Good morning. Well I spent the night last night here in the village of Alrewas.
I think that's how you say, I'm gonna have to ask a local to find out for sure.
Apparently the village I stayed at last night was called Alrewas. You miss out
the L completely. I am going to aim to get through Fradley Junction this
morning. Even though it's still quite early at the moment quite a lot of boats
have gone past, probably about five. One really, really early. Sort of about half past five,
which is quite early for narrowboaters and there's no time limit on when you
can travel. You can travel all the way through the night if you like, it's a bit
like driving on a motorway or a road, there's no time restrictions. You've
just got to be aware of noise and how fast you're going. Like I'm going at tick
over and it's not causing any wake and that's really, especially early in the
morning that's really what you should be doing because otherwise people will not
only get out of their boat angry, they will get out their boat angry and tired
which is what you don't want!
[Music]
I left the village of Alrewas and headed southeast in a relatively
straight line to the five locks at Fradley Junction. I stopped here for a
hot drink and carried on towards Handsacre and then the larger town of Rugeley,
Armitage Shanks has a factory here, where they manufacture bathroom fixtures right
next to the Trent & Mersey Canal. Once through the town, I make a tight, right turn over
Brindley Bank Aqueduct and moor up just before Woolsley Bridge.
There's a long stretch of canal before Common Lock and I can see lots of
activity at the lock. A boat has just come out of the lock and it's only a
narrow lock so it won't take very long to fill but I don't know if they will wait
for me, or if they will see if they can get
another boat through, down and out before I get there.
Yeah, they are squeezing
another boat through so I've just slowed down a bit, no hassle I don't want to
stress them out by going right up to the the lock and I can see the other boat is
gradually going down in the lock. So by the time I get there, hopefully they will
have been down enough open the gates and out to come and then in I go.
There are volunteers on all *five locks at Fradley which is fantastic.
[Music]
You can't come through Fradley Junction without stopping off at the cafe here.
Really early in the mornings it's great for breakfasts. I don't know if this is
the same for other dogs but Molly is very, very affectionate. Whenever she lies
down she has to be physically touching me in some way, either a leg or bit of a
back. If heaven forbid I move my leg, she sort of shuffles over so she's got
some sort of contact and she's doing it right now.
Well that was a very nice
coffee at Fradley Junction nice break and now it's time to continue sort of
south and then west and then south again.
If I'm going up in a narrow lock like this on my own,
I usually butt the the front of the boat up against the plate on the gate and I
just have the boat in slight tick over, so it keeps it nudged up against the
gate. Whenever I'm going through and other people are putting me through the
lock, I tend to do the opposite and nudge up against the the gate at the back, or
the stern and keep the boat ever so slightly in reverse. So therefore they
can just open the paddles as much as they like and let lots of water gush in
and it speeds us through the lock quicker. So if I turn left here it goes on to the
Coventry Canal which leads down through Tamworth and the bottom of the Ashby
Canal and the Oxford Canal and obviously down to Coventry but today I'm carrying
straight on.
Well that was Fradley Junction. I think realistically, that's probably the
busiest that junction has ever been for me to go through. Some people have said
that there's anything up to three hours wait sometimes but luckily, I only had
one boat to wait for and I just helped them through and that was fine but I'm
through now and the rain has held off, the clouds around do look like a bit of
rain but I don't think it's going to today so hopefully I'll have a really
nice day.
Oh dear, I've just been told off by an angry boater.
Remember I'm solo going through a lock and when you have a volunteer
sometimes you offer to get off the boat and the volunteer says no stay on it
because it speeds things up. This one I didn't get off and because I didn't, the
boater that was coming down shouted at me. Now there were two on his boat so
he's used to dealing with the lock whilst the other person navigates. With
me, I have to get up on the roof, get up out of the lock to help and that just
slows everything down. Now yes, he was right I didn't help the lock keeper in
this instance and I did apologise but it's a tough call to make sometimes.
Sometimes you do it and everyone's annoyed that you're
slowing them down because you're up and down ladders and you're on your own, and
then sometimes you get up there and the lock-keeper says stay down on the boat.
So anyway.
[Music]
In a couple of videos ago a couple of people asked me about Molly and did she
have a bed or a blanket to lie down on. Well funny you should say that because
I've gone through all of those scenarios. She's had her bed out here, she's had a
blanket to lie on and every single time she pushes it aside and lies on the
wooden or metal floor. I don't know if it's because of the warmth from the
engine below but she prefers that rather than lying on her blanket. It's even got
to the extent of once she sort of pushed her blanket into the canal, which I
obviously then had to fish out but I've tried all that. She likes sleeping on the
hard surface!
At Bridge 61A it gets really, really narrow and you have to sort of walk
ahead to see if there's anyone coming in the opposite direction because there's a
bit of a tight turn and there's only enough space for one boat it feels a bit
like a tunnel.
Remember the television aerial I had as well as the Wi-Fi aerial or the cellular
mobile reception aerial? Lots of people were saying that because
the TV aerial was at the top and the Wi-Fi was further down the pole, the pole
would cause interference and not let it work as much. I've changed all of that
around. I did have the TV aerial on the pole but the pole became quite heavy
because the TV aerial was quite large it got caught under a bridge and nearly
speared me whilst I was travelling just north of Oxford so I took the TV aerial
off and it was all bent and twisted because he got stuck under the bridge. So
that's gone. I've gone back to my MaxView aerial which has got an amplifier
with it and it works really nicely and all I've got on the pole now, to make it
nice and light is the mobile phone reception aerial, or the Wi-Fi aerial as I
call it. I have just done a speed check, I do it every time I moor up, just to see
if there's going to be problems or not because obviously I need to get online
and the internet speeds both up and down here are fantastic and that is good
because tomorrow and the next day is supposed to be very heavy rain and I
don't want to travel, so I'm gonna be busy editing the next vlog.
It's not like you to bark.
So whilst Molly runs up and down the towpath and enjoys the summer evening, I'm
gonna say hello to the wildlife and until next time, I'll see you later.
You can't just push in whilst I'm saying hello to the ducklings.