Sunday 19th August 2018



We are getting low now on water and shopping and the bin needs emptying. By now we would have reached Great Haywood with its service point and village shop but are staying in the country, beside a road, waiting for the kids to come out on Monday.

We were going to walk into Weston-upon-Trent where the guide says there is a local shop. But googling it, the shop has closed down. Thank goodness for the internet.

Instead we walked back to Sandon where there is a village store, but even this turned out to sell not a lot, all we bought was a tin of dog food. The Post Office in Sandon is open every Tuesday from 10:30 until 3!! Wonder how much business they get.

We hadn’t realised just how close the River Trent comes to the canal, sometimes just the other side of the hedge. Indeed, in places the river, canal, main electrified railway and A51 dual carriageway, are all within a 100 yards.

Sandon itself seems to have grown up as estate houses to the nearby Sandon Hall. The few houses are of the same architecture similar to the likes of Port Sunlight, complete with a village hall and cricket club house, now used as a child day care centre. The war memorial is quite poignant. The name plaques have been temporarily removed, it looks to be having cleaning and maintenance, but no doubt the names would be of estate workers all joined up together, reminiscent of David Jason’s portrayal of employees of Sandringham Estate in the film “All the King’s Men”.




The owners of Sandon Hall, like all gentry of the time, must have had a lot of influence when it came to the building and routeing of the railway and canal before it. Sandon actually has a railway station, and a substantial and decorative one, now disused, but most likely built purely for the residents of the hall.




Back at the boat, we did not a lot. Went out again later in the day for another walk, trying to get to Pitts Column. This column is marked on the map as being within the grounds of Sandon Hall itself, although we are over a mile from the hall. Bastards. We couldn’t get to the column though, the shrubbery was too thick and the column too far in.



Breaking News: I finally got the TV to work. The wrong co-axial cables had been connected and one of the joints had to be re-terminated.


mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Thursday 22 nd November 2018 We were awake during the night and watched a lovely, bright, full moon in a clear sky with a thick ground mist. When we woke this morning the world was white after a hard frost. Apparently it got down to -4 ˚ overnight. The stove has remained light since its first lighting on 19 th October. This morning was no exception and the boat was cold but not overly so, the stove having been damped down overnight. However, we did turn the heating on for ½ hour to warm the boat up while the stove was heating up. We haven’t had the heating on for some time but the times we have, has been when the boat has become cold. We still haven’t yet mastered the regulating of the heating. If it is left on too long, the boat becomes oppressively hot and remains so for a long time.   We went for a walk to the nearest village, Stockton. The walk was along a main road to begin with and was not pleasant with all the traffic and narrow verges to walk on. We w...
Read more
Image
Sunday 14 th July 2019 We went for a walk around Avoncliffe before a slow cruise covering the 1 ½ miles back into Bradford and were, yet again, lucky enough to find a place on the 48 hour moorings. Avoncliffe is a tiny, delightful place and a very popular stop for walkers and cyclists. Around the Cross Guns pub are a few cottages, all staggered towards the river bank and dominated by the Aqueduct. However, looking at signs from the past, it had once been a thriving small-scale industrial centre with water mills and factory mills concerned with the cloth industry. The up-market Avoncliffe Villa apartments bely their past as, first the Bradford Workhouse, then a convalescence hospital for injured First World War troops and later a hotel. Right our Bradford moorings, down a small embankment, is Barton Farm. The farm buildings are all Medieval and consist of a Manor House, a Granary, one of the best examples of a Tithe Barn and several other buildings. Today, the Tithe Barn ...
Read more
Image
Monday 30 th July 2018 We ambled about in the morning. Brenda did some housework and I walked up into Winsford for some shopping. The day was not good, a lot of cloud and threatening rain. Matt brought Manny and Eva out to us at 3pm. Just as they turned up the heavens opened with heavy rain. It was great to see them both, they are here for a week, so hopefully we won’t get sick of them and make them swim home. Once Matt had gone we waited a short while for the rain to stop and then set off. We passed under the two bridges that make up the roundabout at the bottom end of Winsford which we have travelled over countless times by car. As soon as you pass under the first bridge you are off Canal and River Trust waters. We winded at the entrance to the marina being careful not to venture too far into the flash because of the danger of shifting, shallow sandbanks and then started to retrace our route. This now put us right at the start of the Weaver Navigation and by th...
Read more