Victor tackles the Shroppie

WE ARE now well and truly along the Shroppie, with lovely long clear sections through most attractive scenery but far too many long lines of moored boats.

As I mentioned previously, there are no marinas anywhere near this side of Audlem, and in any case one would imagine that such linear mooring are far cheaper, but certainly a bind.

Constantly slow down

One boater I met at a Shroppie mooring told that having to constantly slow down makes a mockery of a  well known web based calculator of how long it takes to do lock miles, and I well remember another boater not being too thrilled with that particular calculator as it does not allow time taken at  having to queue at locks or follow very slow moving boats, and shopping puts it all to cock.

But let me tell you our Thomas made a bit of a pig's ear of our calculations on this trip.  In the dim and distant past he created a canal and a river calculator for locks/miles taken from our logs, which has worked fine, allowing for queues and shopping. But this time he was caught out at the last minute when Cart closed the Peak Forest Canal stopping us having a cruise to Bugsworth Basin, so had to hurriedly calculate the Four Counties trip.

Complete shambles

So he produced a temporary one which was a complete shambles, as the silly sod mixed up his miles with his locks, and actually had us doing a calculated 11 locks that included the five at Tyrley, five at Adderley and 15 at Audlem—which he really should have realised were wrong having done the section quite a few times in the past.  The result was that we were somewhat behind schedule!

But to the cruise. Having a dog on board, we always give thought to where to moor to give him a run, and for you others with dogs who do the same, there is a rather hidden exceptional place above the much photographed balustraded Avenue Bridge. Here's a different picture taken of the top of the bridge which is quite remarkable, and with a long avenue of woodland on both sides is a dog's heaven.

No cyclists

There was one thing we were discovering about the Shroppie—the towpath was perfectly safe.  No cyclists time-trials here. And with the exception of a few miles of made-up towpath around Nantwich they were all boater friendly, sometimes just grass, sometimes stone, and as the picture shows the towpath in Woodseaves, mud—very much anti-cyclist, and everyone else in fact.

We saw very few towpath people, with the exception of dog walkers, during the entire Shropshire Union, and the long, long stretches obviously did not encourage people, and certainly did not do much to confirm Cart's 300,000,000 visitors a year!

A mess

I remember our old columnist Richard Swan telling of the work being done on the Tyrley Flight, but we found them somewhat tricky, and in fact one boater we spoke to thought the reason was that maintenance had not been completed, and I tended to agree.

On one particular lock, the top gate leaked, and once again the bottom gate leaked so much when we attempted to fill the lock that it just would not fill, so it needed all of us to get the top gate open against the water pressure. Here's a picture of the leaking bottom gate.  And again at the start of the season!

Can I use that word?

I thought though, that  the overhanging trees looked most attractive, and would be a 'must' to be shown with the sunlight showing through, that we see time and time again in those every increasing canal television productions, they are somewhat dangerous growing from the steeply sloping bank.

(Or am I not allowed to use the word 'slope' any more, as I remember Jeremy Clarkson getting in the neck for using it, whatever else it is supposed to mean from the BBC PC brigade.)

Seeing the many uprooted trees along the cuttings of the Shroppie, these are just waiting for a high wind when in leaf, and the ivy rooting into them is not doing any favours.

After the ease of the Staffs & Worcs paddle gear, I was finding the lower gearing of those of the Shroppie quite hard, with some gear installed so close to the beam that even the popular lightweight windlass had not enough space to operate as the picture shows.

I see those weed beds that we saw the last time we passed are going the way of all things, remaining nothing more that an hazard for boaters.  Never understand the point of these or coir rolls to encourage vegetation, when such as the Shroppie is absolutely surrounded by little else than vegetation.

Expect it satisfies someone in an office somewhere who knows no better, but is nothing more than a complete waste of our money.

Audlem Flight

And so to the Audlem Flight, and we were amazed to notice in the log that it was way back in 2007 when we last tackled this flight, and it tells us, 'Went down like a dose of salts' as most of the locks were full so in our favour'.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. this time we went down—in Jan's (She Who Must Be Obeyed) words, "Like a drunken duck."

For we found, and a local boater confirmed, that all the bottom lock gates but one leak, and so empty the locks. Something we soon discovered, as the first couple were empty and as another boat was coming up we expected them to then be in our favour, but even the first we arrived at was then just three quarters full, and very soon those after were nearly empty such was the state of the bottom lock gates.

It takes two

On the flight we encountered two CaRT box tickers, or perhaps they are now tablet tickers, examining the locks.  Exactly what they were examining is hard to guess, as they had no windlass and never actually went on to a lock beam.  But why two, I can hear you ask?  Because, in its—I usually state wisdom, but there is nothing wise in this decision—in its idiotic decision Cart has decreed that no one can now work singly, they must be in pairs. Which means of course twice the cost!

But even worse, boaters' associations whose people do such stirling work on both the waterways and restoration, must follow the Cart directive. So does this mean that we will no longer see a single helper, painter, volunteer or anyone else working alone, unless of course unofficial...

So we will no longer see the lone Shropshire Union Canal Society member officially looking after its many picnic areas or busy repainting the distinctive grey and white lock beams.

One boater we met at Audlem village at the only pair of bottom gates that did not leak had come up to the lock under the bridge believing it to be empty, only to find a boat entering from the top—he was so used to them all leaking, and seeing no water coming out, that he simply took his boat forward expecting the lock, as usual, to be ready for him!

And then we met my old mate and former columnist Brian Holmes striding towards us at Hack Green from Nantwich, a fitter man than I! Thomas would dearly like him to take up his keyboard once again,  as one of our former better columnists, and certainly having plenty to say how things have changed under CaRT...

Victor Swift

To of course be continued.