We may be narrowboat nomads but that doesn’t mean we’ve missed the opportunity to join in Jubilee celebrations. It’s just means we’ve joined them in several places!
Whatever your thoughts on monarchies, 70 years in the same job these days is nothing short of remarkable. It is something to be celebrated, something we know neither of us will achieve, and there is also a feeling that after the past few years of uncertainty and upheaval, we all need a party!
In the past week we’ve travelled 54 miles and 41 locks from the Oxfordshire village of Cropredy with its honey coloured stone houses and musical fame, to the rural Leicestershire village of Fleckney whose duck pond once provided clay for brick making.
From the Oxford Canal onto the Grand Union (Grand Junction Canal) and through Norton Junction onto the Leicester Line in sun and rain, we’ve seen growing evidence of celebration preparations for the Platinum Jubilee. Flags and buntings adorn houses and gardens, shops and pubs. Talk at locks is of joining family, parties and public events.
At Crick Marina preparations were well underway for the Boat Show when we passed and those we met on their way there were looking forward to coming away with new gadgets, and in one case with a new boat.
Crick mooring marshal aboard Book and Spud
We’re happy with our boat and our lot, so we came through Crick early, although the mooring marshal was still in evidence working hard. We were down the Foxton Flight before the show even started. Our Jubilee weekend began at Foxton with a stunning sunset.
Our upcycled bunting made from a pair of old shorts and two tee shirts that had seen better days now festoons the cratch. We came down the Flight of 10 locks early on Thursday morning in beautiful sunshine without a gongoozler in sight but with 3 voluntary lock keepers for company, crossing in the centre pound with 2 hire boats heading to work at Crick.
We shared the excitement of beacon lighting at Fleckney, in true local village style. Local band, dancers, children getting involved, before we made a leisurely move towards Leicester.
After several years it is good to see the vibrant multicultural Riverside Festival at Leicester back again. NB Preaux will join the Royal Navy, the Merchant Navy and all recreational vessels today in the Saturday Ships Salute, by sounding a long blast on our horn at midday 12.00 BST.
However you are spending this once-in-a-lifetime Bank Holiday we wish you sunshine, fun and relaxation. It is another chance to remember and celebrate the things that really matter in life – family, friends, communities, good health and stability as well as recognising 70 years of service.
Individualism has a stronghold on the inland waterways today but I’d argue it always has had. Even in the days when homogonised corporate commercial barges plied their trade, the roses and castles adorning cabins and water cans made individual statements about the people on board and their desire to make their home/workplaces more attractive.
Today’s narrowboats echo those original decorations, but there is more, so much more to see on the waterways these days that speaks to the creativity and individualism of those living afloat. Untrammelled by commercial requirements on names and colours, imagination can now run riot.
You don’t have to go aboard to enjoy the this individualism. Walk along any towpath or marina and where there are moored boats you have an opportunity to delight in the creative touches boaters bring to their floating homes.
Perhaps this lack of competition combined with a capacity to demonstrate individual creativity has a significant part to play in the lack of stress and sense of wellbeing to which many boaters attest.
There are still those out with polishing cloths and determined to display ownership of the latest gadget but we haven’t found many liveaboard continuous cruisers in their midst.
It’s definitely not an environment to worry about ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. After all – how could you possibly compete with something as unique as this?
Seeing the changes being wrought on the landscape this week by HS2 prompted this week’s blog.
We’ve been travelling the Grand Union to Napton Junction where we turned onto the Oxford Canal. Both evidence the changes of HS2. Travelling on from Leamington Spa we saw the impact on the landscape of the southern section of the high speed line in Warwickshire.
The line will go through a mile long tunnel being dug beneath ancient woodland and then travels south on a huge 60m concrete viaduct over the Oxford Canal and towpath near the village of Wormleighton. The Long Itchington tunnel is being dug by a mechanical mole named Dorothy after the first British woman to win the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1964. Dorothy Hodgkin was a student of Somerville College Oxford, just a stone’s throw from our current mooring, and later returned to the City as a research professor.
