Things Can Only Get Better

Sunday morning: Winter

The last thing you want to happen on a boat on a cold, wet, windy and thoroughly miserable morning is to find that you can't get your fire to light. Mine wouldn't draw properly on Sunday morning and on Starcross this means only one thing: I had to put on waterproofs, hat and gloves and go outside to give the flue a thorough brushing.

Worse was to follow because the next job is to clear the dislodged soot from the baffle plate at the top of the grate so that it doesn't block the end of the flue pipe. I have a variety of tools to do this but in reality I always have to resort to scrabbling with my fingers with the predicable result that my hands and forearms look as if they've just done a shift down a pit (I'm from south Wales -  I know).

It was definitely a day for going nowhere, but I'd arranged to meet Jim and Sarah from Chertsey in the Swan at Brewood so when the rain looked to be dying down after lunch I untied and set off. I soon realised how sheltered the mooring at Gnosall was; once out on the embankments the wind was so fierce that it blew my hat off - even though it was one of those you tie on under your chin! I was passing two moored boats at the time with another coming up behind and a blind bridge ahead so there wasn't much scope for manoeuvring even without the wind. Once through the bridge there was no piling and stopping would have involved the use of mooring pins, by which time the hat would be long gone so I abandoned it to its' fate!

It was all worth it for a splendid evening with Jim and Sarah and also to meet "Hairy Neil" who isn't hairy at all, but used to be apparently!

Monday morning: Spring again

 Today was completely different: a lovely spring morning although that did mean I had no excuse for not polishing the brasses before setting off. I've had a lovely run down to Autherley Junction, where I am writing this after the usual kerfuffle of arriving at the stop lock at exactly the same time as another boat turned in under the bridge. It was his lock really, but neither I nor his lockwheeler could tell, so small is the rise, and I ended up going through first. 

Life before Telford

Wellington Town Centre

At one time Wellington was the centre for this part of the world, the most important of the small industrial towns of east Shropshire (Madeley, Dawley, Ironbridge etc) that sprawl throughout this area in a way reminiscent of a sort of rural Black Country. But then came Telford New Town, as far as Wellington was concerned the ultimate out-of-town retail park, and Wellington went into decline. For a while the town even suffered the indignity of having its railway station renamed "Wellington Telford West" but that seems to have been dropped now.
I went there on the bus from Gnosall, mainly because I remembered it had a rather good market, which I was pleased to see was still thriving.

Wellington market: ready for the jubilee

I bought a couple of  Shropshire Blue Cheese and Caramalised Onion "sausage" rolls from the stall on the right, but when I ate one for my lunch it was just sausage meat!
In fact all of Wellington seemed to be thriving, with no empty shops on the High Street and few charity shops either. 
On the way back I changed buses at Oakengates. Oakengates is much smaller than Wellington and nearer to Telford as well so it's not surprising that it's not doing so well. It does, however, have one saving grace: three excellent pubs in very close proximity in the town centre:

Oakengates pubs

The Station Hotel, on the right, sells beer from the Salopian Brewery as well as a wide range of other beers and has an excellent unspoiled public bar.  Further up the street is a pub run by the Ironbridge Brewery, whilst across the road is the excellent "Crown", with beer from Hobson's and many others. Which to visit while I waited for my connection? It was a tough call, but the Crown was having a beer festival and also has the advantage that it's back door leads directly to the bus station - and yes, I did make the bus!

