Gongoozlers in the sky & Market Drayton

Friday we completed the rest of the Audlem Flight - 11 locks and 2 miles in 2 hours!  Jan and I have worked out a good routine to do the  locks together to make life easier, though Jan still ended up walking most of the 2 miles uphill with Spot having a whale of a time. Only motored another couple of miles and then found a fabulous remote spot with a magnificent view over the vale close to Adderley to moor. We followed the same pattern as previous day, starting early and were then moored by 11:30. Chairs set up and parasol on the bank and sat in the sun admiring the view, reading, and listening to music - a very restful day recuperating was had by all.

Yesterday we were awoken by a strange wooshing sound outside TM. I stuck my head out of the side hatch and was greeted by a basket full of Gongoozlers attached to the bottom of a large red balloon with Virgin written large on the side. All flyers were waving furiously. I was thankful that I had looked out the side hatch and not gone out onto the stern as all I had on was a t-shirt. I was not expecting visitors you see.

Bridge 73

Rope grooves on bridge 73

Tilly May at Adderly

Once on the move we did the five Adderley locks: it was like Clapham Junction, boats queueing both top and bottom to pass through, although it made life easier to work the paddles - good team work between boaters except a 60-footer with 7 lads at the top lock who waited on their boat while we worked through the lock and set it for them (Jan said if it was'nt for the waste of water, she'd have emptied the lock and let them do the job themselves!!).  The passage through Betton Cutting was beautiful, a wide glade of high-banked woodland overhanging the cut. Again we were moored in Market Drayton by 12:30. Before mooring we stopped at the CaRT services in Drayton to fill up with water and try to use their self service pump out. It uses a digicard system to give you access to the pump so I found the card that was given to us by the previous owner of TM almost 3 years ago and pushed it into the slot. Hey Presto, it worked! All the pump out kit looked brand new and everything worked like clockwork. Well done CaRT.

Adderley

The reason for the stop over in Market Drayton was to meet up with Andrea, a very old friend of mine. She had never seen TM so after a quick tour we had a few glasses of wine before adjourning to the Talbot Inn for more drink and a bite to eat. It was a good night and great to see Andrea again.

Early morning boating