It has been a week of decision making, or rather accepting decisions made for us by circumstances without railing against them.
After a wonderful weekend of seeing family, meeting our newest teeny family member and staying in what we are convinced was a real-life Fawlty Towers hotel, we returned by Shanks’ Pony, buses and trains to the boat ready to set off for the Rivers Severn and Avon.
As Robbie Burns said, the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, (or boaters and boatdogs) often go awry, and lock issues did just that for us. From the Stourbridge Town Arm we turned onto the Stourbridge Canal passing an area where the week before pounds had been drained and a boat capsized, but when we passed all seemed well. We turned right then onto the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal instead of our planned left turn, avoiding a lock issue going onto the Severn and another on the Avon.
It’s a good few years since we travelled the Staffs and Worcs and we had forgotten how delightful it is. Pink and red rhododendrons in varying hues line sections of the canal carved into sandstone. We stopped off to visit the National Trust property of Wightwick Manor and experienced it in a thunderstorm! We were delighted to be rescued by a car-driving friend who we were due to meet for dinner, but made it back to the Manor the next day to walk their Mathematical Bridge and have a free coffee as we were visiting from a boat.
From the Staffs and Worcs we turned left at last, heading onto the Shropshire Union, fondly known as the Shroppie. It wends its rural way through an array of famous Thomas Telford bridges including High Bridge with its telegraph pole mid arch, through wooded cuttings and a single tunnel at Cowley hewn through the multi-patterned red sandstone. Its locks, accompanied by-washes that often catch out the unwary boater. A notification of a lock issue turned out to have been fixed by Canal and River Trust staff by the time we got to it – what service!
The Shroppie is popular for leisure moorings on farms and this means boats travel very slowly (or should). We can take our time in many places passing moored boats on tick over to enjoy views over rolling farmland of waving grain or grassy acres dotted with cattle, in places looking out towards The Wrekin and the Welsh hills. This feeling of space, of distance is uplifting after quite a time in more urban constrained vistas but also coming as it does between steeply sloping wooded cuttings of this waterway. We have in rain, in sun and in blustery winds that buffet us but often at this time of year bring us gusts of sweet, light, scents of honeysuckle and elderflower.
Moorings are rural, comfortingly dark at night, shared with rabbits and badgers. Herons led us along their beats and jays darted from steeply wooded slopes above us, until we made our way to one of the most well known and longest flight of locks on the canal. The Audlem Flight of 15 designed by Thomas Telford takes boats 93feet from the Shropshire Plain to the Cheshire Plain or vice versa. At the top of the flight by the top lock is a famed honesty shop of the local farm with ice cream, pasties, pies, cream teas and cakes. It is without doubt a highlight of the Shroppie for us, other boaters, dog walkers and villagers.
Turning the opposite way to that we originally planned has turned out to be a pleasure, a chance to meet up with old friends in planned and unplanned reunions. Things look better for months to come because we are heading in this direction. Plans, after all are made to be changed. We reduce stress by embracing change, and agree with Heraclitus that “The only constant in life is change.”
Pickingupducks 