We made an early start in the hope of being able to get through the Grindley Brook set of locks before the end of the day. In the end it turned out that the Grindley locks weren’t a grind at all – the staircase of three is apparently notorious for causing delays to boaters, with someone having to wait 5 hours yesterday. Luckily for us we didn’t even have to wait for 5 minutes, perhaps largely as we turned up fairly late in the day at about 5:30pm, so we breezed through in quick order, with the lock keeper and his assistant’s help.

Unfortunately the other locks don’t have nice lock keepers to do all the hard work, so Sarah volunteered (it was that or do the steering!) and leapt across the gates to do some winding and pushing as required.

Whilst a dab hand at the locks, Sarah’s also an accomplished helmswoman as could have been seen in the photo until she deleted it. During one stint she also did a great job sneaking up on this heron, which I managed to get a decent picture of before it flew off to find a quieter spot.

The early flurry of hire boats headed in the opposite direction dropped off after we passed Ellesmere junction and the canal became more like the Shropshire Union we know.

We eventually moored up shortly after Marbury lock – we had planned to stop at the Dusty Miller pub, but some other boaters headed the opposite direction told us it was closed today, so we stopped short.