Goodbye Norbury Junction

Yesterday, almost six years to the day after arriving, I took Starcross away from Norbury Junction. I went more with a whimper than a bang.  I got to Norbury off the one bus of the day from Stoke station at around half-past three and called into Norbury Wharf to pick up my keys and settle my bills. Starcross has been away from her normal mooring "down the arm" for the last month and I had to get them to send Fred out in the rain to move a couple of boats so that I could get away. At least it meant I could begin my trip by navigating the whole surviving length of the Shrewsbury & Newport Canal! After calling at the water point I'd intended to tie up on the visitor moorings to go and see if anyone was around to say goodbye to and perhaps even have a last pint in the Junction Inn but I got to the end of the line without finding a space and it was too wet and horrible to try and tie up on the embankment itself, which isn't easy at the best of times. I hadn't even unpacked my camera so I'll never have that "last shot"!
So, I left Norbury Wharf as I arrived: without ceremony and in pouring rain - and made my way to Gnosall on the start of my summer adventure. Starcross is now officially homeless (or "continuously cruising") which will, by the way, be genuine continuous cruising, as I make my way slowly down to Droitwich, back to Brum for the BCN Challenge and then over to the Trent, the Fosdyke and on to Boston over the summer.


There have been two big improvements on Starcross since my last visit: I now have a working fridge again after Hugh mended the broken power lead and, having had my propeller "chamfered" (or as Norbury Wharf put it, "furtled"), it is no longer anywhere near as noisy as it used to be: not completely silent but I can live with that.

Tea Break

This should have been a post about my visit to the Rochdale Pioneers Museum, which commemorates the birth of the Co-operative movement. I followed the signs from the bus station (all of them - it's a long way) only to find that it's closed for refurbishment!  The Co-op still does very nice tea: their "Indian Prince" blend is very good - loose-leaf of course - no modern innovations like teabags on Starcross!

Problem Solved. . .Just Like That!

Isn't the internet wonderful? After a post about my problems with renaming the links on my blogroll to fit my preferred "house style", within an hour Kevin had been along and pointed me in the direction of Tom's post on his Waiouru blog. with a method of getting around the bug.
Following Tom's instructions and having used Google Reader to ensure I was "subscribed" to all the blogs I wanted on the roll I then renamed them. Tom doesn't tell you how to do this - he probably thinks it's so obvious he doesn't need to - but for the other dummies out there, you go to "Feed Settings" and then "rename subscription".
Tom then says you should go to your Blogger template and delete all the names on your existing blogroll replacing them by adding "Blogs I am following". But I didn't need to do this as it seemed to have imported them, with my preferred names, automatically! Ironically, the only one it didn't add was Waiouru itself, but when I went back and added that in Reader it appeared as I wanted it on the roll!
So thanks, Kevin and Tom - and also Sue who confirmed it works for her too.
All we need to do now is find a way round Blogger's awful new interface when they switch the old one off!

Where did my Blogroll go?

For some time now Blogger's facility for renaming the links to blogs on a blogroll has not been working. This is a nuisance to anyone who wishes to present them in a coherent fashion. Without it, blog titles appear in a number of different ways: some prefixed "Narrowboat", some "Nb" or "NB" some not at all, and boat names can be either lower case or in CAPITALS. Basically, it's a mess!
I first noticed it after adding "Sickle and Chalice" to the roll. Or at least, that was how I wanted to present it.But that's not how it comes out so I had to amend it.  At first, I thought it was just me and that I'd forgotten how  the renaming worked, so I kept trying and trying - until I pressed the wrong button and ended up accidentally deleting the whole Blogroll!
I've now restored it from scratch, but of course I can't rename anything so the end result is the shambles you can see in the sidebar - and it will have to remain a shambles until someone at Blogger gets off their backside and fixes it. Honestly, when you think how much we all pay to use this software.....oh! um!... Well, please fix it quickly, if it's not too much trouble. . . .

Fares Fair?

I seem to have developed a bit of a reputation in certain quarters for my attempts to beat the system when it comes to train fares. But what can you do? - the whole system is a shambles that has taken on a life of its own and defeated all attempts to rationalise it since privatisation of the railways in 1994. I don't know who's responsible for setting fares so I work on the basis that if you can't join 'em, beat 'em!
I have to go to Christchurch in Dorset for a family wedding in June (note the "have to!"). (Why they have to get married there when they live together in London - which for all it's faults is at least accessible - beats me).


