Early morning tranquility before zooming off to Tyrley

Norbury to Tyrley, Shropshire Union Canal, 10 miles 0 locks

The stock was changed this morning, this is where the tiller arm connects to the rudder ..

This was the beastie that came out, and a new bit was welded on.  This piece in the pic had worked itself loose over the years and made the tiller shudder with the free movement from the tiller to the rudder.  I have kept this bit, it says JL Pinder & Sons Boat Builders.. well it is part of this narrowboat really, part of history, it will serve as a bit of ballast, it sure is heavy!

I was up early this morning.. no real reason, I just was.. and this was the scene here at Norbury Junction as people were beginning to waken to a new day.. some very tranquil pictures across the canal…

and this looking the other way towards the British Waterways services.  This is the real junction and to the left past the bows of No Problem is the southern route to Birmingham, to the right the northerly route to Chester, and under the bridge the entrance to the now derelict Shrewsbury and Newport Canal..

I couldn’t wait for the engineers to finish their work on NP to try out all the alterations and see if they worked as we had hoped, and just after 12 noon we swung her to the right and headed north.

No Problem handled totally differently, the larger prop making all the difference.  No more did we have a sluggish boat struggling along on high revs.. no more did we have to endure the rattling of the tiller arm and the shuddering vibration of it through my body.. she was a different boat altogether happily going along with seemingly no effort.. a real pleasure to skipper with no movement whatsoever of the tiller.. in fact I could just let go and the narrowboat continued along in a straight line holding course… brilliant!! Oh Boy, was I one happy gal!

It was fantastic today.. at last we were on our way with no ‘we must get this done’ stuff left on our list, and now we are free to cruise wherever we like for the rest of the Autumn without having any commitments to work on No Problem… phew… 

Vic and I relaxed on the cruiser deck while the canal alternated between high embankments, where we could see the mountains of Wales, to deep wooded cuttings into solid rock.. the bridges at an awesome hight above us..

This particular cutting, Woodseaves, is particularly narrow, and passing boats is difficult.. I do wish British Waterways would cut the edges.. our side for passing today was non towpath side.. ie in the bushes.. so it was hard not to scratch he paint with all the ash tree saplings trying to grow out and up to the light..

Above is the old Cadbury’s Wharf, where, between 1911 and 1961 Cadburys processed local milk supplies into chocolate crumb and transported that to Bournville in the Birmingham area by canal.  It was nice to see some old working boats at the wharf, including Starling, built by W.J. Yarwood & Sons Ltd of Northwich in 1936, and the British Waterways working boat No 121 both seen here under the wharf buildings.

And so to Tyrley.. we put the pins in for the night.. what a lovely area this is.  Been down the locks with Lucy this evening, once again an outstanding area of beauty.. will look around more tomorrow I think..