Saturday 15th December 2018



We had a walk around Shackerstone and visited the railway station. The first train of the day had been warming through since I got up at 6:45 this morning. The station was very busy with lots of excited children going on the Santa Special. It was nice to see.





      









Shackerstone Village from the canal bridge  

     


                                                                        St. Peter’s Church, Shackerstone                                                       
                                                                                                 The Rising Sun Pub



We walked around Shackerstone. Although there is not a great deal to see the place does have a nice feel to it. Very rural and tranquil. There is however, a very well preserved Motte and Bailey. These were a form of defence used by the Normans as a quickly erected, temporary structure prior to them building a more permanent castle or manor house. They took the form of a small, rounded, man-made hillock surrounded by a moat. Some sort of wooden structure would have sat atop the hillock.







While there are many Motte and Bailey’s in the English countryside, most are either very difficult to distinguish or are hidden beneath undergrowth. This one sits in the middle of a field with part of the moat still surviving. Unfortunately, it is on private land so can only been seen from the edge of the field.

It was a very cold day. Returning to the boat the wind was up and we had a challenging manoeuvre, having to reverse about 400 yards, through a bridge, to the winding hole. After turning, we headed again for Snarestone passing one of the boats we had befriended in the pub the other night.

There was still patchy ice about but the cruise to Snarestone was uneventful. Arriving, we found all the boaters we had met with had moved. They are continuous cruisers but never move far and, at this time of year, stay for 14 days in a place before moving on.

The wind was blowing quiet strongly and it had turned very cold, we were glad to moor up. It turned into a wild afternoon but we felt snug on the boat in front of the fire.



Weather: a very cold day. Windy blowing stronger in the afternoon. A wild afternoon and evening.



Day Total: 0 locks; 3 miles; 0 Tunnels; 0 Swing Bridges; 0 Boat Lift; engine running hours 1.1

Overall Total: 323 locks; 633 miles; 28 tunnels; 5 Swing Bridges; 2 Boat Lifts; engine running hours      387.4

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