Woodseaves Cutting and Market Drayton.

Tuesday 16th July, 2013 in Market Drayton.
Just a few miles to go to Market Drayton, where we will leave MM in the marina to go home tomorrow and then up to the Lakes for a week to celebrate Christine's 70th birthday.
Thomas Telford was the engineer who designed the Shropshire Union Canal, and its embankments and cuttings are legendary. The most famous cutting is Woodseaves, which is over a mile long and  70ft deep through very solid rock. You can get an idea of the depth of the cutting from the height of the bridges across it.

Unlike most of the Shroppie, it is very narrow. In places it is not even possible for two boats to pass. Memories of "The African Queen"!  Luckily we met only one boat coming the other way (and for anyone familiar with the film of the same name, it wasn't a WW2 German patrol boat!).

The sides of the cutting are solid rock, but trees still manage to find a purchase somehow; some of their roots are twisted like serpants, trying to grip the rock.

In other places the rock is still exposed, just as the navvies left it all those years ago.

After the cutting come the five locks of the Tyrley flight. These were the first locks that we ever did with Terry Robertson on our Helmsman's Course five years ago. We have done 660 locks on MM since then!

Next to the locks, we saw a field of "Elephant Grass" or "Miscanthus". A lot of this seems to be grown around here, mainly used as biomass for fuel production. Later in the summer it will be up to eight feet high.

On the way into Market Drayton, we passed nb "Firefly" that we last saw at the Black Country Museum and on the Dudley Canal. She was moored up but Ray and family were not on board.

Finally, we moored up just outside Market Drayton and walked into the town to check on the marina, where we will leave MM tomorrow, and also to check on the buses to Stoke-on-Trent. We also looked at the house that we once considered buying - but the Estate Agent was so useless that we never even got to view it! It was a lovely town house, light and airy, and best of all - it had its own mooring!

Tomorrow we will leave very early, so our next post will be when we get back in two weeks' time. So please watch this space!!
Today: 7 miles, 5 locks and 4.8 hours.
Trip: 235 miles, 185 locks anf 195.0 hours.