Tixall Wide

It's been another glorious day; a bit windy but lovely and sunny and perfect for cruising down to Tixall.

We were last here in May 2011 and I'm sure Tixall Lock cottage has had a make-over. I certainly don't remember it looking as smart as this.

The by-wash has definitely been smartened up. It used to have all sorts of gnomes lurking about and I seem to remember one that was either flashing or mooning at you as you peered over the wall.

Tixall Wide is one of our favourite mooring places on the whole canal system. It's almost like mooring on a lake and the variety of bird-life here is amazing.  We've only been here a couple of hours and have already seen a kingfisher, swans, mallards, coots, a cormorant and a great crested grebe.

Roger's been fishing off the back of the boat but hasn't had much luck as yet, neither have the fishermen on the bank behind us. Maybe the cormorant has eaten them all?

We've put in a couple of long days getting here which means we can now have tomorrow off and make the most of a beautiful spot. We'll probably carry on again on Saturday.

Catch-up

Blogspot has been having problems for the past 2 days and actually 'lost' my posting for Thursday so here's the catch-up posting.

We had a really good night out with Ned and Julie Edwards on Wednesday.

They took us to a lovely little pub restaurant in Rugeley called The Yorkshireman and the meal was one of the best we've had in a long while.  Ned's very fond of cheese and biscuits and the plateful the put in front of him certainly brought a smile to his face.

He runs Cabincare and supplies all kinds of blinds and fly screens for boats and houses. Apparently his screens are very popular with cat fanciers and some of the stories he told about them had us in stitches.

The Hut on the Cut  at Great Heywood - Ned's HQ

On Thursday morning I called in at the farm shop at Great Heywood junction before we moved on to moor at Tixall Wide. This is a small lake that the canal passes through and is one of our most favourite mooring places.  The weather wasn't been very kind while we were moored there and Roger didn't manage to do any fishing, however an angler fishing just in front of our boat caught several large carp. He had all the gear and the cold wind and rain didn't put him off.

There are always plenty of birds here at this time of year and this time we had a nesting swan and also a nesting coot just opposite our mooring. The male swan came pecking at the boat on both evenings.

Nesting Coot

Tixall Gatehouse - view from the boat

view from the boat over "our new garden"

evening over the Wide

A long days cruising

It's been a long day's cruising today, by our standards anyway. We set off about 10.30 and went down the locks through Stone to fill up with water just below Star Lock. While the tank was filing Roger nipped into Stone for some compost to plant up the tomatoes as they'd outgrown their pots and were ready to go up on the roof.
It's been threatening to rain all day but we actually managed to get away with only one light shower and I was inside washing the dishes at the time so it didn't bother me.
There have been quite a lot of boats moving today, luckily they were mostly going in the opposite direction and we managed to time it right at about half of the locks so that we went in as one came out. I'm getting quite good at steering the boat into and out of the locks now. I might just have to carry on and let Roger do all the hard work. At Hoo Mill Lock there was a rusty old steam engine hidden in a shed in someone's garden, such a shame, it was crying out to be restored.

We arrived at Tixall Wide too late this evening. By 5pm all the moorings were taken, so we turned round and went back down to the junction and moored on the main line.

We'll move back to the wide tomorrow when some of the boats leave. As it happens it turned out for the best, as just after we'd moored up Ned from Cabincare phoned. He'd seen us passing Great Heywood Marina and was inviting us out for a meal tonight. That's wonderful! I couldn't decide what we were having for dinner so now I don't have to cook anything and someone else can do the dishes too!