Up the hill to Stoke

Great Haywood to Harecastle

May 2018

There are a plethora of moody miles between Great Haywood and Stone, long pasture fringed pounds which seem to stretch on endlessly just above the the narrowing upper reaches of the Trent.

Halsall above Hoo Mill

In some ways its a beautiful landscape, especially on a cloudless day such as this but it also a bit, dare I say it, tedious. Each field looks the same and with so few landmarks time stretches on, and on and on. In spite of all the boats at the junction we seemed to be pretty much alone as we crawled slowly from lock to lock, rising step by step to the outskirts of Stone.

Stone

Having used a lot of water on wash day we needed to refill only to have a boat slip onto the water point below Star Lock as we approached. Fair dues, he got there first and what is more with him in front of us and another boat behind who we had let pass we secured two new customers and troubled the till once again.

Etruria top lock

With all the moorings below the lock full and a desire to reach Harecastle the next day we moved up through the Stone Locks to the foot of the four at Meaford. The adjacent road does create some noise but not enough to disturb our slumbers.

Wednesday dawned much cooler and we tucked in behind Mountbatten and Jellicoe as they made their way up to Stoke. Their need to double lock certainly slowed progress a bit, but they are a fraction faster on the flat so we pretty much paced each other all day and ended up moored nose to tail at the Herecastle Tunnel portal. 

The route up from Stone to Stoke is much more interesting with areas of abandoned industry all around. I always like the top lock at Etruria which bears the telltale marks of mining subsidence. The original coping stones are about 5 feet down the lock walls and the top two feet of cement, laid in the 70's suggests that the subsidence has ceased. What is more, this part of the canal includes a few steel gates which survive from the 1970's when BW, a nationalised concern, was obliged to used steel from British Steel, another troubled nationalised enterprise.

The section north of Etruria offers some of the finest relics of the buildings which used to line the Trent and Mersey. The areas of Middleport, Newport, Longport and Westport all have their old pottery buildings, most on terminal decay but there and there some remain operational as going concerns.

Chilling in Great Haywood

Great Haywood
May 2018

After the big push up the Severn and Staffs and Worcester Canal we ended up with a day to spare in Great Haywood.

East Bridge at Shugborough

Helen, you see, has been part of a book group for the better part of 20 years and it has become customary to try and host a meeting on the boat before we leave the Midlands. Last year it was in Birmingham and this year the optimum point was at Great Haywood on Monday evening.

With a day to kill we busied ourselves with the washing (you can see the twin tub on the back of the boat in the blog banner photo) and sampled the delights of the farm shop just across the canal. For the afternoon we took a stroll into the grounds of Shugborough Hall and made use of our soon to expire National Trust membership. We have been to the hall before but had never taken the walk around the island formed by the new course of the River Sow and its old route immediately in front of the hall.

West Bridge at Shugborough

The walk includes two rather lovely bridges and the mock Chinese Temple which was constructed in about 1740 based on drawings brought back from China. Sadly it does not offer any great reflected views of the hall itself, which, if I am completely honest, is not the most beautiful of stately homes.

The National Trust have big plans for the house and grounds and I suspect regular visits will be rewarded. At this time of our visit the daffodils had finished but the rhododendrons were coming into their own, as was the wisteria on the front of the stables.

Lobelia at Shugborough

We passed on the hall itself and instead walked back over Essex Bridge and sampled the coffee and cakes at the farm shop cafe.

Essex Bridge over the River Trent

The book group duly arrived and initially I was consigned to the back cabin and my laptop. However, a chance comment on The Erin Mae blog alerted Martin and Margaret Inchley to our presence and we had a lovely catch up on the stern with the setting sun and the literary murmurings providing a backdrop to our conversation.

The book group arrives

Completing the Staffs and Worcester

On to Great Haywood

May 2018

As you may have gathered, I am running several days into single blog posts because I really want to catch up and be posting real time. 

Gailey Roundhouse

This post therefore covers three days and territory with which we are very familiar. So familiar that I don't bother with maps but make increasing use of Waterways Routes on line map service on my i-phone. I am coming to love this app (thanks for sorting it out Paul) which lets me carry the entire country's waterways in my pocket and is available at all times together with a GPS marker of our current location. Other boaters talk about distant locations and in a flash I have the app open and we are pinpointing the subject of our discussion. Dare I say I am becoming a bit evangelistic on the subject?

 Botterham and The Bratch

On Friday we made our way up the Staffs and Worcester, passing through the Bratch flight which are always something of an occasion. The afternoon was lovely so we pressed on to the summit pound and arrived at Oxley Marine (Autherley) at just after 5.00pm. Luckily they were still open and supplied both a diesel top up and a quick look see at our engine. Now there is nothing terribly wrong with the engine but it is a little bit more rattly and tappetty than is used to be and I was worried lest something was seriously amiss.

Coal Boat Roach

They gave it a knowing shove, removed the rocker cap and observed that like us, it is getting a bit older and it starting to tire a bit. The pistons are showing signs of wear exhaust gasses are passing the pistons a bit more than they used to. Nothing to worry about but we should expect a very slow decline leading, ultimately, to a new engine. I can't moan because it has already operated for nearly 7,000 hours without missing a beat and for the last five years the little Beta 38 had been pushing both a boat and a butty - and therefore operating a bit warmer than it otherwise would. I will keep changing the oil regularly and treat it gently.

Stemmed up after a botched overtaking manouver!

In the event we moored at the Anchor at Coven, having a lovely meal in the pub and enjoyed what is probably our most used mooring over the years.