The "muppet fare" from Lancaster (i.e. the fare you would be charged if you just asked for "a return to Lancaster" via the direct route through the midlands for two adults, one with railcard, is £199. Booking in advance is no help as the cheapest advance tickets work out at £203! Advance fares via London come out at £169 but if you travel via Manchester and re-book there you can do the journey for £119 (for two). If you travel via Manchester and don't book in advance however you might be asked for an improbable (but true) £703!!)


But is car travel any more straightforward?  The Transport Direct website helpfully includes a route finding option by road and information to help you establish the direct cost of going by car, or at least that part of the cost related to fuel. This is easily calculated at "distance divided by fuel consumption x cost of fuel". So Transport Direct says that Lancaster to Christchurch is 578 miles return and that the average small car does 40 miles per gallon whereas the average cost of petrol is, er, £1.42 per litre. Doh!


How typical of the UK's half-hearted attempt at metrication is it that we have fuel priced in litres, which the oil companies like because it makes it seem cheaper than in gallons, but we measure fuel consumption in miles per gallon presumably because you get more miles for your gallon than for a litre.
More rational countries measure fuel consumption in "litres per 100 kilometres" but we can't do that of course because, unlike the rest of Europe, including Ireland,  we still measure distance in miles!


The end result, as far as I can tell, is that it will be cheaper for us to go by train once we take into account all the other variable costs other than petrol of travelling by car and, of course, as long as those cheap tickets via Manchester are still available.

The Waterbus Returns

Summers on the Lancaster Canal are enlivened by the regular passage of "Kingfisher", which operates what is described as a "water bus" service between Barton Grange (north of Preston) and the northern terminus at Tewitfield, although if normal buses were as slow and infrequent as this they would have died out long ago.
What the Kingfisher actually does is to provide a series of excursions along the canal, starting at Barton on Mondays and making its way in stages to Tewitfield and back over the course of a week, with a few short rtrips (such as Lancaster to the Lune Aqueduct) thown in.
The service proper doesn't begin until July but Kingfisher was seen here in Lancaster last week providing the "canal" part of an inclusive road-and-canal day tour of north Lancashire in conjunction with a coach operator, and judging by the passenger loading on the coach parked nearby very popular it was too.


The Lancaster Canal was one of a small number that provided passenger services in the days before the railways, although they were considerably faster than today's boats if this information from the Lancaster Canal Trust's website is anything to go by.

The Newest Tram Depot in the World (Probably)

To Blackpool, where the well-known 125-yr old tramway system that runs along the promenade has been closed for the winter whilst the final stages of its transformation into a modern "light rapid transit" system have been completed. It re-opened at Easter, but yesterday was the first opportunity that I, together with occasional Starcross crew members Hugh and Mark, had had to pay a visit.
We started with a tram ride from the North Pier to the southern end of the line at Starr Gate, where a brand-new £20M depot has been built to house the new fleet.

This is almost certainly the newest tram depot in the world, but it's so well fenced-off that the best I could do photographically was to take a picture of a picture of the depot attached to the security fence! The large construction on the left is the drive-through tram-wash!

The original Blackpool tram depot (above) - which must be one of the oldest in the world - now houses the "heritage" fleet: Blackpool trams as most people know them date from the 1930s although they have been progressively  modernised over the years, losing many original features (and even original bodies) in the process. Now, a few of the old cars have been restored to something approaching original condition and will be used at times of peak demand to supplement the new fleet or to run a "heritage service". Note that whereas the new vehicles are "light rapid transit" the original fleet are definitely "tramcars"!

We had a great day riding the trams, which were very busy - particularly on the  promenade section of the route.

Standing room only - and not much of that.

Things went a bit awry at Fleetwood where our plan to cross over on the ferry to Knott End and catch the 86 to Lancaster were scuppered as low tide meant the service had ended an hour earlier! (Even professionals can mis-read timetables - or in this case, perhaps "tide-tables")  This meant a nail-biting ride on a bus to just outside Poulton-le-Fylde, where we had a spot connection (i.e. no leeeway) with the 42 to Lancaster instead. All was going well until just before the Carleton Crossing stop, where the connection was to be made, when the level crossing gates came down in front of us and we had to wait for a very slow train. The bus driver took pity on us at that point and let us alight between stops so that we didn't have to cross the road to make the connection, which we did with less than a minute to spare.

