An unexpectent encounter at Tyrley Locks.

Blooming 'eck, retired late to bed after a good evening of laughter and chat and then, lying half awake, I became aware of the fridge cutting in and out rather more than normal. In fact, it would start and stop, become a constant hum, switch off and 10 seconds later the whole thing would start all over again. So shaking Ian awake (why can he fall asleep immediately whereas I seem to take forever?) he deduced that the battery volts must be low. So he turned the fridge right down with the hope that would resolve the problem. And it did as no more noise came our way.  Then almost asleep and the phone rings! For goodness sake who could be phoning at this time of the night? Turns out it was our daughter in law who was at a party in Poland and, unbeknown to her, the phone had connected to the last number dialled. Oh well...who needs sleep anyway...overrated if you ask me!!

This morning the mist had cleared and a bright sunny morning greeted us. Today we wanted to make for Market Drayton, mostly a cruising day apart from the 5 Tyrley locks. Going up this flight can be difficult as those bywashes are vicious, pushing the boat against the wall when trying to enter the bottom locks. But going down was so much easier. But before getting to the locks we had to negotiate the long long rows of moored boats (at least a mile of them) and those long narrow cuttings, dark and dank without any sunlight making it feel cold and oppressive.

Top Tyrley lock

Slippage at  the bottom lock

Seen at the bottom lock

Made it to Market Drayton and no TV signal. Moved a few feet and still no TV signal. Moved once more beyond the bridge to the water point and at last, we could get a few channels. But those channels were what I call ''dross channels' so we decided to watch a film from Netflix instead.

And as for my heading,

Between 3 and 4 of Tyreleylocks and we were stopped in our tracks by this Kingfisher

  
And on route,