BCN Explorer Cruise Day 3

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.

Chasewater

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.

It was so nice at Anglesey Basin that we would have liked to be able to stay longer and have made a note to return soon.

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.

Audlum & Adderley Locks

We left Overwater Marina on Saturday morning but only went as far as the moorings below Audlum flight of locks so that Roger could watch the Grand Prix qualifying.

the mere

River Weaver running under the canal

It's a lovely spot to moor but the "Shroppie shelf" is quite wide here and every time a boat went passed we slammed into it so as soon as the qualifying finished we set off up the locks.  We both prefer doing lock flights in the afternoon anyway, and as usual, most boats had finished moving by the time we set off. Despite most of the 15 locks being set against us we had a good fast trip up and moored for the night just below the Adderley flight.

I really like Audlum locks.  They're easy to work and really beautiful with cowslips everywhere.  

They also have a couple of lock-side stalls ranging from this small tea chest selling free-range eggs and flowers

to this stall selling home-made cakes, biscuits and clotted cream teas.

It's Grand Prix again today so we did Adderley Locks this morning.  It was very busy but as most of the traffic was coming down we didn't have to queue to go up the locks and had plenty of help from the hire boat crews.

There's a farm stall beside the top lock selling cakes, home-made jams, sticks and bacon and if you want any lamb, pork or chicken the actual farm shop is just behind the lock building.

Roast Belly Pork and a numpty!

Many thanks to Keith on n.b. Kotuku who told us about the butchers in Pershore Market.  We paid a quick visit this morning and took his advice and bought hot roast belly pork for lunch. It was delish! We also bought some lamb sausages (never seen them before) which I’ve frozen for later and some hake steaks from the fishmonger. Hake always reminds me of holidays in France, poached and served with beurre blanc (butter) sauce. I’ll make it next week and share the recipe with you.

Morris dancers on Pershore High Street

It rained quite heavily overnight and until about 11.00 this morning but by the time we set off it was nice and sunny again, if a bit windy.  We saw the black swan again just past Osier Island and he followed us for a couple of hundred yards posing for the camera. What a beautiful bird.

Yesterday when we were at Fladbury Lock I noticed lots of signs all over the place.  “No swimming in the lock or in the lock entrance”  “Keep back from top gates as there is a risk of swamping your boat” (or similar wording) “All boats must be tied to bollards front and stern when emptying or filling the lock”.  When the empty lock was filling so we could go in, the rush of water through the top gates was ferocious so we were prepared to be very careful when going back up today. The lock approach coming upstream is very narrow and on a bend and just as we got there we saw someone in a wetsuit swimming by the lock landing. He saw us and got out of the water and walked up to the lock. He helped us empty the lock so that we could go in but then rushed to the top gate and started winding the paddle before Roger had even got against the lock side, never mind tied our ropes round the bollards. I had to scream at him TWICE to get him to stop. He said he was only going to open the paddle half way!!  If he’d done that he would have swamped our boat without a doubt. He got the message and disappeared, turning up again later in a coracle messing about near the weir. The man’s a numpty!

We’re moored back in Evesham in the same spot as Thursday night but we have a slight problem. Our River Avon licence, which was glued in the cratch window, has disappeared. It was there when we set off from Pershore and the cratch sides have been down all the time we were travelling but when I went to close up for the evening it had gone. Just the glue marks remain so we don’t know if it’s blown away, unlikely, or been nicked, again unlikely.  We’ll have to try and get a replacement as we’ve still got 10 days or so left.

Shrewley

We had a very bad time with Charlie last night. He barked solidly for 4 hours until he fell asleep at 00.45 with us following him within minutes. The tablets the vet gave us seem to be kicking in and he’s been quite calm all day, just sitting in his usual position on the roof watching the world go by. I just hope he stays calm this evening, it would be nice to be able to watch TV live instead of having to record programmes to watch at a later date.

It’s been another lovely sunny day with just a few showers this morning but they didn’t affect us as we didn’t set off until after lunch.

