Up and Down the Monty!

So today the plan is to go down the Montgomery Canal. Bit more involved, 8 locks and 4 of them are in a staircase, so you have to book in and be there at a certain time.

We got ourselves booked and arrived in plenty of time. The lock keeper even opened the gates a little early for us. It was interesting getting through the staircase. We were the first ones down and swapped over in the middle with the first one up.

Another lonely little lock by itself, which was only shallow but took forever to empty. Then three more and of course all the usual skinny bridges. If anything these ones seemed even skinner. Took about 2 and a half hours to get down to Maesbury, where the canal ends. This canal had just been restored in recent years and Maesbury is as far as they got!

It's very quite down here with hardly any traffic, which is just as well, the canal is pretty narrow in a lot of places. They keep telling us the canal is 4 boats wide, I wouldn't like to test it in a lot of places. Restoration is underway on the reminder of the canal and we took a walk to have a look at it in the afternoon.

It's a bit of a nature reserve down here, but a bit disappointing for us. It's not nearly as pretty as the rest of the canal. Lots of hikers and bird watchers though so must be something in it. What it does have is a fantastic pub, where we had a great meal. Graham had duck, best he's ever had which is saying something and I had Faggot. Had to have it just for the name. It's a bit like a pork rissoles with liver and heart so pretty meaty but very tasty.

Back up the canal again the next day, through all the diy locks and oh no we weren't first in the queue. Turns out that's a bit of a problem, the water in the middle has to be balanced out between the top and bottom locks or the boats start running aground. There was a lot of "Oh Dears" from the lock keeper when we were in there and we had to wait for a while till they put some more water through. Eventually we got through and then motored up to Ellesmere for the afternoon.

Goodness Ellesmere gets some canal traffic, we cruised all the way in and couldn't find anywhere to park until right in town where someone said they were leaving in an half an hour or so. The canal arm ends in sort of a triangle so we pulled over to the off side to wait till our space was ready, in the meantime this huge Narrowboat came down the arm way too fast, I thought it was going to plow straight through the boat at the end. It did give it a bit of a bang but managed to pull up in time. Needed the help of several people on the wharf to turn it around though.

Old mate left and we pulled into his space, locked up and took a walk around town. Only saw Tesco last time we were here so it was nice to see a bit more. I had a lovely time looking in the charity shops, only wish I could take some of the stuff in there home. The China is amazing!

Guess what off to the pub again for dinner!Read more