The Oxford is a contour canal, following the curves of the land. That means changes are visible for a long way. The Napton Windmill is one of these landmarks you see for miles. It’s been a visible sign of change on the landscape for centuries, originally powered by wind, then steam and then rendered sail-less before being restored as a listed part of a house. It’s a beacon of historic changes on this 75-mile canal that was once a coal route from Coventry to Oxford, and connected to Reading and London via the River Thames.
The Oxford Canal has seen dramatic changes since it first opened in 1790. Its first competitor turned out to be the Grand Junction Canal (Grand Union as we now know it after a name change). It offered a quicker, shorter route to London. Then came the railways offering even quicker and shorter journey times for freight. The canal struggled on but was facing closure and dereliction by the 1950s.
Today it is bustling and busy with commercial hire boats and private boats, a testament to the vision of the Inland Waterways Association which fought and won one of its first campaigns to get the Oxford designated a Cruiseway in the 1968 Transport Act.
The IWA came about to restore, retain and develop the Inland Waterways of The British Isles not just for leisure but commercial use too. The change it has created stems from the impact of a book – the power of the pen to create change.
Tom Rolt’s book Narrow Boat, vividly chronicles his 1939 journey around the canals in his boat Cressy. It still inspires people to seek a life on the inland waterways (although most of us don’t manage to incorporate a State Room and full sized bath on board!). It also sparked a partnership between Rolt and Robert Aickman who suggested they form a society to campaign for the regeneration of canals.
Tooleys Boatyard in Banbury where Cressy was fitted out
On Saturday 11 August 1945, the men and their wives, Angela and Ray, met for the first time aboard Cressy at Tardebigge on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. The inaugural meeting of The Inland Waterways Association took place six months later.
The leaders have changed, members have changed, the work has changed but the IWA’s focus remains the same – to restore, retain and develop our inland waterways. Change means just that – things don’t stay the same.
The IWA has been active along with Canal and Rivers Trust in seeking to positively protect the canals at times of change wrought by apathy or activity like the construction of HS2.
On our travels elsewhere in the country we’ve seen individuals banding together to try and bring about change because of the environmental impacts of HS2.
We are grateful daily for the changes brought about by Rolt, Aickman, their wives and those they inspired to continue the campaign for the waterways. Those changes mean we have been ablento change to living and working afloat.
Water is a major global problem for us all, and it’s getting more acute.
The United Nations General Assembly back in 2010 recognised access to safe, clean, and affordable drinking water and sanitation as a basic human right.
Living and working afloat makes us hugely aware of water – we need it to stay alive and afloat as well as to travel. You, like us, need water for your survival too, even if you don’t have to fill up your water reserve regularly as we do (we’ve filled up our tank 36 times in the past year).
Filling up with water – oops, the hose from the mains tap is trailing in the canal which isn’t a good idea
Conserving water as we travel is an essential. Where we can we share wide locks with other boats. We are conscious of not emptying or filling locks unnecessarily, so waiting for other boats to come up or down before we move wherever possible.
Sharing locks on the Hatton Flight this week
On the River Severn last month we were made very aware of the evident pollution in and around the water. Sewage was an issue in the water there too. Plastic and rubbish pollution is as apparent on the canals as the rivers. We try to fish out what we can, and not to add to the problem.
Fishing out from what gets tangled round the prop…as well as fishing with a net
We’re conscious of how we use the water we store on the boat so we don’t have to fill up too often or waste the water we have in our tank. Washing up water, and shower water all provide useful roofgarden watering sources. Perhaps it seems a drop in the ocean when we look at the scale of the issues surrounding water availability but every little helps. We are also aware of the distances to travel between sanitation waste disposal sites so we don’t get caught short.
Sometimes reaching the designated site isn’t always straightforward!
Water is a major global problem, with over 2 billion people according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) living in water-stressed situations, a problem getting worse its climate change and population growth. Clean, safe water is not available either to over 2 billion people meaning health is being compromised, and many are dying as a result.
Sometimes too much water with floods and tsunamis creates as much difficulty as drought or pollution.
