thomas Telford due to the instability of the ground. The signs at the lock tell you not to share the lock with other boats due to distortion in the Iron plates. Luckily we were travelling alone.

After exiting the lock we spotted these Deer on the hill.

After a good days cruise we picked up this mooring above Wharton’s lock. This has to be the best view we have ever had out of our front room window in all our years on Inca. It is Beeston Castle which is over 500 feet high and dominates the skyline .Needless to say we just spent a most glorious evening sat out with a bottle or two of the Red stuff . Boating just doesen’t get any better than this !!

                                                                                                      Happy Days