Left Gailey Wharf this morning nice and early and we were the first ones through the lock at Gailey. Topped up with diesel and then set off on our journey. We did not make a decision on where we would stop for the night but agreed to stop after about 4 hours of cruising.
Only the one lock today so not a difficult cruise. We wanted to go to the Morrisons at the side of the canal at Coven Heath and then make a decision where to spend the night. The cruise was pleasant enough for the first three hours but then the rain started and boy did it rain. We were both soaking within minutes. When we got to the Morrisons as indicated on the map we realised that we had already reached Autherley Junction which was where we had to turn for the Shropshire Union Canal towards Nantwich. Compared to Great Haywood the junction was very disappointing but perhaps the rain didn’t help. John went to look for some moorings and found some nice moorings just past Napton Boats. We merrily went through the junction into the little stop lock and that is where the day turned sour. The lock gate to leave the lock was broken and would not open fully so we had to force our way out of the lock and in doing so marked the paintwork quite badly. John told one of the people at Napton Narrowboats but they said it had been like that for ages. We have now reported it to the Canal River Trust. We moored up, got dry and then the rain stopped so we worked into Coven Heath to visit the Morrisons to top up some of our provisions. When we got back to the mooring we realised that all the Napton Narrowboats had been moved to the other side of the canal in a secure location and there were no other boats around. This made us feel very isolated and quite vulnerable to vandalism. We asked someone for some advice and they advised us to move the boat closer to Napton Narrowboats so we would be covered by the security cameras. It was too late to move the boat and try to find alternative moorings so we moved nearer to Napton Boats. We were both pretty cross with ourselves as we always plan our overnight stops at a safe location so why we didn’t today is anyone’s guess. We stayed up quite late and then had an uneasy night however we had no problems at all so maybe we were just being over cautious.
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