Staircases and Flights

Sunday was lovely and sunny as we cruised off our moorings just after 9am. We caught up with a hire boat in a narrow part of the canal just before Autherley Junction, the turn off towards Nantwich on the Shropshire Union Canal. I didn't think much of it until we continued at tick-over for quite sometime before I heard the deafening sound of Chartwell's horn and Silvie on the bow asking the hire boater (nicely) to move over so we could pass. He moved to the side and we passed, for some reason he didn't seem best pleased, must have enjoyed leading a very slow convoy!

Needing a few odds and ends from the supermarket we completed Compton lock and moored in town, it was only a short walk to the Sainsbury's Local. While we were operating Compton Lock I took a closer look at the round weir, I had seen several from a distance. Apparently they are unique to this canal, have to believe the book since I can't remember ever seeing them before.

The ladies discussing the finer points of lock keeping.

The weather closed in rather quickly after lunch, another hour cruising and we were tying up on yet another rural mooring.

Overcast again on Monday, we donned our wet weather gear and headed off with fingers crossed. It never rains when you put all your wet weather gear on! It was only a short cruise to Bratch Locks. These locks are interesting because they are three complete locks (they each have their own front and rear doors) but so close together that they can only be used one way at a time (normally only the case with staircase locks). And sure enough there is only a few metres between each lock so nowhere for boats traveling in opposite directions to pass. Also of interest is the toll house beside the top lock for collecting tolls from boats as they passed. The toll was usually calculated according to weight. Lock operation was a little more tricky than usual and there were two volunteer lock keepers on hand to help us through the locks.

Bratch Locks

Toll House

Brath Locks, Lock Keepers Cottage

Continuing on with the rain still holding off, we passed through Botherham Locks, a two chamber staircase lock. This time the front gate of chamber 1 becomes the back gate of chamber 2. These gates were well over 3 metres high and then another metre of cill underneath to the water.

The weather finally closed in around lunch time but not before we took the chance to visit the chippy at Swindon for some fish (cod) and chips for lunch. It rained most of the afternoon and some of the night.

Today (Tuesday) I was instructed to start the engine at 8am and switch the Travel Power Generator on. Rachael put a load of washing on, we were hoping to get through most of two loads before we stopped at the water point at Greensforge Lock. Load two was well underway when the tap was turned on to fill a very thirsty boat. These (two) water points were quite quick and twenty minutes later we were away again. We cruised through some beautiful country.

We passed by Stourton Junction, the turn on to the Stourbridge Canal to head for Stourbridge and Birmingham.

We finished our cruise in light rain at Kinver where, after tying up, it was time for a pint at The Vine Inn. We plan to spend a bit of time in Kinver tomorrow visiting the Rock Cottages.

Reaching the Summit of the Staffs & Worcs

Our rural mooring was nice and quiet with plenty of open paddocks although being on the Four Counties Ring makes for quite a few boat movements usually from early in the morning to later a night. The last boat passed us around 9pm although it was still light...just.

Friday wasn't a difficult day with only four locks to do on our four hour trip to Penkridge. We stopped en-route at Midland Chandlers to do a little shopping for the boat, maintaining the paintwork is always a priority. Our traveling companions, Michael and Silvie also had some boat shopping to do, paint for them as well. Rachael gravitated to the new appliances section, I can feel a kitchen renovation coming on!

Two locks and one hours travel and we were mooring in the small town of Penkridge around 3pm. We had passed The Boat Inn only 100 metres down the canal so once moored up it was back to the pub for a pint or two. It began pouring rain while we were at the pub so we made a point of waiting until it had eased!

Today (Saturday) has been overcast all the way but the rain has stayed away for our six lock trek to Gailey Wharf. Once again there was an abundance of boats coming down the canal, we seemed to be the only two boats going up which made for a reasonably quick trip through the locks with extra hands to operate the locks. It was a two and half hour trip, stopping at Gailey for lunch at midday. Gailey Lock is the summit of the Staffs & Worcs Canal so no locks for a while from here.

Ready to move into Gailey Lock

Upon reaching Gailey the most significant feature is 'The Round House' previously a toll clerk's office.

The Round House in the background

We cruised on after lunch for a short while, once again opting for a rural mooring just beyond Bridge 76.

Tixall Wides Meeting

A cool start to Wednesday as we moved off our Stone mooring around 9:30 heading towards Great Haywood Junction. The sun was nice and warm when it was out but a beanie and jacket were the order of the day. It was a pleasant cruise, only four locks to do and in early spring there is plenty to see. The Canadian Geese seem to have bred very well this season we passed quite a few large broods.

