Has summer finally arrived? I hope so. I spent a very pleasant half hour first thing this morning feeding this swan family while drinking my coffee outside for the first time this year. It's little things like this that make living on the boat such a pleasure.
We made another slight detour to the itinerary when we set off this morning. We reversed back to the junction and headed up the Cannock Extension Canal. It's only 1.5 miles and very straight, but is really beautiful and was well worth the detour. At the end, there are several boats moored on linear moorings.
Back on the mainline, we continued on to Brownhills where we stopped for a quick shopping trip into town. There's a large Tesco beside the canal which has obviously had a detrimental impact on the main shopping street as there are now lots of empty shops in between the charity shops. There's also an Aldi and a Wilkinson's.
At Catshill Junction we turned up the Anglesey Branch.
Once again, this canal is beautiful and so under-used that the locals were amazed to see moving boats and 17 in one day was causing quite a stir.
At the end of the branch we moored in Anglesey Basin and went for a walk up to Chasewater. This is a canal feeder reservoir but is currently practically empty as they've recently been doing lots of improvement works to the dam. We've been told it will take about 2 years to re-fill.
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| Chasewater |
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| Anglesey Basin |
This mural was painted on the back of the Innovation Centre. It's a shame that bridge graffiti can't be as good.
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| canal-side statue of a fisherman |
It's been a very long day. We still had another mile or so to go to reach the other boats who were mooring at a boat club for the night, but by 7.30 we'd had enough, so I phoned ahead to let them know what we were doing and we pulled in at the Manor House pub. After dinner we were joined in the pub by a few of the male boaters who had brought their dogs out for a walk.
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