No locks today, just Shrewley Tunnel. Visitor moorings are marked in the guide book, just by the south portal, so we stopped and walked into the village. It’s a nice sleepy village with a shop/post office which has a deli counter selling a good range of pies & samosas.  There’s also a large pub The Durham Ox but it was closed when we got there.

An unusual place to store your bike

Shrewley Tunnel passes underneath the village and although it’s wide enough for 2 boats to pass it doesn’t have a towpath so the horses had to go over the top and through the village, passing back down to the canal through their own horse tunnel. The tunnel itself is very tall inside but is also very wet. In places it’s like passing under a shower and there are several jets of water coming out of the side walls to soak you as well.

timing's a bit out, it only takes 6-7 mins.

South portal

inside the horse tunnel, further down it's cobbled

North portal with the horse tunnel from the village

We’re now moored up in the wilderness before Rowington.  We chose a nice secluded spot in case Charlie has another evening of barking but within half an hour we were surrounded by other boats.

Warwick

We had a nice slow cruise this morning. It was warm and sunny and too nice to rush anywhere. Pity I couldn’t say the same for 3 boats who motored past us later, going so fast they could have towed water skiers behind them!  We’d moored up outside The Moorings pub at Leamington Spa as Google had showed a Pets At Home store and we were getting very low on dog food. When he was young, Charlie had really bad eczema which defied all the medications prescribed by the vet. After exhaustive internet research we tried changing his diet to James Wellbeloved Hypoallergenic dog food and low and behold his skin problems cleared up almost overnight. We normally buy this in 2kg bags and always try to have a couple in stock but lately we’ve been struggling to find it so this time we got a 15kg bag which I’ll split and re-bag tomorrow and stash away in any spaces I can find. Charlie thought it was his birthday!

Just round the bend from The Moorings is a Lidl store with a couple of moorings outside.

These were full so we stayed at The Moorings, took the granny trolley and did some shopping. We haven’t been in a Lidl before and I was very impressed. The fruit and veg was good quality and half the price of Tesco. They have an extensive selection of continental cooked meats and the salami with fennel which we had later for lunch was delish! Roger was pleased to see that they have a good selection of bottled ales and stocked up on Bishop’s Finger at £1.39 a bottle.  His favourite beer, Old Speckled Hen, is currently on special offer at Tesco so when we arrived at the Warwick branch later in the afternoon I took the trolley again and cleared the shelf. That should keep us going for a while and the beer store is now full.

If you need other shopping there’s a large Sainsbury’s, Homebase, Argos, Halfords and others at The Shires Retail Park about 5minutes walk from The Moorings.

We finally managed to pair up with another boat this afternoon and shared the two Cape Locks. We moored at the end of a long line of moored boats and went into the lock-side Cape of Good Hope pub for a couple of pints of their own beer “Two Llocks” That’s not a spelling mistake and it’s pronounced Tw’ollocks. It was very nice and a more realistic price at £2.90 a pint.

The moorings here are quite dark as the canal is over shadowed by large apartments on the opposite side and large trees on the towpath side.

Radford Bottom Lock

Sunday
As it’s Sunday we didn’t move very far, just down 2 locks to moor below Radford Bottom Lock and get internet reception. Again, we’d waited to pair up down the locks and again no-one came. It had been quite busy earlier in the morning but the boats were all going the opposite way. When I went to open the lock gates there were 7 tiny ducklings swimming around with their mother sitting on the lock gate watching. The people on the last boats to come through must have shut the gates with them in there and we had a hard job getting them out before we could empty the lock. We tried bread and duck food but ended up having to chase them out with the brush.

unusual boat moored above lock 22

We moored up just past the bridge which has this sign on it. We could do with lots more of these along the canal as the cyclists round here are particularly fast and the towpath is very narrow in places.