In the UK we might think there is no problem, but a research project is underway to determine exactly what the situation is in terms of water and sanitation access among boaters, van dwellers and others with alternative off-grid lifestyles.
Ruth Sylvester from the University of Leeds is looking at water insecurity and equity among off-grid dwellers. She’s part of the Water-WISER Centre at the University of Leeds. Ruth and Helen Underhill , a liveaboard boater and researcher with the Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub at Newcastle University are keen to talk to anyone living off-grid.
In boater terms that means they want to hear the situation and experiences of boat dwellers on moorings with services, moorings without services, continuous cruisers, boaters with accessibility issues, full time, part time liveaboards and those who live on narrowboats, cruisers, widebeams, Dutch barges – you get the picture!
Leeds’ Water-WISER Centre = Waste Infrastructure and Serviced Engineered for Resilience – a higher education acronym if ever I heard one! Their work is seeking to have global impact combining as it is with research from Loughborough University’s Water and Development Centre, Cranfield University’s Water Science Institute and the Water, Public Health and Environmental Engineering group also based at Leeds.
If you can contribute to the factual content and perspectives of their research in any way do email them – helen.underhill@ncl.ac.uk or Ruth Sylvester cnres@leeds.ac.uk
In the past 10 days we’ve both been away from the boat which has given valuable time for reflection. Reflection about what really matters.
Living and working afloat as we do provides two key essentials that are reaffirming and invaluable – choice and freedom.
To be free to go and help instantly where and when without needing to book time off, juggle leave or appointments is liberating. It is good to be both wanted and needed, and even better to know that we can dig in to support with our time at the drop of a hat.
Downshifting has meant the work we do has to work for us, as a means to an end and not a be-all-and-end-all. Working flexibly may not make us millionaires but allows us to support ourselves and our family with time and actually being there when it really counts. Our work goes with us wherever we are, but we need to do less of it, so it doesn’t constrain in the way it once did. That’s good for the output too.
We choose where we go (within the obvious constraint of having water to float on!). We moor where we choose: choosing whether to take short mooring or longer moorings, to moor in cities or towns, villages or the middle of nowhere. Sometimes a need for internet and/or phone signal moves us on, but I think that’s only happened twice.
Freedom allows us to take the time to appreciate living so close to nature – to see the changing of the seasons, the cycle of life including battles against predators and elements to thrive and grow, and we make the time to marvel in the beauty of life around us. It is a privilege – something we failed to build into our daily lives when they were absorbed by work, commuting, packed diaries and constrained by houses and cars (nice as those were).
We have freedom through choice from monotony, from overwhelming routine – we can choose to make every day different, to move on, to stay put, to explore on foot or on the boat, to give work the time it needs and then devote the rest of the time to what we choose to do, which often includes the constant of boat maintenance. Living like this makes us more aware of our consumption, and even regular tasks like filling up with water, emptying waste and fetching the shopping become interesting because they’re nearly always in new places, certainly since lockdown constraints ended.
Part of my trip away included regular hospital visiting, underlining once more as the pandemic did how vital health is to us all, and how like so many things life, we take it for granted until we don’t have it. That can also be said of freedom and choice – we need to really value them where we have them in our lives and not let them be eroded or obliterated by work or material pressures.
This floating lifestyle can at times seem selfish in its multiple positive benefits to us. Knowing we can go and help when needed, to take time to share the good times as well as the difficult brings another really important positive.
So this life we have afloat… It’s a simpler life. It’s a slower life. It’s a better balanced life. It’s not a wealthy life, but in many ways it is a richer life.
That’s been proven to me this past 10 days when we’ve both been able to be with family, to support and help when and where needed (one of us headed south and the other headed north!). It’s been so good for us to be able to do that, to share daily routines like chatty walks to pre school, garage clearing, and enjoying relaxing over home cooked meals together – let’s hope it was good for them too!
Hope the coming week is good for you and yours. Build in some choices for yourself, create some appreciation time and ringfence some time just to reflect on what is good in your life.
