Norbury Junction

If you moor in Market Drayton you need good curtains, its light all night.
Now a moan. Why do people insisting on doing locks with their fenders down, Between locks 2 and 3 we picked up yet another round the prop, so had to do a weedhatch visit whilst in lock 2.

The morning was a bit misty when we we off at our normal10am heading for the Tyrley locks.

As we approached Tyrley bottom lock I could see a boat leaving and a boat below the locks on the lock moorings but the gates closed. Diana was walking ahead and I saw her open the gates, I was expecting the boat to go in but he didn’t move so I went by into the bottom lock. Apart from getting a fender round the prop. If the owner would like it back its in the bin by lock one. We met 4 boats as we entered the cutting, thankfully we didn’t meet them in the flight. Also in the cutting we saw lots of Kingfishers, in fact we saw lots all morning. The towpath through the cutting is now open again and has been well cleaned up.

We moored briefly on the 48 hour moorings opposite The Wharf Pub at Goldstone with a view to having Sunday Lunch, Diana nipped across to book a table, no chance, they even had a party of 17 to cater for, so when she came back we continued on our way.
Passing one lot of long term offside moorings this colourful shed caught my eye, there’s a Moose looking out of the window.

We stopped for an hour at the Shebdon long term moorings to chat to old friends who moor there , we also called in at the Soudley moorings to see friends but they weren't in.
When we came this way only 3 weeks ago I posted a photograph of where I suspected the farmer had dredged the edge of the canal onto his land,  today you wouldn’t notice it as its mainly green.

Like lots of farmers the one here is diversifying into Glamping, in another field there are imitation, or maybe restored railway goods wagons like at Whixall Moss Junction.

We carried on to Norbury Junction to moor on the visitor moorings for the night.

Todays Journey

11 miles, 5 locks in 5¼ hours

We now have a new plan which can be seen at the link below https://canalplan.uk/journey/17997_cp