The 18th of July was rapidly approaching and we were committed to our booking in the marina. We could no longer delay it, so we began the last leg of our journey down the Shropshire Canal.
Our intention after leaving Market Drayton had been to complete the five Adderley locks and then moor up somewhere quiet for a night, before taking on the fifteen Audlem locks the following day. A couple of boats coming and going halved our workload on the Adderley flight, so we decided that, as we’d had a fairly easy run of it, we’d venture down the first few Audlem locks and then pull up for the night. We had a slight delay in getting underway down the Audlem flight due to a small canal-side stall that had mouth-watering offerings of freshly baked cakes, slices and scones, and ice-cream. After a good deal of deliberation, The Captain bought a pack of two scones, jam and clotted cream for morning tea, two brownies for coffee, and two small tubs of ice-cream for the hell of it!
The Captain's call
Purchases safely stowed, we pressed on in the drizzle, and the locks clicked by. “We’ll just go down to the next mooring spot and then find a place to stop,” we told each other. Open, shut, push, pull – and then we were almost at the bottom. We nearly stumbled at the 13th lock, however, as we rounded the corner and came upon “The Shroppie Fly” pub, with its sprinkling of patrons enjoying their pints and the late afternoon’s entertainment – the boats that were pulling in right in front of them to fill with water. We duly filled our tank – never pass a water point without filling – and then resignedly pushed on to the bottom of the flight.
This little building signals the end – or the start – of the Audlem flight. In years past, it sold fresh meat and veggies, the latter grown in an adjacent patch.
Sadly, although the veggie patch is still maintained, the shop no longer operates.
We found our quiet mooring looking out over paddocks of Friesian cows and the beginnings of the River Weaver, and said: “That’ll do pig”. Kites whistled above and an elusive nightingale serenaded us from the hedgerow. We had set off at 9.00 am, intending to do 5 locks – instead, we pulled in at 3.30 with fifteen locks behind us, making it one of our longest days this side of Birmingham. Another 168,000 kg day that was celebrated with the spoils from the stall – scones, raspberry jam, clotted cream, and coffee.
Why did I not know how good clotted cream tasted?
That evening after dinner, we ambled along the public footpath into the village. The route took us across a freshly mown paddock; this walking through someone’s paddock or back garden continues to mess with our heads.
We wandered up and down streets and back lanes, finding the quaint and the impressive.
English police stations have certainly changed over the years
The keen observers among you, will, by now, have picked up on our habit of visiting the local cemeteries in the towns and villages through which we pass. Audlem’s final resting place has a particularly grand entrance – a vaulted arch flanked by two small chapels. I wondered if one’s religion dictated which chapel was utilised for a burial service, however, after checking this with a local historian, it seems not to have been the case.
Our wanderings brought us to a memorial stone that had been erected to honour some ninety men, women and children whose remains had been uncovered in a series of documented, but unmarked paupers’ graves in an over-grown section of the grounds. The eldest person buried there had been 89 years old, and the youngest, a mere two hours. Both deaths were from the same family. We noted with interest, however, that a number of the surnames on the paupers’ memorial were repeated throughout the cemetery – a sign that circumstances for some local families, at least, had improved over the years.
Life was clearly difficult for the Walley family
As we moved around the grounds, we met an older couple and fell into conversation with them – a conversation that revealed some fascinating co-incidences. The woman explained that her husband, who had suffered from dementia, had died some time ago. The man she was with was a friend with whom she’d gone to school as a child. They had lost touch over the years, with each marrying and moving away from the village. In recent years, both of their partners had developed dementia and both had been cared for in the nursing home in Audlem. Staff re-introduced them to each other, and they had renewed their friendship. Each of their partners had since died and the two friends now lived together. In a further twist of fate, the nursing home that had cared for their partners had been set up in the friends' former primary school.
The coincidences did not end there. The woman was keen to tell us that she had been to Australia a number of times and had a friend living in Brisbane. Well, not in the city she said, but on the bayside, at Wynnum. Improbably, this is where I was born. She knew that area well, along with the surrounding suburbs of Lota and Manly, the latter being where I lived for the first five years of my life. We were both a little stunned and I can well imagine that she would have been online that night regaling her friend with the story. Fact is indeed stranger than fiction.
We were now just a day or two away from the marina and we decided to spend those days at Nantwich – a town we’d visited briefly about two years ago – before turning off the Shroppie and heading down the Middlewich branch. Frustratingly, however, there was not a mooring to be had anywhere, so we made a last-minute decision to turn up the Llangollen canal and find a mooring there. We both knew why we really wanted to head up the Llangollen – we just didn’t want to admit it to each other. Once moored, however, we dragged on our wellies with indecent haste and trekked across the wheat paddocks to the Snugbury’s ice cream farm.
They're not both mine - really!
The farm also makes large straw sculptures that they change annually, to commemorate a topical event or personality of the year. The last time we were here, Peter Rabbit, resplendent in his blue jacket, reigned supreme, in honour of Beatrix Potter’s one-hundredth birthday. His successor is a 40 feet Apis melliferra, the European honeybee, which seeks to remind those on this side of the globe, that one-third of the UK’s bee population has disappeared in the last decade.
As we were making our way back to the boat, we happened upon a salient reminder that celebrity status is short-live, for there, in a far corner of a paddock, lay what remained for Peter, reclining in a supine pose and gazing philosophically at the heavens, no doubt recalling his days of fame, and dreaming of Mr McGregor's vegetable patch.
And so, Dear Motley Crew, Saturday 18th August had arrived. With the rain falling, we plodded along the Middlewich branch of the Shropshire Union Canal until we arrived at Aqueduct Marina, which was to be our home for the next six weeks. The fact that we would not be flying back to Australia in two days’ time could now no longer be avoided and settled on us with a dull reality. We manoeuvred into our berth, hoisted our covers, and hooked up to shoreline power. We had arrived.
The Captain, The Commodore and Mrs Chippy - who says she's not feeling so chipper!
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