19th Blakes Mere to Wrenbury.

Spent half the morning stuck in an ever-lengthening queue behind a boat going at snail's pace - which they dropped to barely moving when passing boats - the're main speed would have hardly rocked anything anyway. It felt like a bit of a parade by the time we got to Grindly Brook at it's staircase locks (and huge queues, we were pretty lucky last time) A boat or two behind me appeared Andante, so we worked through together again. It was well after five by the time we got through - I didn't half feel bad for Bliss, the boat I'd shared a few locks with earlier - their mooring is at the top of the Grindley Brook locks, but at least they know the best times to go through. Lots more rain, too. At least we didn't get as much as Northern ireland.

In the queue though I was told the story of the boat pulled up on the bank from the other day - it had been lovingly done up by it's owner, kids got in and trashed it 'breaking his heart' and he abandoned it... it was thought the farmer had pulled it up out of the water to stop it sinking completely. That, and me supplying one of my 5l diesel stashed to a who's boat had broken down - he's checked everything until he realised the tank had been emptied while he'd left the boat in the middle of nowhere for a few days. Rare, islolated incidents, but good reminders that boats are happier left with a few friends for company around them.

Mon 18th - Llangollen to Blakes Mere

Ah, this is better. I'm sitting on the side of a small lake alongside the canal - I'd spotted it on the way up, and it's good to be away from everything, everyone. Well, I was away from everyone until two other boats moored up right next to me, so I moved a few hundred yards further on - they don't call me a misanthrope for nothing (in fact they don't, it's generally only me).

It's been an eventful day - I ws thinking of an early start anyway, so being woken by a boat going past at half past six wasn't the end of the world, and I was on my way myself half an hour later.Being single handed I've no-one to send ahead on the single boat stretches, so assuemd (correctly that I'd have the canal to myself, ansd if anyone was moving it would be in the same direction.

I'd used a little more fuel that I was expecting, so topped up at Trevor - had a look at the engine, but nothing obvious. Note to self - when looking for a fuel leak, look when the engine is running - which I did once over the aquaduct, and saw a broken pipe gushing fuel - it was amazing anything was getting to the engine. Noticeable amounts of white smoke (unburnt fuel) suggested the air mix was wrong, too (must look at Tony Brooks' notes about that).

Another brass olive on copper pipe was to blame, thankfully there was enoguh remaining pipe to be able to pull the broken section out, put on a copper one and carry on. Tortoise wasn't happy about going home at all, actually as later on the temperature started to rise - both sea cocks were a bit bunged up - clearing them (with a bit of thick wire, actually) did the job, thankfully.

Just near bridge 27 a face stuck their head out of their boat and said 'hello, Tortoise!'. The boat, Rosie May, I'd passed a couple of times previously (once a few evenings agho mooring up more or less where I am now, in fact). I couldn't resist stopping for a chat, and I'm glad I did - the lovely Mich is a food artist, works with respecting and honouring food, and in fact will be part of the festival of London food thingy on Southwark Bridge 13th Sept - sadly I'm already double booked that day. We chatted for far too long about food, anaerobic digesters, people we knew in common (inevitably) and life generally; sometimes it works out like that.



Also got to meet Bob and his boat 'Vital Spark' - I asked about the windows, and he started the sentence with 'well I had a steel rolling press at home'... there's two steering positions, one outside and one in a wheelhouse that rises up electrically... he was marvellously enthusiastic about showing me round, and it is good to see boats that are a little bit different, as so many are - well, look the same, really.

In the evening I made a basic wall shelf unit for the kitchen - it goes over the cooker and is 5 1/2 deep at the bottom, but good to have things in front of me rather than being tucked away.

Rain at dusk itself prevented a more photogenic shot, but once it was pretty dark I got the ga cyclinder brazier out beside the lake, and watched the flames, the surroundings becoming dimmer with the brightness of the flames, the noises of the wild around me. It's obvious to everyone bar me, I suspect, actually - this is my church.

17th - still in Llangollen

It's all a bit bonkers on the canal at times, but mainly just due to the limited space available - the canal is half way up the valley side, after all. It's actually quite an achievement, the whole canal, the only locks being miles away, the canal staying at a flat level across hills & valleys. It's easy enough to get away from the tourist hell of the high st and canal, and I did.



The steam railway are having a week or so of Thomas the Tank engine - all the same bunting and branding I saw at Shacklestone on the Ashby. As the guy there had said, they have to hire in 'Percy' as well, even though it's a bit knakckered and doesn't work - so is on the other end of the tiny train attached to Thomas, being hauled around in a fauirly undignified way. At £12 for adults and £7 for children, there were more people watching from the bridge than on the platform...

The church was lovely & peaceful though, a long chat with the church warden type people, and the opportunity to light a candle for absent friends. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to light a separate candle for each individual, but in the end it's for my benefit anyway, a bit late for them.