Really this just added to the fun and I'll be returning to Blackpool from time to time to keep an eye on how the new service is settling down.  I don't think I'll be the only one doing that!

The Organist Entertains

In a recent post, Sarah on Chertsey mentioned the BBC Radio programme "The Organist Entertains".Last Saturday I experienced the real thing! 
I found myself in Ulverston, where Hilary's singing group was giving a concert in a nearby village church and not being a singer myself I had a free evening. In most small towns the options for evening entertainment consist of going to a pub, or...er...going to another pub. Nothing wrong with that, but Ulverston is fortunate in that it still has a cinema. At one time, every town had a cinema, usually more than one. The small town I grew up in in south Wales had six in the 1960's! but one by one they faded away, those that survived the coming of television, videos and DVDs being defeated by the large out-of-town multiplexes in larger centres.

That Ulverston still has the "Roxy" is due to the determination and enthusiasm of its owner, Charles Morris, who has a small chain of what might be termed "heritage" cinemas were they not fully commercial enterprises and on Saturday it was showing a special programme of silent films with organ accompaniment. Here's the programme:

Mack Sennet's "Keystone Cops" had the audience in stitches, whilst Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton proved that the coming of sound to the silver screen was not as big an improvement as its sometimes thought. The inclusion of a Laurel and Hardy film was, of course, appropriate as Stan Laurel was born in Ulverston. The "Roxy" post-dates the silent era - it opened on 21st June 1937 and celebrates its 75th birthday this year. Neither does it have a cinema organ - a modern electronic one being provided for the occasion - but the auditorium itself still has most of its 1930's art deco features.

         The Roxy's auditorium with the organ awaiting the organist.
The evening was a fund-raiser for the Furness Theatre Organ Project, which has acquired the 1927-built Wurlitzer Organ from the Rex Cinema in Stratford and having installed it in the Royalty Cinema, Bowness-on-Windermere, is currently putting it back into working order. Bowness is an even smaller town than Ulverston and the survival of the cinema here is surely due to it being in the enthusiastic ownership and management of Charles Morris
The audience entered into the spirit of the occasion magnificently. We applauded at the end of each film, queued-up to buy ice-creams from the usherette in the interval (remember intervals?) and even stood for the national anthem at the end of the night (albeit chuckling self-consciously as we did so).
I've seen silent films on the telly, obviously, but the musical accompaniment adds so much to them and I had an absolutely brilliant evening - and there was still time to meet Hilary in the pub afterwards.

Fame at Last

Recently I posted a tale told me by my old boating mate, Mark who lives in Oxford, concerning a single-handed boater that refused his offer of help at a lock on "Health & Safety" grounds. You can find it here.
I thought the story deserved a wider audience so I sent it off to the editor of "Waterways World" and he obviously agreed, because it's been published on the letters pages of the May edition.


My old English teacher was of the view that writing letters to newspapers and magazines was silly because all you did was provide them with free copy that they would otherwise have to pay someone to produce, but I don't think I'm alone at getting at least a slight thrill at seeing my name in print!

Anchors, A way?

With my boating plans for the summer including the Severn and the tidal Trent I have been looking into getting a few items that I hope I'll never need. I've got the lifejacket, even if the courier firm did deliver it to a house eight doors away on the other side of the road without leaving a note and in the depths of the storage locker in the engine room on Starcross  I've found a Danforth anchor.  Obviously the anchor's not much good on its own and I'll need some chain and rope, although I've no idea how much, and I'm still a bit puzzled about how and where to attach it to the boat.


The obvious place is either the "T-stud" at the bow or one of the stern dollies but from what I've read on-line this may not be such a good idea as these might not be able to take the strain of the anchor being deployed and I might end up losing both them and the anchor.


What does everybody else do?