Solutions to what may seem insurmountable odds come in multiple guises and so often the answers lie in the shared endeavour of teamwork. It’s true in physical and academic endeavours; in engineering and business.
Teams are valued in the real world but often not appreciated in Higher Education – at least by student team members who believe it’s individual endeavour which matters and counts. This results because so often we consider that our outcomes are, and should be judged on our individual contributions.
The canals of Britain once again showed us the value and scope of teamwork and shared endeavour this week.
The longest flight of locks in the UK raises (and lowers) boats 220ft at Tardebigge in Worcestershire. Over 2.25miles 30 locks are the solution to getting boats over the Lickey Ridge.
This lock flight is a feature of the Worcs and Birmingham Canal. It was designed and built by teams – of hard working navvies and a trio of engineers. They started in Birmingham in 1792 and made it to Tardebigge without needing a single lock. At that point it plus its tunnels, were wide enough for 2 laden barges Once locks were needed to tackle the terrain wide locks were out of the budget. So the 56 locks down to Worcester are single with narrow 7ft chambers. The final 2 between Diglis Basin and the River Severn are wide, enabling river-going vessels to enter Worcester to unload or offload onto narrowboats for the journey up the locks.
The 29 mile canal was a key factor in the the commercial success of many firms including Cadbury Chocolate, linking as it did their factories in Bournville and Worcester.
For today’s boaters laden with our worldly goods or holiday essentials, making it up or down the flight is as Pearson puts it ‘A Boater’s Rite of Passage’.
Some have tried to moor at the Reservoir near lock 57 but CRT advise there’s no overnight mooring on the flight so all 30 need to really be done in a day. The final lock is deep – 11ft.
It was originally created as a vertical boat lift designed and installed by John Woodhouse. His solution raised and lowered a boat at a time in a water filled chamber worked by counterweight and a windlass. It did work, moving 110 boats in a 12 hour period but it wasn’t considered robust enough for continuous commercial use so the Lock we still use today was installed. Technically it can move fewer boats in the same period but has been working since 1815 with only pauses for maintenance.
Technically the whole lock flight could take up to 7.5 hours to complete though for most it is under 5 hours. Time depends on the number of boats in the flight and the numbers of working crew aboard. Single handed boaters tend to take longer and the flight is most rapid for those with a team of board who can continuously prepare locks ahead as the boat moves through.
Teams from one boat also help others – true team spirit evident along the waterways.For us, a single additional crew member taking us to 3 plus dog enabled us to complete our ascent in a highly respectable 3hrs 8 mins.
Teamwork wherever it appears pays off, just as it has in designing, building, and now navigating this remarkable flight. It provides a lesson to remember:
Tackle more together Enjoy empowering each other Abandon individual egos Make more happen
Six months ago we started travelling the 46 miles of the Staffordshire and Worcester Canal. This week, 250 years after it was first opened, we finally completed its 43rd lock and passed under its final bridge. It has been a fascinating lesson in history, geography and England.
As slow travel goes this is probably a record for us, 46 miles in 6 months, but we have retraced our steps and veered off to explore to the Mersey and Llangollen in that time too.
The Staffs and Worcs is like all canals we find, unique. It traverses market towns, quaint villages and pockets of industry. In its commercial heyday it was a noisy, constantly moving conduit. It bustled with barges carrying pottery from Stoke, glass from Stourbridge, carpets from Kidderminster, bricks from Wildwood, agricultural produce aplenty, coal from the Littleton pit, and iron from the works at Gothersley. The Staffs and Worcs connecting as it does to the mighty River Severn which heads to the South West and the Port of Bristol enabled goods to be transported locally, nationally and internationally.
The only barges using the waterway now are historic craft or commercial fuel boat. Whilst quieter than 250 years ago, this last stretch has been busy for us with happy hirers passing on holiday boats, a vital commercial aspect of the waterway today.
The weather is different too. When we turned onto the Staffs and Worcs last winter passing under bridge 109 at Great Haywood near the sumptuous Shugborough Hall, we had iced ropes and chill fingers. We’ve ended in April sunshine.
