Audlem Top

One boat had left the moorings going north before we were up this morning, We along with 3 other boats were moored on the long term moorings, why? Because the visitor 48 hour moorings were full of long term moorers. At 10am. Diana walked down to dump the rubbish and set the top lock while I cast off and chugged down past the winding hole, oncein the lock I could see someone drawing the top paddle of the second lock, it was the same chap, a boat owner from Market Drayton getting a bit of exercise, so it was straight out into the second, from here I could see a boat coming up in the third accompanied by a lady Volockie, so the bottom three were with us.
We stopped in Market Drayton to fill with water, not the fastest of taps but by no means the slowest we have encountered. A quick peek in the service block showed this pump out machine also on pause, but as we only emptied the tank 2 days ago I didn’t bother repeating it.
I managed to get a photo of the mooring restrictions in Market Drayton and I understand its because of the herring bone moorings opposite.

We said goodbye to Market Drayton and they said goodbye to us.On the straight we met Mountbatten towing Jericho, a poor angler on the towpath was hopping up and down, waving madly to try to get Richard to come over to the bank side as he passed, but I think he thought it better to carry on down the centre of the channel. 
Further along in the woods behind the towpath there is quite an encampment growing, I don’t know if people are living there.

By now the wind was picking up and at times we had a snow storm with all the blossom coming across the cut.

We arrived at Adderley Locks just the single hander we had met a few days ago was leaving, thankfully a member of the crew from the boat following him had been helping him, this of course meant that we had another flight with all the locks with us. We had planned to moor between the bottom of Adderley and the top of the Audlem flight but we had made such good progress we pushed on a bit past Pool House on the off side  and on to the Audlem flight where cake was bought from the lady at the top lock cottage. We arrived just as another boat was going down, we hadn’t seen them earlier so suspect they stopped for lunch and were just setting off. We followed them down the first two locks before mooring for the night in the long pound before lock 3.

Todays Journey

6½ miles, 12 locks in 4 hours