Home

Sunday, 1st April
An uneventful trip came to an uneventful end today back at Norbury. The sun returned and I enjoyed the views which are a feature of this part of the Shroppie whilst Hil slaved away in the cabin cleaning up (for some unaccountable reason my cleaning skills are deemed not up to scratch). At Stretton we said hello again to Jim and Sarah who were getting Chertsey ready for their trip to Droitwich and, after a brief lunch stop at Gnosall we were back at Norbury by early afternoon and home for tea after a trouble-free trip up the M6.

Nearly Home

Saturday, 31st March
Cold with heavy drizzle this morning - the first precipitation of the trip. British Waterways had been busy at the locks above Penkridge removing the temporary barriers that were in place on the lock bridges and installing rather neat fencing such as this at Otherton Lock, although surprisingly it's been placed on the side wall away from the lock, which is still protected, as it always was, by only a low barrier wall making the whole enterprise rather pointless!

Compare the photo above with the one I took on the way north a few days earlier.

After Calf Heath we caught up with a really slow boat whose steerer had no idea we were behind him and which consequently we followed all the way to Autherley Junction. Going through the narrows at "Pendeford Rockin'" we even had to knock Starcross out of gear to avoid running into it. I don't know why people go through here so slowly; surely the best way of avoiding meeting another boat between passing places is to minimise your transit time by getting through as quickly as you can.

I never seem to get past Autherley Junction without some messing about and today was no exception. Despite willing the slow boat to go straight ahead it turned right and disappeared under the junction bridge and into the stop lock. Hil, who is still practising her turning skills, made a perfect manoeuvre under the bridge to wait for the lock but then we saw a boat approaching from the other direction, which meant we would have to reverse out of the bridgehole to let it through. This took longer than anticipated as Napton Narrowboats, which has a hire-base here, was using the passage of boats through the stop lock to instruct a group of hirers on lock use - understandably as unless they were headed for Wolverhampton, which most of them aren't, the nearest locks are some distance away in any direction. 

Eventually we were through and carried on as far as the moorings between bridges 7 and 8 where we tied up, being careful to choose a spot as far away as possible from the "Wordsley Lass" on which an enormous television ariel suggested an equally large widescreen telly and sure enough an evening stroll along the towpath at 10pm revealed a generator running, although to be fair it was quieter than most and located in the engine room rather than, as with so many, on the towpath

Cannock Chase Again

Friday, 30th March
Today was Hilary's birthday (I can't tell you which one!) and her choice for the day was a cycle tour of the bits of Cannock Chase we hadn't yet seen. We set off due east from Penkridge and soon reached the rather unlovely town of Hednesford. Soon afterwards things improved as we got up onto the Chase itself. We found a quiet bridleway that for once was cycleable with "ordinary" bikes (so many of them require mountain or "all terrain" bikes) and stopped halfway along at the edge of the forest for a picnic lunch.
Later we headed for the "Visitor Centre and Deer Information Centre". Well, it had a cafe, toilets, a huge car park and a cycle-hire shop but no information about deer or anything else as far as we could see! At Pye Green there is a high telecommunications mast, which is clearly visible from the Shopshire Union between Wheaton Aston and Brewood. We'd often seen it from that angle but never before had we cycled virtually beneath it. By now we'd seen most of Cannock Chase. It's an interesting part of the world and good walking and cycling country  - or at least it would be if the supposedly minor roads that criss-cross it were not used as short cuts by huge amounts of motor traffic speeding between the surrounding towns.


Back in Penkridge that afternoon, Hil found a hairdresser that could accommodate her at short notice (the poor girl was just packing up for the day!) while I did the shopping for the evening meal.
We had hoped to eat out and last night had toured the town's hostelries to see what was on offer, but we weren't impressed. Hil is vegetarian and has long since got used to the idea that her choices on any menu will be restricted but the choices available in Penkridge were particularly poor - and expensive -  so we opted for a night in, with yours truly of course as cook!

