Tuesday Junctions

Today, again we amazed ourselves by waking at 7.00. Bed at 9.00 and waking at 7.00 means 10 hours sleep, which must be good! Already we are feeling the good effects of the holiday, we are relaxed and able to talk easily together. A happy place to be for "Three Men on a Boat".

Leaving Penkridge we voyaged up the Staffs and Worcs Canal through locks with names which evoke the history of the county we are travelling through - Otherton, Rodbaston, Boggs, Brick Kiln and Gailey (where there used to be stables for a change of horses for the working narrowboats using the canal). At Gailey Wharf we called in at the Roundhouse Canal Shop having walked up the towpath and over the Roman-built Watling Street, now rather sadly called "the A5". The Roundhouse has a little shop on the ground floor and the owner of the shop and her daughter live in the two stories above. Built in 1805, the Roundhouse was probably built to celebrate Nelson's victory at Trafalgar. Apparently a number of such Roundhouses were built. Why? No idea!

On the route between Boggs Lock and Hatherton Junction we travelled in a huge curve circling Calf Heath which is best described by Pearson - "a strangely isolated tract of country, pancake flat and crossed by a grid of sullen little roads, with here and there a huddle of houses, gathered reassuringly together like something out of Van Gogh's early potato field paintings." It is, he says, a "gravel pit riddled landscape". Well, I am not sure what he was smoking at the time he wrote that, but that was not quite how we saw the country-side, wooded and beautiful!

At Hatherton Junction we passed a Marina which uses the end of an old canal as moorings. Sad to see a disused canal, but good to know that there is a move afoot to restore it some day.

Travelling through Staffordshire we passed the villages of Cross Green and Coven Heath. One would expect these to be rural hamlets, but in fact they are built up areas of modern semi-detached and terraced houses. We passed under the M54 (very busy with cars and trucks) and so left Staffordshire and came into the county of "West Midlands".

The first highlight was what the old boatmen called "Pendeford Rocking" which is a very narrow cutting through an outcrop of sandstone. Fortunately there are two passing places where one boat can pull in and another, travelling in the opposite dirtection, can pass by. Which was fortunate for us as a boat came our way and, gentlemen that we are, we pulled in to the passing place and waved the other boat through.

And so to Autherley Junction where we left the Staffs and Worcs and joined the Shropshire Union Canal. We were so busy talking that it was only as we passed the turning did we realise what it was. It was not the happiest of times as we reversed, got stuck across the canal, had to use ropes to pull etc. and at the same time avoid a boat coming out of the Shropshire into the Staffs and Worcs. We managed fine in the end, arriving in the 'Stop Lock' which marks the beginning of the Canal. A stop lock is there to tell you that you are entering a canal owned by a different company and the difference in levels is usually only 6 inches!

The Shropshire is stunning - I just love the tranquility and the reflections -

More later!