The first day of our BIG Summer Adventure

Every few months we hire a car and go and visit the family. Last week we left the boat in Sawley Marina and Chico at a local boarding kennels and headed back up to Manchester and Newcastle. A wonderful time was had by all, although Chico has come back minus his bark and has done nothing but sleep since we picked him up yesterday afternoon.

Today we started our Big Summer Adventure. A few months ago we joined the Cotswold Canal Cruising Club which is an internet based cruising club i.e. no club house and no gardening/maintenance duties and is perfect for us as continuous cruisers. Back in early June some of the members sailed across the River Mersey from Ellesmere Port to Liverpool and later this month another group are planning to cross The Wash.  This is the trip that is forming the basis for our B.S.A.

It's been another glorious sunny day, perfect for cruising on the River Trent.

I always used to be scared of rivers but now I think I prefer them to canals. I may change my mind of course when we get to the tidal bit.

I love the way the rivers are so wide and have such a diverse bird life. We saw lots of Grebe families and several Cormorants too, much more interesting than mallards and Canada geese.

At Nottingham we met up with one of the other boats coming on our trip, n.b. Vagabond, who had been stocking up at the canal-side Sainsbury's. They set off behind us with the intention of sharing the double width locks but another narrowboat pulled out in front of us so we ended up sharing the locks with them and Vagabond caught up with us when we moored for the night at Holme Lock.

When you come down Meadow Lane lock Nottingham City Football Ground is right in front of you. No football today though.

This is the huge weir barrier and sluice gates at Holme Lock. We're moored in the channel to the right.

It's a great spot to moor as it's beside Holme Pierrepont Country Park which is home to the National Water Sports Centre. Basically it's a white water canoe centre and makes for some excellent entertainment.

This is one of the rapids......remind you anywhere Michelle?

Just as I was starting cooking our dinner, these intrepid souls went past the boat heading back up-stream to the river entrance to the slalom course.

I reckon you could get a narrowboat between those bollards so we kept well away........

I grabbed the camera and rushed back out, just in time to watch them come into the course.

They didn't last long though

and were almost instantly tipped over

It didn't seem to put them off and half an hour later they came back past the boat to go for another run.   Each to their own I suppose.

On to Shardlow

We left Alrewas late on Sunday afternoon, after Roger had watched the Silverstone Grand Prix.

This sign was beside Barton Turn Lock

The obstruction was where the towpath has collapsed into the canal. I wonder how long it'll be before C&RT do the repairs.

The cruise to Branston was very pleasant.  It was very quiet as everyone had already moored up for the evening. I'd put the dinner in the oven to cook as we travelled and by the time we moored up at 7pm the smell of garlic and rosemary roast lamb had a couple of walkers drooling.

On Monday morning we set off from Branston but hadn't gone more than 50 feet when we got stuck on a submerged rock. It must have been quite big as it lifted the boat up about 6 inches. Nothing we did made any difference, we were well and truly stuck! After 5 minutes a boat called Slimline Tonic came along and gave us a hand. By tying a rope between the two boats and going hard into reverse they managed to dislodge us. Thanks guys.

Later in the day we called into Shobnall Marina for diesel and a pump-out. That's the entrance to the service dock from the canal. It's a bit tight but the service at Shobnall is excellent and their diesel isn't too expensive either.

Today has been lovely and sunny again, although we've been followed by big black storm clouds which seemed to be circling around us. We're now moored just beyond Shardlow and I've been doing a bit of gardening.

I thought we might have been lucky to miss the rain and had just finished watering and dead-heading the plants on the roof when the heavens opened.

My dwarf tomato plants are proving to be quite prolific this year

and the dwarf sweet-peas are coming along nicely. They may be small but their perfume is very strong.

The surfinias and lobelias are getting lots of compliments although they probably won't look as good tomorrow after the heavy rain that's pelting down at the moment.

National Memorial Arboretum

I've seen it all now!  A boat pulled in behind us the other day and started to set up camp on the towpath. Out came the table and chairs, followed by the chicken run..........

We had a bit of drama at Fradley on Friday morning. It was busy as usual but as I was waiting on the lock moorings at Keepers Lock there was a long delay when a plastic cruiser got stuck in the bridge-hole.

It was an Australian couple who had just picked the boat up, having swapped it for two months for their motor home. They hadn't been given any tuition by the owners and had left the fenders down which caused the problem. Roger ended up pushing them backwards out of the bridge by closing the lock gate and then, once the 6 fat fenders had been removed, he taught them how to operate a lock safely. To say that the wife wasn't happy would be an understatement. I don't know how good their motor home had been, but the little cruiser had definitely seen much better days and they were going to live on it 24/7 for the next 2 months.