Great Haywood to Penkridge via Katyn

Thursday, 29th March
A BW maintenance crew was in evidence at Tixall lock this morning. Actually they were on their tea-break and came running from the van as we entered. They wanted to tell us that that the lock furniture was being painted ("only the black bits") but were just too late as the "black bits" included the gate handle, which Hilary had already discovered the hard way!  They were most apologetic and helped us through the lock whilst Hilary, who is a former BW employee herself, joined them in a moan about the constant re-organisations that organisation imposes on its workforce another of which is in the process of being implemented in the last few months of its life.
Later we tied up at Bridge 94, just short of Acton Trussell as it appears that a path leads from here to the village. Well, maybe it does - but as you can't actually get off the towpath at the bridge it's rather irrelevant.
Still, we got he bikes out - Hil's tourer and my Dahon folder and set off for another visit to the Chase. We followed the road up through the village and at the top of the hill found a tea-room (lovely setting - expensive tea!). 
This area of Cannock Chase has a number of mementos of the second World War. There is a German military cemetery where German soldiers, sailors and airmen killed in and around the UK are buried and also a memorial to Commonwealth war dead.
This area apparently has a sizable Polish community - and not just from recent immigration - and a third memorial has recently been placed on the Chase, this time to the 25,000 Polish officers and intellectuals murdered by the Russians in 1940 at Katyn (although for 50 years they blamed it on the Germans!)

It seems a shame that all three memorials are sited in what was once a peaceful forest setting but which is now blighted by constant noise from the busy roads that cut through the Chase.
Later that afternoon we took Starcross onto Penkridge, topped up the water tank, emptied the cassette and went out to check the local hostelries for somewhere for Hil's birthday meal tomorrow night.

Cannock Chase

Wednesday, 28th March
A change of plan today. Our original intention of getting to Stone was abandoned in favour of a return to Great Haywood and a walk up onto Cannock Chase. We did something very simiar last time we were up this way in 2009 and enjoyed it enough to want to repeat the exercise.
As we were tied up last past the winding hole near Shirleywich the first task was to reverse the couple of hundred metres or so and turn, a task I accomplished almost faultlessly because there was no one around to witness it. We were soon back at Great Haywood where we left Starcrross on the visitor moorings and set off through the village towards the Chase.
The village itself is not without interest.

The Memorial Hall commemorates the war of 1914 - 1919!

At the village school bike shed these mini-scooters seem to be taking over from bikes. 

Still, it's better than the children being driven there by car.

From the school a gate leads on to some National Trust land and appears to offer an off-road route to the Chase. Except that it doesn't. There is no way out at the other end and we were forced to return to the school and then find our way onto the towpath towards Littlle Haywood. But after this false start we had a most enjoyable walk, getting onto the chase at "Severn Springs" and walking through woodland (where we got a bit lost) and open heath and then down again and through the grounds of Shugborough Hall back to the boat.

Stuck at Tixall Wide

Tuesday, 27th March
Today's plan had been to get through Great Haywood and on to the Trent & Mersey, which we managed - just - although it took a lot longer than we thought because we stopped for morning coffee at Tixall Wide. A stop which turned into a lunch stop and then an afternoon tea stop, as anyone who has ever been there on a warm sunny day will understand.

Tixall wide

We eventually dragged ourselves away in later afternoon as other boats started to arrive and it threatened to get crowded and carried on to Great Haywood, where we turned left onto the Trent & Mersey, stopping for the night just past the winding hole at Shirleywich.

Slade Heath to Milford

Monday, 26th March
Being away by 08.40 we were soon at Gailey Top Lock and beginning the descent towards Penkridge. Following a recent accident at Stourport, when a young boy was drowned attempting to cycle across an unfenced bridge at a lock, British Waterways has gone into overdrive, preventing use of such bridges by means of scaffolding poles to "temporarily" obstruct the bridges such as here at Otherton lock:

I've not yet seen any reports of this year's duckling crop on line yet but today, at Filance Lock, I saw my first of the year. I was so surprised that I didn't have my camera ready although a few seconds later we also encountered our first "congestion" of the year, having to wait for a boat in front to pen through before us!