We queued at three of the four locks today, I thought this was unusual so early in the season but it has been great weather to be boating. Colwich Lock was the last lock of the day, from there it was tick-over most of the way with the large number of moored boats. We cruised into the junction and turned off the Trent and Mersey Canal onto the Staffs and Worcs still moving at tick-over as we passed yet more moored boats, arriving at Tixall Wides, a ten minute cruise from the junction. The canal widens considerably here at Tixall and the bird life is abundant. I couldn't get a photo but there were three Heron busily scanning the water from a tree at the edge, looking for their next meal.

Canadian friends Silvie and Michael from NB Chartwell greeted us as we arrived, over the winter break we had organised to meet here as we plan to cruise down to Gloucester together.

Thursday was going to be a rest day because of rain but the reports changed overnight so it became a shopping and sightseeing day in Stafford. Only a short cruise from our mooring we came across Tixall Gatehouse, a 16th-century building and is all that remains of Tixall Hall which was demolished in 1927. The gatehouse is a Grade I listed building and was used as a prison for Mary, Queen of Scots for two weeks in 1586. 

After again queuing at both the locks prior to Stafford we moored both the boats on new CRT  moorings just after St Thomas Bridge (101) and trekked the mile into town. The first shop we came across was a large ASDA supermarket so it was a quick grocery shop for some essentials and a bite to eat in the cafe before heading further into town.

The Elizabethan townhouse in the centre of Stafford, built in 1594, is very impressive.

We visited the local Collegiate Church of St Mary in the centre of Stafford to view the ornate 12th century font, much older than the church itself. A couple of hours wandering the centre of Stafford and it was unanimous, we took a cab back to the canal side pub, the Radford Bank Inn for a pint.

Michael and I were sent up the tow path to pick up the boats, cruising back to the pub to pick-up the ladies at the Radford Bridge and moving on for another half hour to a rural mooring just before the village of Acton Trussell.

The Start of a New Cruising Season

We left Melbourne on the 1st of May and transited through the USA, stopping for a few days in Las Vegas for a little targeted shopping trip, sports shoes and Levi jeans were the order of the day. It may seem surprising but gambling is not a big priority for us. There is also the chance to ease into a different time zone rather than taking on the 9 hour time difference between the UK and Australia all at once. Rather than bore you with lots of Vegas photos there's just the one, a night shot of our hotel, Paris.

Just a note that we didn't try the Gordon Ramsay Burgers you can see advertised, we went to the buffet at the hotel instead...we should have tried Gordon's burgers!

So, after four nights in Vegas we arrived in Manchester and headed straight over to check out Serafina, making sure all the maintenance had been completed ready for our departure from the marina on Tuesday 9th May. We checked her over, had a chat to the marina staff, dropped our large bags, threw a small bag together and headed north to Scotland for the weekend, to call in on family.

We set off this morning (Tuesday) around 9:30am, it had warmed up to around nine degrees by then! I took it nice and slow getting out of the packed marina, it's seven months since I touched the tiller managing to get out without hitting anything.

The first two locks of the season were against us, our luck changed for the next three of the Stoke Locks with boats coming up as we moved down through the locks. It turned out to be a lovely day for cruising as we took on the Stone Locks this afternoon.

We finished the day filling the water tank after two loads of washing, the first chance to wash our clothes since we left Melbourne. I hauled Serafina off the water point and on to the 48 hour moorings in Stone, the only boat moored here but I know that will change as the cruising season rolls on. When we were here last year we were one of more than a dozen boats moored here.

The soccer ball in the canal tally is currently sitting at five.

A Short Holiday in Port Isaac

Well, it's taken a while to get things sorted out after our computer, containing all our photos, crashed and the backup failed as well...quite a predicament! I was about to write this post and thought I would do a disc scan first, that's when it all went wrong, the scan stopping half way through. Eventually, with the help of the IT expert at work, we have sorted out the recovery of all the photos and files that were lost and I have rebuilt the computer. I replaced the failed hard drive with a new solid state drive (SSD) and installed a brand new copy of Windows 10 instead of an upgraded copy over the top of Windows 8.