On Saturday we walked from our mooring in Alrewas to the National Memorial Arboretum. It's about 1.5 miles and the first mile is a good safe walking route, but the last half mile is decidedly dodgy. Some idiot has decided that a public footpath along a very busy road should now be designated as a nature reserve.

This means that the footpath has been left to the nettles and other weeds and pedestrians now have to walk on the road.....The world's gone mad!!

If you're ever in the area I'd definitely recommend a visit to the National Memorial Arboretum. It's a very beautiful and peaceful place but I was surprised how busy it was. There were several coaches in the car park and I suppose it is busier at weekends.

This is the Armed Forces Memorial, designed so that the sun strikes it's central wreath at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month. That must be a very humbling moment.

It's walls are carved with the names of fallen servicemen and women

but the scary part is the amount of blank walls, ready for future conflicts. I hope they're never filled...........

All around the arboretum are small places of remembrance, dedicated to the different regiments and services.

The ATS, women who served during WW2

The RAF

 

The Royal Naval memorial is very modernistic compared to some of the others, with the glass panels representing sails and waves.

 
The Merchant Navy Service memorial is a hectare of woodland planted with oaks and was eerily quiet with no birdsong.

The Fleet Air Arm memorial was a granite aircraft carrier

The Commandos, a silver dagger. The names of fallen comrades were etched into the bricks

I found this memorial particularly touching, having watched the film The Bridge on the River Kwai several times

All the time we were walking around we heard the haunting lament of a lone piper. I'm not sure if it was a recording or a live performance, but by the time we'd got round to the main courtyard there was an army band playing. The song?  "It's a long way to Tipperary".....very moving

Needless to say, there were clumps of poppies everywhere.

Polesworth to Hopwas

There's not a lot to tell you about today and sadly nothing of interest to photograph. We had a quick walk into Polesworth this morning to stock up at the excellent butchers in Market Street, plus Roger bought some maggots which are now lurking in my fridge.....horrid little creatures but it keeps him happy. I'm pretty sure that him sitting on the back deck in the sunshine dangling a rod in the water and drowning a maggot is more to do with chatting to passers-by than actual fishing.

Our trip down Glacote Locks took over half an hour as the pound between the two locks was extremely low and we had to let a load of water down to refill it. The bottom gates of the bottom lock are leaking so badly that they won't hold water when full and that's just draining the pound as the lock has to be re-filled every time a boat wants to go down, even when one has just come up.

It's our last night with David, as we'll be going in different directions tomorrow when we get to Fradley Junction. To celebrate/commiserate we're all going to The Tame Otter for dinner tonight. We haven't eaten in there before but the menu on the website looks promising. The moorings outside the pub were empty when we arrived this afternoon, but we've given them a miss and have gone onto the quieter visitor moorings. We took the last of the official places but that hasn't stopped two more boats mooring beside the very visible "no mooring" signs behind us. They're right on the bend and I keep hearing engines being thrust hard into reverse as passing boats try to not ram into them.

Atherstone and Polesworth

We've had a pretty uneventful trip from Coventry Basin through to Polesworth, stopping off last night in a lovely spot just before Atherstone.

Boot Wharf Charity Wharf (thanks Sheila) is a small boatyard/boat graveyard just before Nuneaton. It's quite a scruffy place but has a tableau of statues along one stretch.

We'd stopped for lunch at The Anchor pub beside Bridge 29 and filled up from their water tap which is just inside the beer garden gate. While we were watering up, David continued to the C&RT Hartshill Yard to use their water tap.

Hartshill Yard used to be very neat and tidy but now it's a disgrace, all overgrown with weeds. You'd think that C&RT would make sure their grounds were well maintained. It's not a very good advert for their vegetation management skills is it?

We had a lovely quiet mooring last night, opposite a large field just before Atherstone.

At 5am this morning I had to go outside to chase a pair of ducks off the roof. They were walking up and down and it was so loud it sounded like they were wearing clogs. The canal and field were covered with mist and everywhere looked beautiful as the sun was just breaking through the trees. As a one-off it was lovely, but I hope to NOT see 5am outdoors again any time soon.

Our journey down Atherstone locks was made relatively easy by the sheer numbers of boats coming up in the opposite direction. We passed one up/one down at virtually every lock and only had one lock turned against us by a woman who was in such a hurry she couldn't wait 2 minutes. It back-fired on her though, as the water level in the short pound was already quite low and by turning the lock she wasted the water and her boat scraped on the bottom when coming past me.

The continuing good weather has made the canal-side allotments very busy and everything seems to be growing like mad. The sunflowers seem very early this year.

This gorgeous field of poppies is just beside the railway as you come into Polesworth. We moored there a few years ago and watched a fox and her cubs in the thicket at top left of the photo.

We're now on the Visitor Moorings just outside Polesworth and will carry on again tomorrow.