We cruise the Newport Branch of the Shroppie

Knighton to Norbury, Shropshire Union Canal, 5 miles 0 locks

I was up a bit later this morning, I seemed tired, not in a hurry to leave my warm bed.  I was feeling cold when I got up as well, and now I have started sneezing, so that is probably why.. *sniff*..

Anyway, I hadn’t been up long when the boatyard phoned “Are you moored nearby?  We want to start work on the boat”.. Damn, so no time to consider staying at our mooring then.. “Be with you lunch time OK?” And with that I knew that my wish to stay where we were would not come true!

So we set off with just 5 miles to do.. mind you there are lines and lines of moored boats between where we were and Norbury Junction, so it would probably take us almost 3 hours to get there.

I left Vic to grab the tiller while I walked the dogs along the towpath, trying to warm up with some exercise, but I had only gone about 100 yards when I spotted a load of wood.. the perfect size, but needing the chainsaw treatment.  So that took us an hour to cut it and load it on to the roof of No Problem.  Quite a feat too, we could not get into the side fully and with a gap of about 6ft, had to use our long gangplank on to the gunnels to get it all aboard.

Shebdon aqueduct is being given some treatment at the moment, they are piling one side, and we had to wait about 2 minutes that’s all before we were waved through..

You can see how far they are banging in these pieces of steel.

And so to Norbury Junction, and a difficult manoeuvre to turn No Problem and reverse down the arm to the dry dock at the bottom.  The start of the now abandoned Newport Branch of the Shropshire Union.  Now it is not THAT many boats that can boast they have cruised this particular arm.  Easing gently backwards down the arm passing Starcross on my right waiting for her new engine to be fitted.. Fellow blogger Jim is having the same engine put in Starcross as No Problem has.

Mooring at the bottom, work was started on installing a hospital silencer for No Problem to make our engine sound a lot quieter.  We had one on NP1 and it did make a big difference.  The name hospital silencer came from the old days, I believe, when diesel engines close to hospitals were fitted with a ‘silent’ silencer.. it only just fits in though.. The guy at Wigrams Marina Boatyard said that we would not be able to have one… Norbury Boatyard thinks differently.. proof in the pudding ho hum!