Walking along the Shropshire Union canal & coffee in Bunbury

Walking along the Shropshire Union canal & coffee in Bunbury

We did some more decent walking last week. Our last canal walk had been along a stretch of the Peak Forest canal and the Bugsworth Basin this time starting off along a stretch of the Shropshire Union canal in Tarporley.

The canal stretches for a little over 66 miles and has 47 locks on it – we kept our walk down to a much more manageable six miles or so.

From our starting point we ambled along as far as Tilstone Lock before leaving the canal and walking into the small Cheshire village of Bunbury for refreshments at the very decent Tilly’s coffee shop

Not a random find and more information

Stopping at Tilly’s for coffee wasn’t exactly a random find. I had stumbled on the coffee shop the previous week when I had been motorcycling in the area – you can read more about that at this link.

I doubt my two recent visits there will be the last … to be honest it’s probably worth it for the Eccles cakes alone.

If you want to know more about the Shropshire Union canal there’s plenty of information about the canal on the Canal & River Trust website and it’s worth a look as like so much of the canal network it has a pretty interesting history.

The elephant and castle curiosity

Curious

After we had got back to the car we drove a couple of miles to Peckforton to see the Elephant and Castle Curiosity. It’s a sandstone sculpture of an elephant with a saddle on its back and on top of the saddle is a castle with towers and windows.  According to The Sandstone Ridge Trust, the sculpture was cut out from two blocks of sandstone in 1859 by a stone mason who was working on the nearby Peckforton Castle.

You can see a couple of pictures of the curiosity in the picture gallery below.

Picture gallery one

Clicking on any of the images will open a picture gallery that can be clicked or scrolled through. In this set you will see pictures from the Beeston Iron Lock, which I understand is a unique construction with the lock having iron sides.

Picture gallery two (drone shots)

This second picture gallery has images taken by drone above the Shropshire Union canal. Clicking on any of the images will open a picture gallery that can be clicked or scrolled through.

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