Delights of the Shropshire Union

 We have been travelling south on the Shropshire Union for some days now and I have been wanting to do a posting on our blog. Sadly, while the Canal is very interesting, we have had several evenings with little or no internet signal on our phones so the posting hasn't happened.

Today we are only 3 miles from Autherley Junction at the southern end of the Shroppie and mercifully there is internet. This update covers the canal from Barbridge Junction where the Middlewich branch joins the canal from Chester, to Woodseaves Cutting just beyond the Tyrley Lock flight. A further posting will follow pretty soon covering the rest of the canal. So here goes:

Having joined the main canal at Barbridge it was just over a mile to Hurleston Junction in the picture where the Llangollen Canal sets off into Wales up four locks, the first of which you can see in the picture, with an Anglo Welsh hire boat waiting at the bottom.

And here is the sign at the junction. We had come from the direction signed to Chester and were heading towards Birmingham.

The canal towards Chester is a wide (14 foot) canal with locks to match but this all changes going south at Nantwich in the picture. The bridge we are about to pass through leads to the narrow canal going south. That to the right is the old end to the canal from Ellesmere Port and Chester, now being used by a boatyard and marina.

Passing Nantwich the canal is on a high embankment and ahead of us in the picture is the aqueduct over one of the main roads into the town.

Here is the view down from the aqueduct showing the road into town below. Note that the 'wich' suffix in Nantwich's name is an indication that we are still in salt mining country and many of the buildings in the town have subsided because salt or brine had been extracted from the rock below.

A few miles south we passed this sign. We love the idea of having a sign to a 'secret' bunker! We have visited this bunker in the past. It was a pretty depressing place. Fancy people occupying a hole in the ground with the rest of humanity dying from nuclear fallout. It is also sobering that the bunker was not finally abandoned until 1992!

We stayed overnight in Audlem on Wednesday (28th) and carried on up the rest of the 15 Audlem locks on Thursday. Here we are about to go into Lock 10 (they are numbered from 1 at the top, so we have quite a way to go).

Here is a little hut by the side of one of the locks. These were presumably built to store equipment for the lock keeper and, judging by the chimney, also to keep him warm in the winter.

I think it will be difficult to guess what this object is, again by the side of a lock. It is a weatherproof store for 'stop planks'. Sometimes it becomes necessary to drain locks for repair. Stop planks can be placed in a pair of slots at one end of the lock to form a barrier so that one side can be drained.

While Helen was off the boat working the locks, I had a visitor as this picture shows - a vivid green Cricket.

After climbing 13 of the Audlem locks and the 5 Adderley locks that soon follow, we were ready to stop when we got to Market Drayton. In the morning we walked into this fine Shropshire town. The picture shows the Tudor House Hotel just off the Market Square.

And here is the Sandbrook Vaults next door which dates back to 1653.

We had passed the old Joules brewery earlier in the summer at Stone on the Trent and Mersey Canal but their brewery is now here at Market Drayton.

The Shropshire Union Canal was built by Thomas Telford and did not open until 1835, very late compared to most other canals. This plaque on the Corbet Arms shows that Telford is recorded as staying here in 1832. Curiously the Corbet Arms building is now the town's Post Office.

Coming south from Market Drayton on Friday led us to the bottom of the five Tyrley Locks which begin in this rock cut gorge.

And here we are in the bottom lock. The lock flight was very easy as each lock only rises about 6 feet and there were a succession of boats coming down. A CRT employee was carefully oiling each lock mechanism and tightening any loose bolts. This is a dedication to maintenance that seems sadly lacking on the northern canals.

Tyrley Top Lock is a delight and the sun was out too. The grey and white colour scheme on the locks is particular to the Shroppie.

These plaques on the houses shown in the previous photo tell the story of the buildings and the right one has a superb disclaimer of liability! The left one tells us that previous occupants of the cottages include a wharfinger, game keeper, shoemaker, boatman, horse keeper and estate workers.

Above Tyrley locks the canal heads through Woodseaves Cutting. Unlike earlier canals that followed the contours, weaving about the land to do so, Telford's masterpiece drove in a straight line across the terrain holding to one level using huge embankments and deep cuttings. Woodseaves is one of these cuttings, but has suffered over the years from a series of landslips making the canal narrow and shallow in parts.

Here is one such landslip. The view is taken looking up the side of the cutting from the boat.

And here is another. You can see that these are fairly recent - probably last winter. In places the boat was scraping over fallen trees and Canal and River Trust have given up trying to maintain a towpath through the cutting. It is no longer possible to walk through alongside the canal. But by boat we managed it and fortunately did not meet a boat coming the other way in the narrowest bits.

That brings us nearly up to date and we will follow with another posting in the next few days (phone signal permitting) to conclude the story of our passage along the Shroppie.