Hurleston to Adderley (Monday 1 Sept)

Pulled the mooring pins at 7:10. Although the weather forecast was for rain to day, it was actuallly a beautiful morning. We had plenty of sunshine and there was blue sky. A bit different from yesterday’s grey skies. We filled up with water at Nantwich and then headed off towards Audlem.

The swallows are not showing any signs of getting ready to leave yet. There are still plenty of them. There were rabbits in the fields and big flocks of geese grazing. The hawthorns are laden with berrries. We saw a kingfisher, but it was too fast for a photo. We always seem to see kingfishers along the Shropshire Union.

Just through the two locks at Hack Green there is a sign that reads “Secret Nuclear Bunker 200 yards”. Not a very well kept secret!

Audlem Mill

We got to Audlem Locks just after 10:00. We had sunshine almost to the top and then the rain started two locks away from the top. There were quite a lot of boats coming down.

Several of them had been at the IWA festival over the Bank Holiday. Some people just don’t bother to check whether anything is coming up before they fill locks. It seems as if they can’t be bothered to walk down and look under bridges. We had locks turned against us couple of times on the way up. Still, we made good time as there were more boats coming down than going up, so most of the locks were either in our favour or had a boat in coming down. We didn’t have to wait too long for any of them.

We were just coming out of the second lock from the top when the engine died.
The fuel filter had clogged yet again. Luckily we bought two new ones at Venetian. Twenty minutes later the
filter was changed and we were on our way again, through the last lock. People are very friendly. The crews from two different boats offered help when they saw we had broken down. Luckily Carl is a dab hand at changing the filter now, so we didn’t need any help. We stopped for an hour for lunch at the top of the flight.

We carried on for half an hour and moored at the bottom of Adderley Locks at 2.25. The rain was quite heavy for a while, then the sun tried to come out.

No signal for the Three dongle here.

11 miles. 17 locks.