2022 - A Trip to the United Kingdom
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The Hendersons 2022 - A Trip to the United Kingdom - Narrowboat |
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2022 - A Trip to the United Kingdom |
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29 July 2022 Friday We left the hotel in Shrewsbury and drove a short distance
to the Royal Air Force Museum Midlands. This is an excellent museum which
documents the formation of the Royal Air Force in World War 1 till present day.
They have a huge collection of aircraft and one of the most interesting things
that I noticed was a film about the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember the Cuban
Missile Crisis, but I was so young I didn't realize how very close we came to
nuclear war with Russia.
We had lunch at the museum and then drove to Chirk where we boarded our narrow boat, our home for three nights. Our narrow boat is named Mary. She sleeps up to five, is fully self-contained except does not have a washer and dryer and dishwasher, but for three days we can live without those things. The pilot took us out onto the canal and then we headed toward the very famous aqueduct, Pontcysyllte. I couldn't tell if there was anyone coming across the aqueduct from the opposite direction, so I walked across and snapped some photos as I was going.
Once we got across the aqueduct we turned around and
headed back toward the marina. It was then that Tom realized he had forgotten
his phone in the car at the marina. It was fortunate that we were passing close
by and able to pick it up. We then motored down the canal to a quiet mooring
spot near Chirk, tied up and walked into town for dinner and some minor grocery
shopping. We had dinner at a tandoori restaurant and it was quite good. We
returned to our little boat, drank a bottle of wine, had a nice conversation and
went to bed.
30 July 2022 Saturday Today we did a much longer cruise on the canal all the way from Chirk to a town called Ellesmere. It was largely uneventful but a bit stressful as there were some tunnels which caused some concern because there was a boat coming at us and he couldn't see that we were in the tunnel. We encountered our first locks on the canal and they were crazy. We've never seen locks that operated that way before. It took us the good half hour to figure out how to operate the lock but eventually we got through. The second lock was designed the same way as the first one, so we were at this point better able to cope.
We had
a fair amount of rain throughout the entire day and so we're pretty wet by the
end of the day. The canal was pretty busy and we encountered a fair amount of
traffic along the way and had to be careful passing other boats. We observed
that the canal trust posts the maximum time that you can stay moored at a
particular site that belongs to them. We were very fortunate in that we found a
site where we could moor for two days, although we only needed one. Son Tom and I
walked a short distance to a Tesco and got provisions for breakfast for a couple
of days and lunch for Sunday. We went back to the boat to relax for little while
and then walked into the town of Ellesmere and had dinner at a pub. I had a
braised lamb shank which was quite good and included mashed potatoes and
carrots. Tom ordered the same thing but his dinner was not as hot as he would
have liked. Son Tom had a steak and ale pie as he had enjoyed the one at The
Peacock a few nights earlier. This one was more like a slab of beef rather than
bite size chunks so it was a little chewy.
31 July 2022 Sunday We slept pretty well last night as there wasn’t much
traffic on the canal. We headed out
close to 10 o'clock after having breakfast on board to return to the Chirk area.
It was remarkably peaceful and we very much enjoyed looking at the farms,
animals, trees and wildflowers along the way. Then we got to the crazy lock. The
lower lock wasn't filling the way it should and it turned out that I hadn’t
cranked the gate as much as I should so while it was filling part of it was
draining. We got that resolved, got out of the lower lock and headed toward the
upper lock. Once we got into the upper lock we could not get the lower gate
closed. We had a lot of attention from other boaters who were anxious to get
through the lock. It appeared that there was something blocking the two gates
from closing fully to be able to contain the water. After trying several times
to pull the gate closed son Tom figured the problem. We reopened the whole thing
and with help from other boaters, pushed it back and this time it closed
successfully. It only took a few minutes to fill the lock once the gate was
closed and we got through the lock and headed probably no more than a quarter
mile more and had lunch onboard, eating the things we had picked up yesterday at
Tesco. Our destination was the same place that we stayed the first night out
which will put us close enough to the marina that we would be able to get there
by the required 9 AM check in time.
Our next challenge was the Chirk tunnel. It has a bit of a
bend at the entrance so it is nearly impossible to see an oncoming boat. An
added challenge is that the current flows against the boat, strengthened by the
narrowing of the canal going into the tunnel. As a result, it was slow going and
Tom found steering difficult.
Once we finally got through the tunnel we moored at the
same spot as we’d done on Friday, tied up and walked to the town for dinner at
the Indian restaurant. We tried a new, for us, dish pasanda which we quite
liked, it is somewhat similar to korma.
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