                                              "Congestion" at Filance Lock!                                    

 At Penkridge we stopped for lunch and to stock up the food supplies at the Co-op, whilst Hil bought her outfits for two family weddings later in the year in the hospice charity shop.

Then it was off again as far as Bridge 104, near Milford, where the trains are, if anything, nearer than at Slade Heath. This, however, is otherwise a really peaceful mooring and the lack of light pollution and clear skies made it an excellent night to get out the telescope I keep on board for just such occasions.The planets Venus and Jupiter in close proximity  have been a spectacular sight in the night sky these last few weeks, particularly combined with the crescent moon. Venus is normally seen fleetingly in the early evening or morning and it's very unusual to see it so brightly throughout the night whilst Jupiter is usually much fainter. At the moment a fourth planet, Mars, is also visible as would be Saturn were it not so close to the horizon to be seen.

Hilary stargazing

Norbury to Slade Heath

Sunday 25th March
The clocks went forward this morning but even so we were up and about by 07.30 and, after breakfast took Starcross over to Norbury Wharf for 61 litres of diesel (no panic at the pumps here) and a bag of coal and to see if they had a bill ready for me for the last plumbing job - which I was happy to find that they didn't! Then it was over to the water point to fill the tank so that we could have running water for the first time since December.
There was only one last job to do and that was to light the Morco water heater. I've never liked it, ever since I had to replace my old Paloma, and one reason is the difficulty in getting the pilot light lit. It can take anything from two to (a record) 52 attempts and is particularly difficult the first time after the winter lay-up. So, without much enthusiasm I turned the switch - and it lit first time, which it continued to do the rest of the week!  The only explanation I can think of is that the casing, which has to be removed to drain the water plug, hasn't been put back properly and doesn't fit right - so I'm leaving it well alone.
It was 10.45 by the time we got away enjoying the sunshine all the way down the Shroppie. We said hello to Jim and Sarah on Chertsey as we passed Stretton and by late afternoon had passed Autherley Junction and were on our up the Staffs & Worcs, eventually stopping at Slade Heath where the trains on the main line pass almost as close as they do to our house in Lancaster!

Slade Heath (Railway Bridge in the background)

Here we sat and enjoyed the early evening sunshine until it was time for tea.

Spring Trip - Day 0

As those bloggers who saw me out and about last week will realise, this account of our Spring trip to Great Haywood is not being written in real time - but here it is anyway.
Saturday, 24th March
Our plan to get to Norbury early and make a prompt start was scuppered by a request from the Dorrington Road Allotment Association to call in at their site this afternoon to see about getting a plot. When we moved to Lancaster last year the presence of the allotments at the end of the road was a big plus in choosing the house, but when we enquired about a plot we were told that the waiting list was so long it had been closed to new entrants. We subsequently heard that this was the situation all over Lancaster and that people had been known to wait five years for one.
Imagine our surprise then when Hilary happened to meet a member of the Association in a completely different context who had just attended the AGM where it had been reported that there was no one on the waiting list and three vacant plots.  A quick phone call to the secretary confirmed this was the case and the upshot was our invitation to visit, which was too good to turn down even if it did delay our departure.
It was well worth it - the plot was just what we were looking for: the right size, in a fair condition and complete with a pond (to encourage slug-eating frogs) and a shed. It even has trains on the other side of the fence!
So, by the time we got to Norbury there was just time for a quick spin up to Grub Street to charge the batteries and turn round. Back at Norbury we pulled up on the visitor moorings rather than our own as we could get much nearer to the bridge for unloading the car. By now it was nearly dark and too late to go anywhere, so we stayed where we were.

Picture Quiz - Answers

Well, perhaps the locations in the Picture Quiz were a bit too obscure for most people, but thanks Andy for having a go. Now the answers - or at least the original captions, which may or may not be correct!

Ellesmere Port, July 1971

Stourport, July 1971

On the Wolverhampton 21, August 1972

Coventry Basin, January 1973