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Saturday 31 December 2016

Marbury Saturday 31 December 2016

Well its been a grey old day, warm, dry but grey. We set off at twenty past ten without a breath of wind and only met two boats on the move, one of those was a hire boat on trade plates.

There was very little of interest to report other than Grindley Brook where I managed to empty both chambers completely behind me. This was due to being unable to close the intermediate gate to give less than a 4” gap between them.  I even tried racking the cill with my hook with no luck. The strange thing was that afterwards with the chambers empty they both closed reasonably so I was able to refill the top chamber and bring the middle one up to working level so that the next boater to arrive didn’t find it all drained.
There were a couple of fishermen between the bottom two locks, but as nether offered a weather forecast I assume that they were not the ones I met coming up.

There was a lot more water coming down the canal today than when we went up, this was especially noticeable below Willeymoor Lock.

We carried on down to just through Steer Bridge before we moored on the SUCS 48hr moorings for the night. Most nights this trip we have used their moorings which are very handy. You can find a list of them at http://www.shropshireunion.org.uk/the-canals/visitor-moorings

This will be the last trip report this year folks, normal service will resume in 2017.
Some statistics from 2016 we have covered 1308 miles and done 793 locks.

Today’s Journey  map 13 6½ miles, 9 locks in 4 hours.

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