Also for my benefit was the walk up to the Horseshoe Falls, basically a semicircular weir so they can extract water to feed down the canal - it makes the canal the worlds biggest millstream, basically. Replace the viaduct with a water wheel and they'd really be in business. The cvanal guidebook claims that no only did Telford build the canal, the viaducts and the falls, but also the A5 from London to Holyhead,which I cross paths with once again. I could have sworn it was the Romans, although they would have called it the AV, of course. I suspect there's a bit of both in it somewhere.

Off to the pub with Bill & Gwen from Andante tonight. Probably quieter than the blues band I saw in the Sun Inn last night, in the company of a couple from Lewisham on a coach trip. It was strange and yet perfectly normalt to be discussing the Amersham Arms in wales...

Sat 16th - Ellesmere to Llangollen

Well, it may be p*ssing it down, but I'm moored in Llangollen, got the stove going and seem to have a sensible internet connection (which I haven't had for a couple of days), and I should be finding some live music this evening, so things aren't that bad...

The usual wander round town, bwfore I left Ellesmere - down by the lake I met two cyclists who'd left Wolverhampton at 5am, and were going to be very early to meet their partners in Llangollen for lunch...I told them about my trip along the canal that took three days, many years ago - to be fair they were using road bikes, and were the serious cyclist type. Horses for courses, or something.

back on the canal, a fairly inoffensive journey until it got to the fun bits... the first aquaduct is Chirk, alongside a railway viaduct, and reassuring ledges on either side:



further on, though, we have Pontcysyllte, which just has a metal trough with a towpath on one side, and nothing on the other...



so what I can see from the deck is this:



Crawled through the narrow stretches into Llangollen in the rain, winded, moored & paid (they provide water & power points, which I don't need, but I'm more accepting rather than grudging about the £6 a night they charge here).

Having already turned around, I'm facing home, in a way; Llangollen was my furthest destination, so although I'll largely be returning home a different route, I'll be returning rather than going. I've got two weeks, perhaps a little more, before I'm back at work, and then after that the rest of the journey will be in the bits in between work, weddings & festivals of on sort or another. canalplan suggests I can get back to Brentford by then if I put my metaphorical foot down, but that's not the point of the trip. I like to be in a place for a short while, rather than just pass it. If I didn't, I may as well get an air conditioned 4x4 for transport...

I'll post this then try to sort out the pics later, it doesn't seem to want to play at the moment. It's still heavy rain here, but I'll be heading into town whatever tonight, and tomorrow should be better (metcheck says so).

Fri 15th Wrensbury to Ellsemere

An early start - the boat in moored in front of me had been running engine quite late, which I'd ignored and assumed was a necessary evil - but started up again at 7.30 and woke me up. I was amazed to see it was a hire boat from the Alveschurch branch in Wrensbury. When someone put their head out I asked them if they were having problems, and they told me they had to run the engine to get electricity - and told,me as if I was stupid for not knowing that. Apparently it was essential to run 'the toaster and the children's games'. I muttered something grumpily, made myself a cup fo tea and then headed off as soon as I could - if I'm going to listen to an engine first thing in the morning, it may as well be mine.

Stopped off at Maybury to look around the village (proud of lots of best kept village placques - all very pretty but deadly boring, and the pub was closed all weekend for a wedding). The church was similarly immaculate but at least had comedy gargoyles, again photographed in un-blog-friendly Ilford film, and a wonky tower.

Getting back to above Maybury lock bumped into Andante again, so we (or they, I realised there wasn't much I could do other than stay on the boat that wouldn't slow them down) did the rest of the locks into Grindly Brook, including the staircase, where tortoise was unceremoniously towed up, which at least meant I got to do something useful with a windlass at long last.

I stopped to wander into Whitchurch, the short restored arm stopping long before the town. Of course they have great plans to restore access to the centre of town, and inevitably want a landmark set piece like an inclined plane... strikes me that since the Falkirk Wheel opened everyone wants one - what's wrong with a couple of locks? Nice basic technology, that will work as long as there's water. Whitchurch does indeed have a noteworthy church - the huge great windows make it look more like some kind of railway building from the outside.

How not to moor 'up':



Then just on, and on, got into Ellesmere around nine. It's wierd - I cycled Wolverhampton-Llangollen by canal a good few years ago - must have been ten or twelve - and unlike some sections of other canals I've cycled, I don't remember much about it - although seeing a family bump their bikes along the towpath did yield similar memories. I do remember Ellesmere, though,mainly as someone nicked my big hat off the back of my bike, and I was so grumpy about it I failed to investigate the rest of the town... ;-) I do remember the wharf being a bit of an forgotten bit of empty industrial ground, but of course now it's a building site, to be filled with flats and 'boutiques' - which in my experience of Brentford means a branch of Costcutter at the base of every building.

