Quidditch on Llangollen

Tuesday 12th.. We began early today at 9am and after filling with diesel and water we departed Norbury Junction.

During our transit of the Shropshire Union Canal one big factor is the price of Diesel, cheap at current standards. (Norbury 44.9P, Wheaton Aston 41.5P, Market Drayton 44.5P) so if your following in our footsteps well worth a mental note as we’ve heard that the Llangollen is well over 60P!
Arriving at Tyrley Lock 1 in a group of 5 locks we were met by a 6 boat queue! Probably due to our early departure today as we don’t normally come across many queue’s,11am being our average departure time when the hoard of early risers have moved on.
Completing Tyrley locks we arrived at Market Drayton at around 3pm. If you moor in the section just before Lord’s Bridge (64) you can hammer Morrison’s for supplies and get a taxi back with all your many bags via the path at Windsor Drive for only £3, a real boaters secret.
Wednesday 13th.. After wishing Winnie well, ( A lovely old lady we’d met who lives in one of the houses that back onto the canal), we set off for Audlem. Just after leaving I spotted my 1st Kingfisher of the trip sitting on one of the moored boats, normally we’ve seen several by this time. We had a fantastic pass thru’ the 5 Adderley locks, completing them in only 20mins, and progressed on to the Audlem flight of 15 locks. These locks lower the canal by over 90ft to the diarylands of Cheshire. We completed 13 of the 15 in just short of 2 hours and moored prior to the final 2 locks in Audlem. Having completed 18 locks we didn’t much feel like preparing lunch so we treated ourselves to lunch at the Shroppie Fly. The Fly is a converted warehouse that serves ale from a bar shaped like a narrowboat. Although the food was expensive it was well presented and there was a lot of it. There’s also a useful book exchange there too. When we left the Shroppie the 1st significant rain of our trip had begun to fall.
Thursday 14th.. After a rainy night & morning we left Audlem and completed the 2 final locks of the flight. Continuing on in the rain we passed thru’ Nantwich eventually reaching the Llangollen turn around 2.30pm. Despite this being the busiest canal on the system we passed thru’ the 4 locks of Hurleston Junction with impunity and had arrived on the Llangollen Canal for our 1st visit.
(Pictured above... Dee prepares the 1st lock of the Llangollen Canal in damp & murky conditions)