17th-19th July 2020 – From Market Drayton to Norbury Junction
From Market Drayton we want to get to Norbury Junction, which is a fair hike and we may have to break it into two steps. First, though there are the locks at Tyrley. Again, this is a flight of 5 locks. Just to keep things interesting, there is an underwater obstruction between locks 5 and 4 (we are going up the locks so the number goes down – obviously…) so you cannot leave locks 5 until lock 4 is open.
As with a lot of the Shroppy, these locks where quite busy and we had to join a queue, and it took a fair while to get through the first lock because of this underwater obstruction. But like all things canal boating, we got there in the end. The locks themselves seemed to take a while and it was quite late before we both got through them, so we decided to find somewhere to moor for the night and then head on into Norbury the next day. We had to go as we needed the pump out and the last thing you want to do is fill right up! That’s a cling film on the loo moment! 😲️
Typical view on the Shroppy…
We ended up along the canal in the middle of nowhere and the mooring was not so great – but it was good enough. The forecast for tomorrow is rain, we will press on but Steve and Caroline are going to sit out the rain.
Artful Dodger 