Saturday 7 February 2015

Winter Boating on the BCN

I've spent the last week aboard "Twelfth of Never", a shared-ownership boat of which one of the shares is owned by Steve, someone who I haven't seen for 41 years but who had nevertheless invited me aboard for a week after contacting me via this blog. Although I had internet access via my 'phone and could have posted as we went along, I haven't mastered the art of taking photos with the phone not to mention getting them from the 'phone onto the blog, so this report is a week behind time but hopefully all the better for it.

Friday, 30th January
Twelfth of Never's handover time is 3pm on a Friday at Gailey on the Staffs & Worcester Canal, but I left Lancaster a little early at 0956 to take advantage of a cheap Advance fare. Not that I needed to bother as the ticket went completely unchecked throughout the trip. This gave me a little free time in Wolverhampton, just enough to visit the Great Western pub for lunch,before getting the 76 bus on to Gailey, where I arrived before Steve and his friend Peter who made up the rest of the crew.   

We were ready for the off by 15.10 when Steve winded the boat and we set off down the Staffs & Worcs to Cross Green and catching up with the last 40 years of each other's lives as we did so. It was still  daylight when we arrived and tied up next to the Fox & Anchor pub, which we investigated after tea.

3 comments:

Andy Tidy said...

Jim - looking forward to your posts. As the mainline is closed between Wolverhampton and Tipton at Coseley I am assuming you ventured up the W&E?

Jim said...

Andy, We found out just before setting off that Coseley is now passable again, but by then our plans had been laid..!
Jim

Andy Tidy said...

Thats interesting - not that I can travel anywhere for the moment as we are in the process of moving house to Aldridge.