Market Drayton once more

To my surprise, it's over three years since we were last here, when we had an entertaining time in the cold weather, with a bit of ice floating around (ha!). It's one of our favourite canalside towns, with loads of facilities and good moorings.

Thanks to the the hour going on this morning, we were able to get up and get going by eight without feeling we'd been lazing around.

It was Sheila's turn to steer, and I can't say I was sorry, as the cold easterly wind continued to make life quite bracing on the back. In these circumstances, we go for the multilayered look these days; woolly jumper, fleece sleeveless gilet, fleece jacket and then a waterproof over it all, more to keep the wind out than because we were expecting precipitation.

I took over from time to time to let her go below and thaw out a bit; this is where the combination of the Squirrel warming the saloon and the engine supplied central heating warming the back of the boat really makes a difference.

We had a bit of a fright at Woodseaves; Sheila had lined up to go through the first bridge when a green painted boat popped out from behind the abutment and occasioned much reversing and swinging about to get out of their way. It was the only boat we saw in the cutting, however, so could have been much worse. We scraped past the site of the rockfall waiting to be cleared away – there's a bit underwater between the towpath and the boom which Sanity Again just got over.

Once clear of the cutting, we chugged on to the top of Tyrley and followed the ex-Ownerships boat Sandpiper down the flight. We've both moored on the first set of visitor moorings in MD, the ones on the embankment. This gives a longer walk to Morrisons, but is much quieter than the ones further along.

By now it was officially lunchtime, so I made the remaining two rolls from yesterday into Ben Gunn's favourite meal, cheese on toast, and we had a mug of soup with it. This restored us sufficiently to walk to Morrisons and get a couple of pasties for part 2 of lunch.

Since then, I've submitted our census form online, and taken phone calls from Andrew Denny at Waterways World, and from Elanor.

Andrew tells me, with some justified irritation, that the business about the HS2 route intersecting with various bits of canal has been being researched by him for several weeks now, hence the very complete FOI reply that Chris Wells got out of BW. Because Chris has been able to put it out on his blog, Andrew's piece in next month's WW will look as if he's lifted it from Chris, when in effect it's the other way round.

It's a hard life, though the fact that the Granny Buttons blog used to run stories like this all the time makes it something of a poacher turned gamekeeper situation.

Elanor filled me in on Sally's first encounter with the shower. Whilst rummaging in her favourite field last evening, Sally made a misjudgment about wading in a pond, and fell in. She came back to Elanor covered on pond slime, and had to be showered off when they got home. Sally didn't appreciate this; the shower is over the bath, and Elanor described her standing in the bath with her head hanging over the side in abject despair.

Elanor doesn't have any dog shampoo in the house at the moment, so Sally is still a little odiferous, not helped by the fact that she also found the very old remains of both a goose and a swan, and scoffed some of the bones from both.

We're going to stay here tomorrow, stocking up and loafing about, then we'll probably amble on to Nantwich.