So where was I up to? Our last post was 01 October when were back in the UK, moored outside Toby Carvery in Stoke. By the time the weather finally fined up it was impossible to do my programmed painting so we moved Serafina into the marina. The next morning Rachael reminded me that it was time to start packing up ready for our departure, she tells me I was unbearable for the next few days! We were lucky enough to have Rachael's cousin Stephen come down from Scotland for a few days to see us off and give a final hand packing up the boat and getting Serafina ready for winter.

We had planned a short trip down south before heading off back home to Australia for the Australian summer. With Serafina ready for winter Stephen headed off north as Rachael and I headed south in our hire car to our first overnight stop, the market town of Malmesbury in the Cotswolds area. We stayed at The Old Bell Inn, possibly the oldest inn in England dating back to 1220 AD, apparently built specifically for lodging. It was a late afternoon arrival, still plenty of time to have a look around the town.

Old Bell Inn c1220

Malmesbury Abbey 7th Century

 

Abbey side entrance

Carving inside the entrance

Carving inside the entrance

Market Cross c 1490

Inside the Market Cross

Inside the Market Cross

The Abbey was still a very impressive building even without its original 130m high spire.

The next morning was spent taking it easy with a late breakfast before checkout and heading off the long way towards Port Isaac, our final destination for a few days. We stopped in a Tetbury, near Gloucester, mainly for a look at the wares of Prince Charles' Dutchy Home Farm (Highbury), there is a shop in the middle of town. We strolled the streets of Tetbury, found the Prince's shop, had coffee and with nothing really taking our fancy (apart from some of the architecture) headed off again.

Tetbury Market House c1655

Rachael is the Doc Martin fan hence our sojourn to Port Isaac (or Port Wenn), in fact she gets a lot of tour ideas from her television viewing. It was an interesting entry into Port Isaac as the sat nav decided to go haywire just near the final turn and then redirecting me around some of the tightest roads I've had to drive. It brought us in the back way to Port Isaac, down the hill on the road in the pic below. It got very tight at the bottom with just enough room to get the car through between two houses. Reminded me of being on the boat again, problem was the car isn't built for small nudges like the boat is.

Across Port Isaac

Port Isaac is a quaint little fishing village in Cornwall. We found our B&B right in the middle of town, not what Rachael was expecting when she booked. (I accepted no responsibility for the booking failure) With no ensuite Rachael wasn't terribly happy as this is as close to camping as Rachael ever gets! The B&B turned out to be excellent despite the three paces from our door to the bathroom! There was enough to see and do to keep us busy for the two days, Rachael particularly enjoyed picking out the sites from the television series and there were plenty of art galleries and ice cream shops too. If you're a Doc Martin fan you may recognise some of these shots.

The 9th October we headed off to Heathrow having booked an airport hotel for the night, not far from The Three Magpies Hotel, our regular dinner venue,  ready to fly home to Australia next morning.

Hanging in Stoke

Well we've been just over a week in Stoke and the weather hasn't been particularly kind, it's certainly not painting weather. We have moved around the Stoke moorings a little trying to find the sun for the solar panels as well as a good place to paint. Currently we are moored near the Festival Park Marina. I do remember this being a 48 hour mooring but now there is no CRT mooring signage on any of the Stoke moorings thus making them all 14 day moorings, possibly because there are so many moorings available.

 
I had planned to touch up the bow and stern of the boat but that is just not going to happen now as the bad weather continues. We have had a few nice days but plenty of wind and rain too. I have managed to get the cream coloured strip on the bow completed and ready for the art work but little more.

Before

After

I've also completed the cream strip on the swan neck after having it re-engineered, red and green to go yet.

Before

After

In between rain storms there are other jobs to be done in preparation for winter. Yesterday (Friday) was washing and polishing day, Serafina's second polish for the season. I don't get too carried away, since it's like polishing 3-4 cars polishing one 57' boat, a couple of polishes a year is enough! Lots of little niggly jobs too that can only get done when you are in the one place for a length of time with plenty of facilities.

This is also the time to get some Christmas shopping done. The Wedgwood/Royal Doulton Outlet Store is only a short walk from the canal so these days there is always plenty of Wedgwood and Royal Doulton gifts under the tree! It's handy to get Wedgwood to forward the gifts straight home rather than have to carry them with us, it was around £35 to get them back to Australia.

Rachael and I have both managed to do a lot of walking, with several retail parks and Handley (City Centre) all within easy walking distance. Currently the biggest challenge I face is keeping the batteries charged without increasing their memory, thus dropping more Ahr.

