Aston marina

Sunday 21^st July; Brassworks bridge to Aston marina

This is a lovely quiet mooring once the traffic dies down, though I don’t know what it’s like on a sunny evening when the residents of Little Stoke on the opposite bank are having barbecues and parties!  It’s popular with dog walkers, not surprising as there is a bridge conveniently placed at each end of this stretch of towpath.

I didn’t take a snap of the mooring yesterday because of the rain and totally forgot this morning.  After changing the bedding, which is quite a performance as Alchemy has just pointed out, we dropped down Aston lock and slid into our mooring without problems.

I failed to take any photos at all today, so here is one of the marina entrance from 2015, the last time we stayed here.

As it’s the first weekend of the school holidays we reasoned that the roads would be very busy this morning with people travelling for holidays or days out, so we didn’t rush the packing up.  It was a good decision - we left at about 1 o’clock, and the only slow traffic was on the few miles of the M6 before it joins the M5, which is always bad.  We were home in time to give the dog her tea.

Less than a mile and 1 lock.

Trip stats;

·       Just over 73 miles - 41 miles 1¼ furlongs narrow canals, 31 miles 7 furlongs broad canals.

·       76 locks – 54 narrow (mostly on Heartbreak Hill), 22 broad.

·       Harecastle tunnel (2919 yards).

·       Canalplan said there were 15 aqueducts or underbridges.  We didn’t notice any, and none was large enough to feature on Nicholsons.  But we did go underneath Poole aqueduct which carries the Macc over the T&M.

·       Waterways – Llangollen, Shroppie, Middlewich Branch, T&M.