Within minutes of leaving Great Haywood you can be forgiven for thinking you’ve inadvertently gone to sea as you experience Tixall Wide. This huge stretch of water resulted from a wealthy landowner stipulating the view of a lake not a canal if the waterway wanted to cross his land.
Whilst Tixall Hall no longer exists to view the magnificent Wide, its Elizabethan gatehouse remains. From here we travelled south, through kingfisher country and the valleys of the rivers Sow and Penk. In early December we were moored by the moated luxury hotel of Acton Trussell a stone’s throw now from the M6 and M6 tolls carrying today’s commercial goods. Then into Penkridge with its many magpie buildings, to the summit at Gailey marked by a roundhouse that dates from 1895 when Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar.
The canal winds down through heathland until suddenly industry intervenes with siren threatening chemical works and a recycling plant plus bio digester, under the M6 and M54, contrasting with The Narrows living up to their name before Autherley Junction.
This connection to the Shropshire Union Canal marks another changing point in this multifaceted waterway. It was to here that we came the first time, winded (turned in narrowboat speak) and returned to Great Haywood, from whence we took a loop into further reaches of Staffordshire, Cheshire, and North Wales. We eventually returned to Autherley Junction down the Shroppie after travelling its 66.5 miles and 47 locks.
Although on a map you can see how close the Staffs and Worcs runs to the Midland heartlands of Wolverhampton and Birmingham, it maintains a rural feel. Highlights on this southern section include the patriotically colour coded Bratch Triple Locks, the haunted Awbridge lock allegedly constructed by French prisoners captured post Trafalgar. I’d like to think they would have been pleased to see nb Preaux pass through their beautifully constructed and unique lock and bridge. They might have appreciated the reminder in their native tongue of peaceful meadows.
Through Swindon, Stewponey, into beautiful wooded surroundings at Kinver with its fascinating rock houses hewn from the soft orange sandstone and through Gibraltar to Kidderminster of carpet fame.
Sandstone outcrops and wooded glades often shaded blue at this time of year bring the canal abruptly it seems, to its end at Stourport. Here exuberant seaside gulls and stomach-churning fairground rides, contrasts with the formal surroundings of an inland trading port with its mellow clock in the Tontine tower, genteel yacht club and formal riverside gardens.
Within minutes of the final lock it’s through two staircase locks within Stourport Basin and suddenly you’re disgorged onto the wide reaches of the River Severn.
Peace is good for us all, as individuals, as businesses, as a nation, but is only really valued and appreciated after turmoil. We can become complacent when faced with Peace that endures which is dangerous. Stability and growth require Peace.
We humans need constant reminders of the importance and beauty of Peace to prevent us taking it for granted.
Boaters, walkers and canoeists on the canalised section of the River Soar now have a unique opportunity to appreciate and share Peace. On the private land of the Sileby Lock island now stands a beautiful Peace Pole created and carved by local artist and boat-dweller, Angel.
The Pole rises from a cairn of stones, collected and placed by local children and adults. Her idea is for all of us to expand and spread Peace by bringing stones for the cairn and taking some to other places. At this time particularly, with conflict in Ukraine destroying and threatening the world, it is pertinent to reflect on how we are all vital to create and sustain Peace.
Let’s hope Angel’s not too unhappy with me for this image of her!
The intricacy of this Peace Pole, created from recycled materials, has to be seen to be appreciated. Animals and birds, fish and messages of Peace flow along its length, carved by Angel as a reminder of how nature flourishes in times of Peace. It is a glorious celebration of what we have in our world, and well worth making a trip to see.
The beauty of the River Soar and this stretch of the Leicester line is a fitting place for such a beautiful reminder of peace. Its location is significant too. The Pole stands between the Lock and the weir, The rushing weir which constantly harks back to the situation at some points of the year when heavy rains and melting snow can turn the calm flow of the Soar into a fierce, flooding, threatening torrent. At those times the river is un-navigable. The Lock is man’s attempt to calm and manage the waters, but when the indicator boards show the waters at a red level then nature takes control.
