15th Sept '12

I'm writing this on Sunday morning as we are cruising since last night my camera decided to run out of batteries so I couldn't download the pictures , plus it was the first night of Strictly and I couldn't miss that and then we went to the pub so the blog took a low profile I'm afraid.

 

Yesterday we had a wonderful September day of sunshine and very mild breeze and it was beautiful. We seem to be seeing a lot of herons along here and so I have reverted to the older camera so that I can zoom in on them. There are kingfishers on the Shroppie and I'm hoping desperately that we shall see one. Both of us did our boat handling courses on the stretch of canal that we are now cruising around Norbury Junction. In fact some of the first photos on here are of John on the boat bringing it into the junction to fuel. We'd been hoping to moor there but there were no spaces so we went on a couple of miles and moored outside a pub called the Anchor. It was amazing, completely unspoilt. No food apart from crisps and nuts (and I'm not SURE about the nuts) wooden settles in the bar and no modernisation. John had a 6X which pleased him!

John at one of his favourite hobbies - chatting at locks! This is the only lock in 25 miles of the canal apparently and we went through it yesterday. As you can see a boat was coming up and then one came in after us - perfect!

We have more locks today - 5 to get down to Market Drayton and lots more if we go on to Audlem - plans are undecided as yet as the weather is forecast to get worse. We shall see.


we are now stopped as John has spotted somewhere that mends zips - heaven knows if they will do it on a Sunday but he has left with hope in his heart and a cratch cover under his arm.

The Shropshire is either on an embankment or in a cutting - here is a lovely embankment with the sun shining and a long straight in front of us!

Heres another bridge to add to our growing collection! You are unlikely to see another like this to be honest. In the middle is a telegraph pole - no longer connected to any wires, and there is no road running through it or anything, just a road on top. One of the features of this canal is that with the deep cuttings you get very high bridges! Not necessarily beautiful but quite impressive. This one is just north of Norbury Junction.

Now we are having this delay I suspect that Market Drayton will be our end point for today but I will write more later (or tomorrow as it's Downton Abbey tonight!)