Cheshire/Shropshire borders = lousy 3G signal

After repeated attempts to load Thursday's blog I gave up and decided to incorporate two days into one entry. I kept on losing my wireless signal.

The weather in this part on the world continues to be fairly miserable. I think we had summer in late May and early June. We travelled on through Middlewich and onto the Shropshire Union on Thursday. There were queues at the locks, summer holiday time is here! We often found ourselves the fourth or fifth boat waiting to go through the lock so progress was slow. It would have been faster if a few more people had been like me and helped other people through the locks instead of just waiting until it was their turn.

At Wardle Lock I met Maureen, a lovely lady, probably in her seventies or eighties. she lives in the lock cottage and was born on a working boat. By one of those coincidences that seem to happen the boat she was born on, no longer a working boat unfortunately, was three boats ahead of us going up the lock. We moored for the night in the middle of nowhere about three miles from the junction of the Trent and Mersey and the Shropshire Union.

Today we carried on up the Shroppie, past Nantwich and stopped just short of Audlem Flight, the traffic wasn't quite as heavy but we still had to wait at a couple of locks. There are some nice moorings with picnic tables and barbecue spots along this stretch of canal, if the weather had been better we might have stopped at one of them. When the rain eased off we walked up to Audlem and found it is possible to moor between locks in the flight so we will move up there early tomorrow.

Ray rang Barry and we have arranged to meet up tomorrow afternoon, if the weather was decent we could have a barbie but I think we will all go for a meal instead.

Yesterday's journey 5.7 miles and 6 locks


Today's journey 16.3 miles and 4 locks


So far we have travelled 495.7 miles, 457 locks, 53 swing bridges, 4 lift bridges and 14 tunnels