Just 100yards along the road from the lock is a free-range poultry farm. We wandered up there before lunch and bought some huge eggs & some veg. They also sell oven-ready chickens and ducks but they were a bit out of our price bracket at £16 for a chicken and £18 for a duck!

Since we moored up 8 boats have come down the lock, all paired up and all going our way, typical! This afternoon Roger is going to service the engine and I’m going to make bread and then watch TV with the headphones in while he plays his guitar and it's his turn to cook the Sunday roast. Just what Sundays are for?

Leicester

The weather has been wonderful again today and apparently the forecast is good for the weekend.  Most of the boats have arrived for the festival and Bede Park is being transformed as the fair has arrived, the performance stage has been erected and some food & drink stands are arriving. Last evening and again this evening there are groups of young people chilling out on the grass, lighting BBQ's and generally having a good time.

As more and more boats started arriving for the festival it was time to decorate the boat. This is the first time it’s had bunting on it and we weren’t too sure of the best way to go about it but think it came out quite well.

After lunch we moved into our official position for the weekend, breasted up with Frenchlands 2 which is the floating book shop.

We’ve decided that we both really like Leicester. The market is huge and much better than the one in Loughborough last week. There is a large covered fruit and veg. market and an indoor, fully refrigerated meat and fish market.  Again, the fruit and veg. was incredibly cheap and so varied I didn’t recognise half of the items.

each bowlful cost £1

While we were wandering around we saw the Magazine Gateway which dates back to the 1400’s and is currently under restoration. It has an amazing vaulted ceiling.

The other tourist spot we passed was the Jewry Wall which dates back to Roman Times. The museum was closed when we went past but the roman remains are thought to be of an old bath house. You can read more about it here

The river continues to be busy, especially with rowing crews. Roger is particularly pleased that over half of the boats are manned by very attractive young ladies!

Loughborough Basin

Those of you who know us personally know that Roger doesn’t cook. It’s not that he can’t cook just that he prefers not too. Last night was the exception to the rule and I was treated to one of Jamie Oliver’s recipes  'crunchy garlic chicken'  It looked just like the photo in the book and tasted amazing!

This morning we set off wearing full waterproofs as the sky was grey and rain was imminent. As usual though, the waterproofs kept the rain off and we over-heated, instead of rain we had sun.

The River Soar is especially beautiful when the sun shines and the wildlife was out in abundance. We saw several swan families, Canadian geese with their goslings and a solitary juvenile cormorant but no sign of its parents.

Just after Zouch Cut we came to the flood relief gates and the scary warning signs. Just round the bend were the emergency moorings (known as dolphins), in the main channel with no access to the shore. I wouldn’t like to get stranded on them for any length of time.

At the top of  Bishop Meadow Lock there are more warning signs and lights, just beside the sanitary station.

waiting for the lock to empty so we can go in

We arrived in the basin at the end of the arm just as the heavens opened. I know we need rain but does it always have to come down just at the wrong moment and so hard? Needless to say we’d taken the waterproofs off as well so we both got soaked to the skin!

Last time we came here there was just a rickety pontoon for 2 or 3 boats and you had to go through a builders yard to get to the shops. It's now been developed into a very modern canal basin, overlooked by student flats above an Asian Fusion restaurant and a posh buttie shop. There are good moorings on short pontoons for 5 boats and a sanitary station, but no rubbish disposal.

one of 3 elaborately carved stone balls
about 3 feet high just beside the moorings

Loughborough is a good town for stocking up the boat. There is a fantastic street market on a Thursday and I bought loads of fruit and veg at ridiculously cheap prices e.g. 20 plums for £1 which I might make into jam. The fish stall was also really good and the freezer is now full to bursting. There are Tesco & Sainsbury’s supermarkets within easy walking distance, Dunelm Mill, Wilkinson’s, several banks, dry cleaners, Timpson’s shoe repairs, most well known chain clothes shops and lots of charity shops.  You’ll be spoilt for choice for pubs and bars and there’s a good selection of Indian, Thai & Chinese restaurants & take-aways.