Even now as I write this blog just after midday, it is 10° and pouring rain, we have the engine running to charge the domestic batteries and we have the heater on.

Serafina High and Dry Again as we Arrive Back in Stoke

This year we gave ourselves plenty of time to get a few things done on Serafina before we depart back to Australia for summer. Top of the list was to get the main shaft between the tiller and rudder repaired. It had been damaged coming out of lock on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal nearly three months ago and we have persevered with it up until now. I had talked to a few boat engineers during this time but none of them had instilled the confidence in me to let them 'at it'. I shopped around and the guys at The Canal Cruising Company in Stone sounded like they knew what they were doing, for the right price too. So by late Monday afternoon Serafina was high and dry for the second time this year, ready for work to start first thing Tuesday morning.

We were set up with an access ramp and shore power and were set for the evening. While we were on shore power I talk the opportunity to try and get a few lost amps back from the batteries. Since installing the new batteries the battery management system tells me we have lost around 60 Ah. By switching the battery charger off and on a few times during the evening I managed to fool it into charging down to -45Ahr.

At 8:30am were could hear some banging on the stern, they were starting to remove the rudder so the tiller could be removed. Unfortunately Liverpool Boats require dry docking to do this job, many boats can be done in the water thus avoiding the extra costs of the using the dry dock. It only took half an hour and the rudder, shaft and swan neck had been removed, the shaft and swan neck are one piece.

The rudder shaft was repaired, it had been bent back and also twisted approx. 20° from centre. And while Serafina was apart the swan neck was being re-shaped so it sits further back on the stern of the boat. Below is the finished result, previously the centre part was almost vertical and encroaching right over the stern deck. Now all it needs is a splash of paint!

Swan neck re-shaped

Rachael and I headed over for lunch around midday and we were back by 1:00pm, just in time for Serafina to be re-floated. Filling the dry dock was a much quicker process than emptying it. The planks were taken away one-by-one and in fifteen minutes we were back to canal level.

Since it was so early we decided to head off from Stone locking up the hill, two more Stone locks and then the four Meaford Locks, all had to be emptied before we could enter which slowed us down just a little. We arrived at Barlaston around 4:30pm to find it rather busy with around a dozen boats moored there, still plenty of room for us though.

A late start on Wednesday with only an hours cruising and one lock to do. We were meeting our cruising partners from last year, Kevin and Carole form NB Dunslavin in Hem Heath for lunch at the Toby Carvery Pub. Just as they arrived at 1pm so did the tree contractors who wanted to cut down a dead tree next to where we were moored. So, I put Kevin straight to work and we hauled Serafina out of tree felling range and re-tied her. When we arrived back later in the afternoon for afternoon tea the tree was a pile of small branches and 50cm logs.

A fine sunny morning greeted us on Thursday after Wednesday afternoon degenerated into a rain storm around 5pm. A late start again since there was no long cruising to do...or so we thought! We came to the bottom Stoke lock and stopped behind an empty boat. Rachael went up to see what was happening and found the owner helping another boat, she was traveling with, through the lock. Nothing strange about that! Then the first boat moored at the top of the lock and came and helped her through the lock while other boats continued coming down. I overhear a conversation between one boater coming down and a boater from the moored boat, "why aren't you going on to the next lock?", she says "we want to help her through the lock". Boater coming down says "there are plenty of people here to help", the answer was "no". When they left there were three boats above the lock. The next lock had been emptied and re-filled several times while the boat stayed on the lock landing. When we arrived at the next lock, behind the same boat, the same process started again. This time I had my say but they couldn't see that they were slowing all the boats behind them, at least she told the front boat to go on to the next lock. I expected to go through this lock and get around to the next and it would be almost ready to empty and go in. No! The first boat had gone around the corner and simply waited at the next lock landing for the second boat because when I went around I again moored behind the same boat, went up to the the lock and the front boat was still coming up the lock. This happened through all five Stoke Locks, what normally takes us an hour and half at worst took over three hours! These boats were heading for Birmingham so I'm sure there will be plenty of conflict to come if they repeat this performance!

We did have time at the Stoke Top Lock to chat to the CRT volunteers who told us that this lock at over 12ft deep was the deepest on the system. It wasn't until the sides of the lock were increased by a couple of feet. The photo shows the previous level of the sides on the right.

We cruised out of the lock and on to the Stoke moorings directly in front of us, we had left Stoke in mid-May. We now have nearly two weeks to finish off some painting and prepare the boat for winter.