The Shropshire Union Canal is definitely one of the prettiest, although the double locks are heavy going, but it’s worth it to get to Chester.
Chester is one of our favourite cities and we were lucky to get moored at King Charles Garden, under the wall. ( that’s Charles I, we’re still waiting for an invitation to moor in our current King Charles garden)
It’s so close to the cathedral that I managed to almost managed to fit in a whole years worth of soul refreshment into one week
And we still had plenty of time to explore the city as well,
Of course it became a daily challenge to walk the wall
Thankfully we had left Chester before storm Babet arrived and flooded all the rivers. The river Dee still looked a lovely place to stroll along outside the wall.
We took advantage of being able to stay 14 days in Chester before we turned round to head south, like the Airbus dolphin that flies to Toulouse everyday delivering parts from its Cheshire manufacturing plant and headquarters.
Lots of idyllic rural mooring
We stopped at the Shady just in time to avoid a torrential down pour, and took advantage of eating out, although it was a nice meal, neither of us thought it justified the price,
As it didnt entail any more locks, we decided not to turn off onto the Middlewich Branch straight away, but to go on to Nantwich for a few days. And contrary to what we saw in the shop windows Nantwich really isn’t a dead end place
It’s a very interesting historic town, and if all the mooring wasn’t restricted we’d have stayed a whole week,
As usual I made a beeline for the local church St Marys , besides the deep spiritual calm, they are some of the most accessible historic buildings usually full of hidden gems. This time I couldn’t tear myself away from the two hanging embroideries, worked to commemorate both the queen’s silver jubilee and the people of Nanwich.
Nantwich also has a very good cheese shop, several craft brewery’s and a good market. Not to forget also mentioning some nice mooring, although it’s 2 days throughout the entire stretch of the town.