At this time of the year though, this is a lovely stretch to navigate, packed with wildlife and well worth adding to your agenda for a walk, cruise or paddle. The new Peace Pole is an added and important attraction to this glorious route.
Angel’s unique work inspired by Quaker Peace poles across the world, stands in this beautiful corner of Leicestershire as a necessary reminder that we can need to keep the Peace.
Its an issue for the human race that so often we can become complacent when faced with Peace that endures. Complacency can be dangerous. Growth benefits from awareness, stability and peace. That goes for each one of us too – we need Peace to allow us to flourish as individuals.
If you’re on the Soar enjoy a peaceful moment at the Peace Pole – bring your stone to leave some of your peace and take a stone from the cairn to spread peace around where you go.
The glory is, you can take a little bit of the beautiful peace of the Soar with you wherever you go ❤
If you can’t get to the Soar just hold on to not becoming complacent, holding onto what really matters and recognise the need to keep the Peace.
Goals are strange things – they can motivate and inspire but also leave us feeling bereft when we achieve them, or failures when we find them unattainable.
Since the autumn of last year when we left London after Steve had achieved his goal of running the London Marathon, we’ve been heading slowly, circuitously around the country with one particular goal in mind. We needed to replace the decades old cover at the front of the boat which provides us with vital additional space. It has had a hard life and despite remedial treatment was leaky and torn.
We talked to other boaters for recommendations, visited various companies, and spoke to others for quotes online and over the phone. We chose a supplier. The upshot was that whilst we could have ordered one from them and they could have visited us at a series of locations for measuring and fitting, we decided to travel to them, as they’re in a pleasant part of the country. The appointment was suitably canal-time: “Come around the end of March, beginning of April.”
Through the winter and burgeoning spring, through storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin, we journeyed and diverted to explore new areas, managing work on the way and always with the goal that we were heading eventually at the end of March/beginning of April for Kinver in Staffordshire.
We travelled 577 miles, tackled 351 locks, moved 31 bridges (swing or lift), plunged underground for 5 miles, 6¾ furlongs via 14 tunnels), and crossed high over 2 major adqueducts (Chirk and Pontycyllte) twice in pursuit of our goal to replace the cratch cover as it’s called. Our circuitous route took in sections or complete lengths of 11 canals, and encompassed 425 miles 3 furlongs of narrow canals, 152 miles 1½ furlongs of broad canals, 233 narrow locks and 118 broad locks if you want the specifics!
This week, on Monday after a final week’s 69 mile, 69 lock journey from Whitchurch on the Llangollen we arrived at our destination. Forewarned, the next morning at 8.30am Harry arrived to template the boat’s cratch, and discuss the final details of what we wanted.
By that evening he had returned in the company of another Harry and a beautifully stitched, watertight cratch cover. It was fitted, adjusted, and installed. The speed took us somewhat aback to be honest – we had fully expected to be waiting for days – had even prewarned CRT that we would be expecting to outstay the 1 day mooring for work and wham – the long-awaited goal was achieved before we even caught breath! It was disconcerting somehow, and also helped me reflect on how rudderless we can feel when we achieve our goals when they are very specific.
SMART goals as we know from business and academia are designed to be just that – Specific, Measureable, Achieveable, Realistic and Timebased (i.e. they have a deadline). SMART goals support us to set targets and benefit from the realisation of them. If we are so focused on a single goal, that can leave us feeling lost when it is achieved. This can be the successful end of a project, or a career stage – striving for one thing and then wondering where to go or what to do when you reach it.
New challenges dawn after old goals are met
PhD candidates (myself included) talk of spending years working to achieve their doctorate and struggling with mixed emotions of elation and deflation when finally Dr So-and-so. What they’ve worked on intensely for so long can no longer be their sole focus. Athletes talk of spiralling into depression after training for a specific race, event, or medal. When it’s over their entire focus is gone, they feel lost and bereft. Authors say the same when they reach the end of a book, and face another blank page.
