Queens Head to Maesbury Marsh

Wednesday 1st August

We were meeting up with Kay and Gladys at the café in Maesbury Marsh that afternoon. Maesbury Marsh is currently the furthest you can navigate along the Montgomery. There are sections open further down but these are land locked. So we decided to go to the end, turn around and try to moor near the café.

 There are so many wonderful bull rushes around here.

 We soon arrived at Aston locks. There are 3 in total.

 It was weird seeing a car parked right beside the lock.

 Lock number 2!

 There were some man made lakes for wildlife conservation.

 Lock number 3!

 Parts of the canal are really narrow.

 John had been walking with Dex along the towpath so I picked them up at this bridge.

 We passed the Navigation pub. We would be eating there later.

 We also passed Maesbury Marsh services.

 We could see the café building on the left.

 This trip boat is horse drawn and takes one hour trips up and down the canal.

 The café!

 We approached a lift bridge. I volunteered to open it. It was unbelievably stiff and took me all my effort to open it. I decided John could do it on the way back!

Just past the lift bridge we found a place to turn around. 

 We managed to moor right outside the café.

 I could see the horse drawn trip boat was leaving so I ran up to the bridge to get a better view.

 We had brunch in the café which was great, they did wonderful bacon sausage and egg sandwiches. Later that afternoon we met Kay and Gladys for afternoon tea. Kay is my brother in law's sister. She had kindly driven her mum over from Shrewsbury. We had a lovely catch up.

In the evening we went for dinner at the Navigation pub. Great food and we met up with a young couple from Germany who were on a hire boat. They told us they had gone through the last bridge (past the last turning place) as there was no sign to say end of navigation and the map books don't say you can't continue! We only knew where to turn as John asked a lock keeper. They got stuck as the water was shallow and had to be helped by a man pulling them back by their rope! We had a lovely evening with them and Dex amused everyone with his counting abilities! 😀 They were called Frederick and Charley. In the morning we realised they had left 2 German beers for us on the back of our boat with a thank you note! How lovely 😁