Saturday saw us leave after most of the assembled boats, but tailed by one with telltale antifoul indicating a northern origin. He was hanging just off the butty's elum and I called back to overtake on the next straight. He than started to overtake at once, on the wrong side, on a blind bend and unwittingly drove himself at full revs onto a notorious mud bank. Suffice to say it took him a whole hour to catch up with us again.....

 A moment of theatre

As we turned the corner at Calf Heath we came across Kate Staffin and Heather Wastie of the Alarum Theatre Company who were performing at the pub in the evening. I helped Kate with a few stubborn fixes on her boat whilst Heather made use of our ample hot water supply for a morning shower.

Windmills at Gailey

Then it was downhill through Gailey Lock and on to Penkridge where a number of satisfied customers sought us out and replenished their Wild Side stocks. Today was to be a day of lock landing numpties with one boat moored on the bollards below Penkridge lock causing mayhem for both us and the boat coming up. Barely 30 minutes later we were at Park Gate Lock having paid the Chandlery a visit and, as we approached the lock landing a boat jumped off the service bollards at Teddersley Marina and straight across our bows to the lock landing where they wanted to wait for 15 mins till the service bay came free again. They suggested I reverse back 2 boat lengths (with butty) and were more than a bit miffed when I insisted they vacate the lock landing and leave it free for its given purpose. Mooring on lock landings is one of my pet hates - as you can tell.

Then it was on through Acton Trussell and we moored just above Deptmore Lock, near Stafford Boat Club.

Harrier and Lyra at Tixall Wide

Sunday was a more gentle day with very pleasant cruising beside the Penk and then the Sow to Tixall where we met Kerry and Dan aboard Harrier and Lyra who in turn were moored behind Mountbatten and Jellico. It was something of a butty fest.

Mooring at Great Haywood.

We carried on to Haywood Junction which had no mooring spaces available, so instead we turned north and found an excellent 70ft gap just north of the bridge and opposite the farm shop cafe. We will be spending a couple of nights in this spot so more about that another time.

Heading north

Droitwich to Ashwood Junction

May 2018

We have finally set off on our northern journey which will see us arrive in Liverpool at the end of the month.

Max Sinclar's old cottage

The plan was to travel to Autherley Junction and then turn north up the Shroppie, but the breach at Middlewich means a few more locks and miles as we will go via Stoke. The downside is the climb to Harecastle and then down Wheelock Edge so lots of locking to look forward to.

Reed fringed Barge Canal

For now we started off bright and early, slipping out of Netherwich Basin before the other boaters were awake. The Droitwich Barge Canal was a delight, with deep water and the locks all set in our favour. Not that there were any other boats around, so we locked down alone. 

We breasted the boats up in the bottom lock ready for the passage upstream. This isn't the fastest way to travel but it is by far the safest and one where both boats are under control at all times. The downside is the speed. The Severn is comfortably in the green but it still has a strong flow on it, which slowed our progress to 2.5mph on most reaches but just below the locks where the river is at its shallowest progress slowed to an agonising 1.5mph!

Holte Bridge and Lock - River Severn

Holt and Bevere Locks passed in slow succession but all this time we had the river pretty much to ourselves. Locking up was a tad interesting because in both locks the keepers wanted us on the operators side. Unfortunately, this is the butty side which, with its minute 2m of straight plate, means we tend to swing round like a top. So, Instead of locking up with ropes attached we elected to bob about in the chamber and have the paddles raised very slowly.

We came into Stourport Basin in mid afternoon and after a pause on the service mooring we left the main basin and found a secluded spot on the visitor moorings.

Caldwell Lock

Thursday saw us slide upstream along a deserted Staffs and Worcester Canal, miles and locks passing us by is a steady sequence. Kidderminster offers good shopping opportunities including a visit to Sainsburys. One of the nice things about travelling with the butty is the reaction it elicits from passers by. As we rose up Wolverley Lock a German boating party were having a few beers in the sunshine and asked about the butty. Before we left the lock we had sold 6 jars which paid or a couple of pints of bitter and left a profit on top.

As the weather was lovely we pressed on and ended up mooring in the secluded environs of Ashwood Junction.

St Richards Festival, Droitwich 2018

St Richards Festival, Droitwich

May 2018

Phew, the 2018 Droitwich festival was a hot one!

As the festival approached the weather forecast got better and better, and when the weekend finally arrived we were treated to three days of wall to wall sunshine. Each day was hotter than the last and at the risk of stating the obvious, the success of canal festivals is very weather dependent.

Droitwich, or St Richards Festival to give its its proper name, is far more than a canal festival. It represents a significant event in the town's calendar and as such is able to attract massive numbers of visitors. The crowds flocked in and rather than sheltering from rain they sat around in the shade, eating drinking and generally making merry. Our customers turned out in force and we enjoyed our best ever Droitwich from a sales perspective, running out of some lines which is a bit of a shock for the first event of the year!

Given the unrelenting demand I never got to see any of the event beyond Vines Park, but that was ok. All day long people sat around outside the beer tent, listening to the bands till late in the evening. With a regular shuttle of beer deliveries arriving there was a steady supply of Bumblehole, our favourite beer and its sharp refreshing taste kept us going through the heat of the afternoons.

I lost count of the number of friends who came to the event and say hello. If you came and I barely saw you I do apologise!

Droitwich isn't really a big boaters event, and there was not a lot in the shape of historic boat interest this year. That said, Hadar was in the basin and Scorpio arrived bearing a cargo of salt which was used in the construction of a sculpture commemorating the salt making history of the town.

With the festival over we moved the boats to the basin and went home for a night, attending to various chores, completing several loads of washing and making a jam delivery to The Fairlawns hotel before returning to the boats and our nomadic summer existence. All in all a cracking start to the season and in one event made up for the fact that we have fewer trading days booked this year as we to a tour of the north.