Good morning. I wasn't going to travel today but it's always the way, whenever
there's rain forecast, it doesn't rain.
At Great Hayward I'll leave the Trent & Mersey Canal in the rain and join the
Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. My route curves around Weeping Cross
where to the northwest is the town of Stafford. I'll moor up just around the
corner from Stafford Boat Club for the night.
Then i'll continue south neighbouring the busy M6 motorway and through the market
town of Penkridge winding my way past Gaily Bridge and Hatherton Marina. I'll
then moor up just before Moat House Bridge.
[Music]
So I'm at Little Haywood now. The rain has continued. Now, some people will laugh
at the fact that Molly stays on the back of the boat with me. Now, whenever
she's inside and I'm traveling, she has a right old fuss. She sits right up at the front
door and she's puffing and panting and she dribbles all over the floor.
Basically, because she wants to be out on the stern with me. She really doesn't
mind getting wet, it's not a particularly cold day today and I'm sure she will
enjoy a good rubdown with a towel later.
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Everything is very damp and all the clothing's wet and Molly's wet.
Well that's the last lock on the Trent & Mersey for me. Just up ahead at Great
Haywood I'm gonna be turning left onto this Staffordshire and Worcestershire
Canal and that will take me all the way down to the River Severn. Okay, so the
trick is to pivot the point at the middle of the boat. If you try turning
too soon,
well, no. It's more than a 95 degree turn I must
say. It's more like 100, 110. It sort of doubles back on yourself. Let's see.
Yes I did it. Hard thrust of Alice and I've been able to swing round and avoid
all that Anglo-welsh narrowboats that are ready to be hired which are all sticking
out in the water and haven't touched anything, which I'm really surprised at.
I love it when canals turn into aqueducts and water goes over water.
Up until now, I've been heading sort of northwest towards Stafford but just at
this corner it now turns with Weeping Cross on the left the river and then
Stafford on the other side of the valley and now I'm heading south.
[Music]
This really is what narrowboating is all about. Waking up to a fantastic views
like this really early in the morning and setting off for a day.
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This is really nice to see, the banks of the canal covered in lots and lots of
different types of wildflowers and the really good thing is, is the Canal and
River Trust, or whoever they employ to cut the glass, hasn't cut them all down.
They've cut the grass bits but not where the flowers are, it's a really pretty.
[Music]
Over the last couple of weeks I've had quite a lot of comments asking me how I
plan my journeys. Are there maps, are there guides.
Well yes there are. A guide that you'll find on a lot of norrowboat holidays is
the Pearson Canal Companion guide. It's a map, it's artistically drawn and that
gives a really good analysis of the canal that you're traveling on. It will
give you all of the bridges and the local amenities and the things of
interest to go and look at. I have used those but I prefer a more of a map style
and I use the Collins Nicholson Waterways Guide. There's a whole range of
different books, I will include all these books in the description below but the
Collins guides are more ordnance survey style maps and they give a slightly
wider picture around the canals. Important for me whilst I'm driving
because I need to know roads and towns, and where I can park the car. So those
are the two map type of books. There are lots of others, but those are the two
ones that I've used. Now online, I whenever I'm planning a journey I will
first of all look at the Canal & River Trust map. I will then look at the Canal
& River Trust stoppages map which gives a good indication of lock closures,
maintenance, things where they've had to stop the navigation or stop the towpath.
If I want to find out how long it'll take me to get from A to B on a canal
including locks, including flows of river and that sort of thing, I use a website
called CanalPlanAC. I'll put a link in the description also. You can put various
different locations in and you can put waypoints and all sorts and it'll give
you a very accurate I found time and itinerary. You can print them off and it
will also integrate with the Canal & River Trust and tell you about stoppages,
it's very good website. And then the last thing I will use is
good old Google Maps. I will use the satellite map to zoom in on different
areas where can I moor. Where has armco, which is this metal railing you can just
about see that on some Google maps. Where I can park the car. Where I can get the
car close to the boat. So I use a mixture of both paper and online maps.
Just coming around the corner there and there were lots of high weeds, these
weeds and there was another boat coming in the opposite direction. So that was a
really good opportunity for me to use my horn. I'm not one of these people that
will use the horn all the time. I'm just aware of other boat, they might be having
a nice lie in. I didn't want to wake them up but this boat was quite a lot on to
my side and I didn't know if they'd seen me. So I gave two little tiny blasts of
the horn. It's not an aggressive blast like a big 'brrrr' would for me, because
be classed as a bit of aggressive and I don't want to be that. I just wanted to alert
them, the fact that I was there and true enough, they didn't really realise I was there
and as soon as they could hear my horn, they moved over.
So this lock is quite interesting. There's no bollard for you two moor up
on. So if you're solo navigating and you have to leave the boat in the windy
conditions to operate the lock, anything could happen to it. So I've got
to keep an eye on the boat as well as the lock on this one.
[Music]
Oh dear. Poor Molly. She was lying on the towpath eating a stick and she just so
happened to lie on top of I think, a wasp's nest and she started running
around. You know when dogs have flies or something that land on them and they
sort of go a bit mad, she was running around and there was a wasp on her head,
and one on her back, and one on her leg. They weren't doing anything, they were
just sort of sitting there. So I came over and flicked them off but she went
up and down in a bit of 'whoooo'. She's perfectly fine. She's just a little bit
wary of coming back out on the towpath this evening. Anyway, I've moored up.
It's been a long day's cruising today. There were some very dark rain clouds
right behind me for most of the afternoon and I was thinking shall I
moor up - shall I not, shall I moor up - shall I not and I'm pleased I didn't,
because I found this perfect place. She's going over to where the wasps are > 'Molly',
come on, at this end, they'll only attack you. Yeah I'll show you them in a second
but I'm pleased I've moored up here. It's extremely quiet, lovely countryside
you wouldn't think that I'm just north of Wolverhampton but I'm gonna moor up
here for the night and I'm gonna see if I can get some nice time-lapse,
and probably do some editing and watch a bit of telly. But until next time, see you later.