We have started this week by planning new goals, new destinations, new journeys to move towards to fill the gap we are experiencing, but it has also made me realise how important it is to keep multiple SMART goals ticking over at the same time. Yes, we need the recognised SMART objectives for specific purposes, and we need goal setting support from experts such as Dr Cheryl Travers, but perhaps it is time for some more sustainable SMART goals too.
I propose:
Share/See;
Make (a positive difference)/Marvel;
Appreciate/Admire;
Reflect/Relax
Thank/Try/Treasure.
What will your SMART objectives be to run continuously through life to never be short of positive, meaningful goals?
Our long-term goal is to continue to share, appreciate, relish and be thankful for everything that living afloat brings.
In the short term we welcome a family Easter, and then a journey to the end of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire, onto the mighty River Severn, up the Worcester and Birmingham Canal to the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal. It’s a little jaunt of 76 miles with 6 moveable bridges, 1 major aqueduct at Edstone, 6 tunnels totalling 2 miles 4¾ furlongs underground and – wait for it – 127 locks. This is because it takes in the Tardebigge Flight of Locks – described by Pearson’s Guide as a Boater’s Rite of Passage. This, the longest flight in the UK with 30 locks over 2¼miles, with no overnight mooring, must be done in a single ascent or descent, and looks like a millipede on the map!
That will be a day devoted to boating with no external work to intervene. We rather hope to meet lots of enthusiastic and energetic holiday boaters there! Anyone wanting a walk and some exercise when we get there – we have spare windlasses for temporary crew!
This week has taken us 47 miles and 46 locks through Shropshire into Cheshire, back to Shropshire and then to Staffordshire.
We left the Llangollen Canal in glorious sunlit days preceded by moody misty starts.
Through lush green Cheshire countryside we made good time, going with the flow of the River Dee waters hastening down to Hurleston Reservoir.
Beside the Reservoir is the final 34ft drop taking boats down from the Llangollen onto the Shropshire Union. Through Nantwich and over the Chester- Nantwich Road Road on an impressive cast iron aqueduct, the result of landed gentry not wanting to see a canal and industrial barges plying near their county seat.
Then it was hush hush territory- Hack Green, the now far from secret (or perhaps a double bluff) scene of a WW2 radar station converted into a nuclear bunker to house Regional Government if the Cold War demanded. Now a tourist attraction it sent eerie chills through me – and not just because of the lack of heating.
Then amid a weather change back to winter on to Audlem, passing the once bustling Shroppie Fly, remembering the barges which were the 24-hr operating delivery service of their day. Audlem’s flight of 15 locks are resplendent in battleship grey and white rather than the familiar magpie colours elsewhere. Remnants of a WW2 paint surplus bought up cheap.
In return for 15 locks by 11.30am rewards awaited at the delightful and delicious honesty stall of Kinsell Farm.
Up the Adderley Flight of 5 locks and into the haunted Betton Cutting where tough old boatmen of yore never lingered…neither did we.
Quick pause for supplies at Market Drayton mooring at the delightfully named Ladybird Moorings. Then through through Tyrley flight of 5, remembering that this sandstone cutting and deep lock chambers were all cut by hand with picks and shovels.
The Shelmore Embankment was another engineering and construction feat in its day – taking 6 years to build. At the start stands the wharf overseen by a duty heron as we passed where cocoa nibs used to be loaded from the factory beyond to travel by barge to Bournville. Bet those Cadbury barges smelled delicious!
On then through Grub Street Cutting (nothing here for writers) but again a route painstakingly created with picks and shovels, wheelbarrows and sheer hard graft. At the end stands the famous double-arched High Bridge. Living up to its name it is well known for the short telegraph pole standing in its centre. It too is said to be haunted after a boatman was killed here in the 19th century. Either our imagination was lacking or the bitter chill kept the spectre at bay…unless you can see him?
We still have 22 miles and 23 locks to our Monday destination – will we make it? We’re ploughing on through sun, rain, hail and snow so hope springs eternal as ever!
Pickingupducks 