Cuttings and Embankments

Tuesday

A bright sunny day. Almost as soon as we set off we passed under the famous High bridge, with the addition of an extra buttress in the middle and an even later addition of a telephone pole, now disused. The next bridge is known as Double Culvert bridge. The guide described some interesting details so we stopped to take a closer look. The bridge carries both a footpath and a watercourse, although the latter now seems to be dry.

The canal passes through many deep and overgrown cuttings,interspresed with huge embankments. The Woodseaves Cutting is especially narrow, hewn out of solid rock, making passing other boats quite difficult.

We moored up for lunch at Tyrley Wharf where we also used the disposal facilities (the water point was out of action as a result of poor quality water supply) before setting off down the flight of five locks.

At Market Drayton we stopped to fill up the diesel tank (53 litres at what seemed to be a very good price). Whilst Christine was paying (it took some time as the man at the boatyard is still finding the unnecessarily complex paperwork for the new duty rules quite diffiuclt to get right) Mike pushed across to the other side of the cut to fill the water tank. (Hopefully we have put the right liquid in the right tank!)

We moored for the night just before the Adderley flight. It was a wonderful warm sunny evening - bright until well after ten - in fact we actually went to bed whilst it was still light! before dinner, Mike decided to put primer/undercoat on the new boat pole and then to sand down the rear cabin steps before applying two coats of varnish.(They really need a good polyeurthethane coat as well).

Bt the way, if - dear reader - you have spotted the lack of photos since last Friday that is because we do not yet have a means of processing them on the new laptop, until we go back to base!