Wednesday 22nd August 2018



We all had a really good day today.

After getting up, everybody getting ready and having breakfast, it was after 10am before we started to move. We moved fully ½ a mile.







                                                                             Tixall Wides





We winded in Tixall Wides and headed back for Great Haywood Junction and the Trent & Mersey Canal. We took on more water, emptied the cassette and dumped rubbish, it’s surprising how much more you use and generate when there are more people on, even if they are little!

After the junction we planned to take the first available mooring to visit Shugborough Hall. We moored up 7 boats down from the junction. An easy day’s cruising.




    



                                         Essex Bridge                                                  
             Junction of River Sow (left) and Trent (right)



We walked down to Haywood Lock and then crossed over the very old Essex Bridge, where the Rivers Trent and Sow merge, to enter Shugborough Park at the back entrance and so avoided paying. We are National Trust members anyway, but we still would have had to pay £7 for each of the kids. We still managed to visit the park and the Park Farm buildings and displays which fully filled the day. The kids probably wouldn’t have been that interested in the house anyway, and one of us would have had to stay outside with the dog.





      



At is was our lunch cost us £21.70. We must get into the habit of doing a picnic.

We all had a really enjoyable time.

On the way back the kids went swimming in the river and had a great time. Nanny even had a paddle!





        





An idyllic day for kids on school summer holidays.



Day Total: 0 locks; ½ mile; 0 Tunnels; 0 Boat Lift; engine running hours 1.4

Overall Total: 160 locks; 320½ miles; 15 tunnels; 2 Boat Lifts; engine running hours 184.3








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