Lock flights to historic sites

Gemma Cusack tackles 66 locks on the Shropshire Union Canal

Our week-long narrowboat adventure from Whitchurch in Shropshire to Chester began when we stepped aboard Inca Wren, a 48ft narrowboat owned by ABC Boat Hire at Whitchurch Marina.

We travelled as light as possible except for food stores, given the lack of shopping opportunities on our route. Indeed the engineer, who watched us curiously as we unloaded our cars, may have thought we were preparing for a round-the-world trip, such were the number of boxes, bottles and bags of consumables.

He kept a beady eye on us as we edged our way toward the winding hole to turn the boat around, but at last we were on our way. The weather gods were kind and we set off under clear skies and with gentle breezes.

The canal wasted no time in introducing us to our first swing bridge and set of locks. We were fortunate to encounter very little traffic at the locks and made short work of them. We took it in turns to keep the boat steady while two went ahead to man the gates. Taking our time happened to work in our favour; the Whitchurch-Chester part of the Shropshire Union canal boasts an enormous 33 locks, many of them placed very close together as the canal follows the atypical rolling topography of the Midlands and descends down onto the floodplains beyond Hurleston Reservoir. The locks are well managed, some of them temporarily manned by volunteer lock-keepers while others rely solely on the elbow grease provided by the crew.

Benches on the banks allowed onlookers to be entertained by our first somewhat hasty attempts to keep the boat away from the cill, the walls of the lock, and to prevent Myrtle, our dog, from making a running jump for the bank.

We moored up at Grindley Brook for the first night, with nothing but fields and birdsong to keep us company.