Dozily to Wheaton Aston

Well, that was a very good night last night; thanks Chancy guys, really enjoyed it. As a result it was gone midnight before we were in bed, and it took a bit of doing to get up and get going this morning. The cunning plan was to get to Wheaton Aston at around ten, so as to get the water tank topped up before settling onto a mooring for the weekend, being as we have some dirty weather in the forecast.

We toddled along quite merrily, if a little dopily; this stretch is the first of those blighted by the Shroppie's besetting sin, one I've mentioned before, I know. That is the endless lengths of offside mooring, so that you end up crawling past all these boats. Seemingly, they don't do marinas on the Shroppie, not before Audlem at any rate.

We rolled up at Wheaton Aston at half nine, and had a change of plan. There was a perfectly good bit of towpath mooring above the lock, and we still have two thirds of a tank of water, so we've stopped up here for the time being. It is very busy on the official visitor moorings down below, so we're probably better off this way.

The only downside at the moment is a bloke on the offside doing some serious metal bashing to his boat. He's got a genny running, as he's doing some welding and grinding, so we're just hopeful that he's going to knock it off at some reasonable hour.

There's a mixed mobile reception situation here; T-mobile/Orange is fine, and 3 is OK, but the Vodafone signal is pretty well non-existent; it seems they've not heard of Shropshire down there in Newbury. This justifies us having a 3 voice contract, any way.

One interesting website visited today, as a result of a post on the Erin Mae blog; that's this one describing a load of useful knots, together with really good visual guides on how  to tie them.

Tonight, we plan to eat at the Hartley Arms, this being our delayed wedding anniversary meal that we didn't have at the time because we were dog sitting. I'll report on the experience tomorrow, probably.