We left Wheaton Aston at 10:00 on Monday 22nd March 2021 after a family walk to the Premier Convenience Shop (impressive range of bottled beer at 3x500ml for £5) and some free range eggs from a stall outside a house on the way back to the boat.
We passed under many bridges and Cowley Tunnel which was more like a wide bridge.
Gnosall looked a lovely little place with two canalside pubs and a “Best Kept Village in the County” (Staffordshire) award. Picture below shows The Boat Inn by the bridge.
And the Navigation Inn by the next bridge on the left. Sadly both closed.
We filled up with water at the lovely Canal & River Trust Services at Norbury Junction, which is no longer a junction as the Newport Branch to Shrewsbury was abandoned by the LMS Railway in 1944 and now just leads into a Dry Dock.
The unusual Bridge 39 is reputed to be haunted by a black monkey-like creature since a boatman was killed there in the 19th Century.
We passed a weird outpost that purported to be a pub and looked like it was home to some dueling banjo players.
We moored up at 16:00 after Bridge 47 at Knighton on Canal & River Trust visitor moorings on a remote stretch of the Shropshire Union Canal. We realised with some alarm that the stoppage at Bennetts Bridge 80 from 15/01/21 to Easter 2021 was 7 cruising hours away on our route to Nantwich and subsequently the Llangollen Canal.
A section of a canal in Cheshire has been blocked after a culvert collapsed. The culvert, a small tunnel that carries water under a road or railway collapsed at the end of January.
The failure meant the Canal and River Trust has had to install a temporary dam to allow work to be carried out to repair the culvert, meaning narrowboats can not travel along the waterway.
Pah!
Comments