Thurs 14th - Middlewich to Wrensbury

I went for a wander around Middlewich before leaving - looked in the chandlers for a new front fender (mine is working fine, just has bits of rope hanging off and tyre exposed), but decided I can leave vanity purchases for another time. I did spot 'Savoy Hill' at the water point, though - the BBC Club boat - the only BBC connected person seemed to be Roger Stockton, who took redundancy some years ago and now is Southwark Council's cycling officer. More sadly I also spotted Felus Cattus III, the former home of the late Mike Stevens.

At Bliss had already left by the time I got back to the boat, but at the first lock I met Andante, 38', and I don't think I got a windlass out in anger until much later in the day. Caught up with Bliss at Cholmondston lock, who offered to share with me but had to have a comedy rejection moment when I pointed out my new partner... ;-)

At Barbridge junction there were lots of moored boats I followed andante through, a boat pulled out in front of me, kept going to left causing delays when met other boats, eventually rammed left side of canal & I passed them; Andante had waited for me at first of Hurleston locks. It turns out that they hadn't even pulled out of their own mooring in front of me, but had been doing similar antics in front of Andante - the kid was trying to fish straight off the side, at at one point when I was ahead of them the two adults seemed to be trying to see how much they could make the boat rock. It was good to be away from them, anyway.

Also went past yet another new marina being built:



I don't like marinas - I could have moored in the BW one here - but I do see that with more and more boats on the canals, they need to put them somewhere. I'm lucky that my home mooring isn't one, and also that I'm generally curious enough about other boats to not mind crawling past on-line moorings. Oh well. I could insert a rant about people preferring to build new boats than preserve older ones, too, but another time...

Somewhere along the way I spotted NB Marmaduke who I'd found via some mutual links and spotted were doing a similarish trip - I'd left them a couple of comments, but they weren't around so I couldn't say hello...

Aug 13th - Rode Heath to Middlewich

>More locks this morning, but not quite as relentless as yesterday's session. Shared some with 'Bliss', who were one lock behind me, and managed to ask the length question - they were 40, so we both fitted through several; I stopped at Wheelock, they carried on (and coincidentally I'm now moored behind them at Middlewich).

I went into Sandbach (not the services)- quite a sweet small town with two saxon crosses (surrounded by pubs, the saxons had their priorities right) and a quite hideous brick 'precinct' that seems to have no formal entrance or exit. On the plus side they have produced town maps with all the shops on, sorted by type, so I could find all the charity shops they had. ;-) A few more books (including two Robertson Davies ones I don't think I already have), and in one marvellously random hospice shop, a box of magnetic poetry words for a pound, which are ideal for back bulkheads:



Oh - favourite interchange of the day was with a bunch of [older] cyclists at a bridge watching me work through a lock, while a couple worked their boat through the parallel onem the man on the boat, the woman up top. A bearded guy in his fifties says 'you need a woman with you to do all the work, like they do'. I looked at him - not actually over my glasses, but I should have done - and said 'my boyfriend couldn't make this trip'. They scuttled away as quickly as they could, leaving me with a big grin on my face...

ALl I knew about Middlewich, bar it being a junction, was that the boat hire place had a boat stolen - 'Holly' last year - the thief (who ended up with a suspended sentence) disguised it with a paint job and changed the interior, but it was nice to spot it on the canal:



I got into Middlewich latish again after a fairly dull run alongside a main road, then down a lock into the junction and straight back up one again, and moored up for the night. Gardens come down to the canal on the other side, and chatted to Nick & Sue across the canal, who have a 32' wide garden and are looking for a 30' steel boat to buy... not selling yet. Not for a while yet. ;-)

Phil tells me the IWA festival is at Autherley junction in Wolverhampton at the end of the month... I'll be passing through, and could be pretty close in timing, too, but like a lot of things this summer, time & place often don't line up. Partially depends on when they want me back at work...

belief in...

On Sunday morning I was back at the boat, and chatted to new arrivals Nick and Jackie on Gloriana - Jacquie wanted to go straight into town to find a Quaker meeting, I was on my way back in anyway so we walked in until we found a local to give directions. Interesting conversation, about religion, how we come together to celebrate religion, also gender balances. This I thought about for a while - my acquaintance with druidry (a very ethical, moral approach to life, no prescribed deities or dogma) has been leading me to think about spirituality/community within in, what for me is an atheist basis - and it works, it does. I've long thought that religious teachings can be taken as models, analysises and metaphors for a way to behave, which mainly all come down to 'let's be nice to each other, guys' - which I think is actually a Douglas Adams quotation. I've also been thinking about how religions treat gender - mainly preferentially to the male - after a discussion at Climate Camp, too - that tends to be tied up in history & dogma, though - thankfully druidry, and as it turns out Quakerism, is a very equal thing, working with the individual rather than the label. It is 2008, after all.




