By the time Sunday arrived spring was long gone. Admittedly the mist had cleared and the Wrekin was visible once more but there were low scudding clouds, a complete lack of sunshine and, as is always the case with this part of the Shroppie, a biting wind which chills to the bone. There were a […]
Kathy and I arrived on Friday evening and got the boat loaded up and tried a couple of experiments with the new curtains. On Saturday morning we got up and cast off and moved over to the waterpoint. The water point at Market Drayton is far from the fastest on the system and we ignored […]
We had another working weekend on the boat this last weekend and we were tackling two pretty big projects: 1) Replacing the gas cooker 2) Replacing the fridge. We had found a very good LPG cooker on line which has flame failure devices on all burners and an electric ignition driven from a battery. Its […]
The Shroppie seems to have been plagued with closures this year and Wheaton Aston Lock No 2 seems to have now fallen to bits and could well need some major work on its gates. So maybe its a good thing that Nick and I are only going up this weekend to do some more painting […]
Well the front cabin and the Galley are pretty much painted now. We still need to do the radiator pipes and some touch up work but it is looking so much better. We do have a leak in the roof caused by the fact that the rope ring in the roof is pulling loose because […]
We had a very productive weekend working on the boat. The floor in the back cabin had become a bit bendy. Its a plywood floor and is 22 years old and its got damp over the years and had a lot of people walking over it. So we lifted the boards. Basically they had delaminated […]
From Nantwich Aqueduct to Ladybird Moorings, a distance of 11 miles, 5½ flg and 22 locks. It was raining and blowing a gale when we got up – not a good start for the last day of a holiday, or any day to be honest, but it suddenly all cleared off and it was quite […]
From Cow Lane Bridge No 123E to Nantwich Aqueduct, a distance of 18 miles, 7 flg and 11 locks. None of us were feeling particularly rested when we got up on Sunday morning. The highlight of the rather disturbed night had been a woman saying, rather loudly, “Where do they Pee, Ooh, Ohh, on a […]
From Beeston Stone Lock No 33 to Cow Lane Bridge No 123E, a distance of 11 miles, 2¼ flg and 7 locks. Beeston Iron lock was totally empty when we got to it the next morning, so we bounced the bottom gates to dislodge anything that might have been stuck between them, and then filled […]
From Ladybird Moorings to Beeston Stone Lock No 33, a distance of 19 miles, 2½ flg and 26 locks. After an evening checking out some of the pubs in Market Drayton we made a moderately early start. Not a traditional early start (like 6:30 am) but a more sensible 8am. Things started off quite well […]