On the Road Again: 18 June

We were on the road again by 7AM and had finished 11 locks and moored at Audlem by 9:30AM. It was very good going. We were lucky with a couple of locks where we simply sailed out of one and into another as there was a boat coming up.

The weather was fine but the cool breeze held the early morning temperature down to around 10C. The skippers on the other boats were usually well wrapped up too.

We wandered into Audlem and had a walk around. It's a very pleasant old village with less than thirty establishments of all sorts in a couple of streets. We went into the newsagents and it was just like stepping back in time to McCulley's on Waiheke. They sold everything from newspapers to nuts and bolts. It took Lynette bought a magazine with photos of Kate, William & “Georgeous George” as the media are calling him and had a lovely chat with the lady about the royal family Generally Charles & Camilla are not well liked despite all the PR from his office. Apparently William & Harry learned to fly helicopters not too far away from here. We had a very pleasant coffee at the Old Priest House Coffee Shop. It's like no other coffee shop we have been in. Besides selling coffee and snacks, the wall was covered in jars of confectionery. In addition, they had several types of old fashioned lemonades, so we bought five to sample.

There was a butter market across the street, which is now used as a bus shelter and St James church behind it. It was a very nice church and has a list of ministers dating back to the 1300's. You can see some of the original structure and the add ons. It's in great condition and well looked after today. Further up the street was the Oxtail and Trotter, a butcher who claims to have 33 varieties of sausages.

Besides three or four pubs, there was a charity shop and an undertakers. There was also a company selling part ownerships in narrowboats. For less than the cost of this trip, we could have bought one sixth of a narrow boat, plus its upkeep for a year and had four weeks to play in it. The problem is which four weeks of the year you get. You would want to avoid July and August, their main summer months, when the canals would be crowded and it would trips would be longer with more boats on the canals and queues at the locks.

After that, we went to the Audlem Mill. Jim had bought the canal guides from Peter and it was good to be able to put a face to an email address. Peter & Christine have an old mill house where they sell a range of canal related items, including books, and a wide selection of needlework and craft items. They also have courses for learning various handcrafts. An excellent place to visit.

Peter said that they used to have a boat but as the only time they close is in Jan/Feb, they sold it. He told me that the canal has frozen over each year in the last four years and that the ice was over a foot thick.

We had a late lunch at the Deli. Lynette had a Gingerbread Latte, which had a delicious flavour. They add a gingerbread essence to a standard latte. The snacks were very good too and will require more work on the tow path to get rid of. Even with a toastie or a sandwich there is also a small salad.

The streets are a challenge for anyone in a hurry. They are just wide enough for two cars and a thick morning newspaper, but there are designated parking areas on one side. People from either direction park their cars in the designated parking spots which reduces the road to one lane. It's interesting to watch the queues when you have a large vehicle like a tractor or truck queuing with the rest. It turns the street into a chicane. The town and its toilets were very clean and this has been a feature of most towns and villages we have visited.

A Waterboard barge and buttie (pushing boat) passed by us. Jim gave him a hand through one lock and had a quick chat to the skipper. It was a 50' barge and the barge and the buttie could enter the lock together. However, if they use the larger 70' barge, they push the barge into the lock and then have to drag it by hand out again, then drive the buttie in. That's definitely one way to keep fit.

We ate dinner at the Shroppie (shortened version of Shropshire) Fly. Good meal. The bar is in the shape of a canal boat bow.

The mobile service was GPRS only, no data facility, so no internet. The mobile coverage doesn't seem as wide as in NZ. Towns of similar size seem to have better coverage at home. The pub offered a free wifi service too, but it was only at dialup speeds so no blog updates again.