With all this in mind I walked into Cheddleton Church - I'm always fascinated by how much churches make me feel - and it's generally very little. Moved by the passion to build in the first place, moved in this case by all the colourful individual kneeler cushions (they really gave a warmth, a welcome to the place), but moved by the presence of people, not the holy spirit. As I experienced in a church in Kerala some years ago, I'm often jealous of those who have a strong, all-encompassing faith in something other - I'm left with a faith in my fellow humans, and to be honest I struggle with that, even on the canals. As I said in a conversation at a lock recently - 'it's a pretty much white middle class hobby (sad but true), but some of us read the Guardian and some of us read the Daily Mail'. ;-)

So yes, anyway, internal travelling as well as physical. A good time to mention friend (and artist, writer, teacher) Dierdre who is travelling in south America at the moment (without baggage, in various ways), and blogging it too. My trip is different, but in no way lesser or greater - just different. Each to ability & need. It's not a bad way to see life.

Stockton Brook to Rode Heath Tues 12th Aug

Rain & lethargy meant a fairly slow ten thirty start, through the boring bit of the Caldon again (and once again did one lift bridge solo, the other with offered help) and back to the Trent & Mersey. Filled up with diesel at the Black Prince boat hire base at festival Park, Stoke (36l in tank, 10l in cans, I'd put the remaining spare 5l in earlier in the morning). While moored there, a storm broke with thunder and an impressive hail storm; I set off again once I'd got waterproofs on as I wanted to make it to the Harecastle tunnel before four (passage guaranteed as long as you get there by then). The sun came out as quickly as the rain had started.

I didn't have much time to wait at Harecastle; David the BW lockeeper had been an electrician, gave it all up when there were more regulations & tests than anything else, and ended up looking after one end of a canal tunnel; not bad. It's narrow, so one way; they put a batch of boats in, then shut the doors (quite ominous) and pull air through with a big fan, which is quite odd. I played a bit more bad accordion in the tunnel, which the people in the boat behind me heard, surprising over the engine noise. Took me 34 mins, which the far end lockeeper said was fine; it's even harder to judge speed in a tunnel than out in the open air.

After the tunnel there's the junction with the Macclesfield canal & the north; then it's locks, locks and more locks. I managed two flights, and moored up at Rode Heath, which may be called Thurlwood, I'm not sure. On the way down met a kayak-er called Andrew who'd left from Manchester and was heading down to his daughter's in Worcester; my comment about him going 'the long way round' went unremarked, but I met him again on the way back when he admitted he'd meant to head south east towards the tunnel, not north west... interesting chap, though, was carrying camping gear, his kayak had a trolley to haul it past the locks, but they did seem nearly as much of a procedure as if on a boat. They're so much easier on a bike, I recall. ;-)

Without a drop touching my lips, I managed to get cheap white wine in my laptop keyboard, and it started playing up... me being me I removed it from the machine, lit the the stove and hung it up to dry. After a pint in the Bourton Arms (quiz night, I should have gone to the other one) I reinstalled it... working so far, but there may be long term effects. Oh well.

Llangollen is very much within reach now; I did here today that traffic is actually pretty quiet. I guess that canal boat hire - an expensive luxury - is an easily dropped expense. Good for me, less good for the hire boat companies...

11th Aug - Froghall to Stockton Brook

Ah, the lovely Caldon canal - some sections on the hillside way above the river are too narrow for boats to pass; I sound my horn and take them slowly, but didn't meet anyone anyway...

I filled up with water at Consall Forge, by the weir; normally water points are woefully low in pressure, this one you could use as a pressure washer, and of course I got soaked; at full the hose wouldn't even stay in the filler hole, leading to comedy hose wrestling exploits.

I'd promised myself a wander around Cheddleton, so moored up after the locks, and even managed to take a few black and white film pics of the flint mill, and explored the village a little - you can have a filling or buy a jacuzzi, even some stamps, but not buy a newspaper or food. We're only a few miles from Stoke on Trent, but capitalism strikes again.

On through the afternoon, and even doing the Stockton Brook flight in the evening again (even seeing the same couple walking through). The pound between locks 7 & 8 was low again; possibly not even entirely the fault of the hire boat crew coming up who didn't seem to know which order & when to open paddles (who also tried to close the lock gates I'd just opened as I cruised towards it. They seemed to be having fun, mind.

Moored up just below the last lock with an inspiring view, ready for a trip through Stoke tomorrow. Less inspiring was the fresh dogshit left behind by a few locals & pets in the few minutes it took for me to walk back to the lock and close the gates - I'm sure there has to be a country somewhere in which it's lucky.