Saturday – a big day

The schedule for Saturday was to get to Warwick. However, we did some more detailed calculations on Friday evening and realised that this would leave the next two days too hard to achieve. So we decided to start the Hatton Flight on Saturday. This meant forgoing the Warwick restaurants – but we remembered The Waterman, near the top of the Hatton flight! So we set of early for a day of locks.

Through Leamington, we shared the cut with a Sprint Canoe. I’d never seen one of these before but apparently it’s in the Olympics. It looks very hard work and uncomfortable. This canoeist was obviously in training.

After 8 locks, we turned North and started the Hatton flight. Although not the longest flight on the English canals (Tardebigge has that honour – 30 locks in 2¼ miles) the 21 locks at Hatton are quite a challenge. Known as the ‘Stairway to Heaven’  they are not quite in a straight line so you can’t see all of them at once. Looking back, there’s a wonderful view of the tower of St Mary’s, Warwick, but we didn’t look back too often!

We were lucky with the locks as virtually all were set for us – they were nearly empty so we didn’t have to spend time emptying them before opening the bottom gates. The flight of 21 locks we completed in just over 3 hours including a 20 minute break for tea.

Day 2: 9.6 miles, 29 locks

Click on the map below to see a larger version with the GPS track overlaid:

Day 1 - Friday

We were all on board by about 1pm on Friday and ready to leave. The schedule required us to get within a day’s cruise from Warwick – but there are quite a few locks on this section. We set off at 13:20 but just moved out of the marina for a late lunch. After a short break the journey proper began.

The day’s route included the Bascote Staircase – two connected locks where the bottom gate of the top lock is also the top gate of the bottom one.

We eventually moored just before the Welsh Road lock at 16:30.

Day 1: 4 miles, 14 locks

Click on the map below  to see a larger version with the GPS track overlaid:

The big move - the plan

 The route is quite important but getting cars in the right place is also key! We had as crew Veronica from near Rugby and Ian from Ramsbottom. So the obvious plan was for Ian to leave his car at Norbury and for me to pick him up. We persuaded Veronica to host us on Thursday night so I drove up to pickup Ian and we then returned to Veronica. Brenda had a rehearsal on Thursday so she was to join us on Friday when the move proper started.

As far as the canal route is concerned, there are not too many options. The various books and web sites showed the journey to be achievable in the time available – we could start sometime on Friday afternoon and wanted to get to Norbury on Thursday in time to drive back for my car. However most days were fairly full and we’d have to find suitable mooring locations en route. My original plan had us stopping at Warwick on Saturday (good restaurants) and Gas Street, Birmingham, on Monday (even better restaurants!) However, this meant that Sunday and Monday were very long days and the risk of not getting to Gas Street on Monday. Finding secure moorings in the outskirts of Birmingham is difficult: many locks in some urban areas have security locks to stop the vandals and you can imagine how tempting a narrow boat may be. There are two routes from Warwick to Birmingham: the Grand Union and the North Stratford canal. The latter is shorter and has fewer locks but fewer moorings if we failed to do the full distance. The Grand Union route includes going up the Farmers Bridge locks in Birmingham which are wonderful but the total route has more locks 51 instead of 41 in the Stratford route.

I did some research and found a secure mooring at a suitable place on the Grand Union route. However these moorings are so secure there is no access except by boat: so much for a meal out in Birmingham if we had to stop here. So we had two options for this part of the route.

Across Birmingham from Gas Street to Tipton and Wolverhampton there are two alternatives: the Old and New main lines. Each is about the same distance and each has 3 locks. There is an alternative of doing part Old and part New and 9 locks. So we left the decision on this until we got to Gas Street.

Other parts were fairly straightforward and we were confident we’d find good moorings. We also planned to eat on board other nights.

So the big adventure was about to start. We were hoping for some Autumn colours on the cut...

Wolverley - the big move

We’re just back from an exciting week when we moved the narrowboat Wolverley from its old base at Stockton, near Rugby, to the new base at Norbury Junction, near Stafford. We share ownership in the boat – there are about 12 owners each of whom get 3 weeks a year onboard. We had booked the week starting 29th October so when it was decided to move to a new base, we volunteered to undertake the task. The route is a challenging week’s run – particularly at this time of year when the sun sets early. The logistics are quite challenging, too – getting cars and people in the right place at the right time!

I kept my GPS running for the whole trip so we have a detailed record of the journey – except, of course, inside the tunnels when there’s no signal from the satellites. There was limited or no internet or 3G phone access for much of the journey so recording in real time wasn’t practical but I’ll try to go through the details with some images of the canals over the next few days.

Here’s a map showing the GPS track of the entire journey – which we did complete slightly ahead of schedule.

Skew bridges

Most canal bridges are at right angles to the waterway, however, sometimes the bridge has to be built at an angle. Bridge 19 on the Grand Union just north of Napton junction is one such bridge. Here’s the aerial view.

This bridge, like most on the canals, has a brick arch. Skew arches, as they are called, are  much more complex than simple bridges. In some skew bridges, the bricks in the arch are laid parallel to the canal. This results in the bricks at the end of the arch being stepped. Most skew bridges, however, are built like bridge 19 with the courses of bricks at right angles to the walls.

The result is that the bricks are laid at an angle to the springers - the point at which the arches spring from the walls, as shown in these photos. I think this means that each course of bricks is curved to follow the curvature of the arch. These skew bridges add another dimension to the beauty of the canals.

There’s more about skew arches on the wikipedia web site at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skew_arch

Canal bridges again

A few of the old bridges are in a pretty poor state...

... but some have been rebuilt very sensitively - this one has a new concrete arch but still retains the classic style.

Talking about classic style, how about bridge 103 on the Grand Union canal. Rather grander than the normal accommodation bridge: perhaps the landowner wanted something special. The web site CanalPlan just says ‘Bridge 103 is a minor waterways feature on the Grand Union Canal’ but gives no more information. Some other references say it was know as the ‘New Bridge’

More canal bridge art

Lots of the bridges in the Rugby area have artworks on the sides - and I don’t mean the graffiti! Many of them feature the game of rugby, of course.

Incidentally, this bridge is less than 3 miles from the home of the friend who accompanied us. She’s able to tell her friends when asked where she’s been on holiday that she visited Rugby! I had the same experience a few years ago when we visited Aylesbury - by canal!


This is the remains of a railway bridge with some railway art.

Tunnel of Light

The 189 metre long Newbold Tunnel, on the Oxford Canal at Newbold on Avon, near Rugby, has been fitted with coloured lights. Originally installed in 2005 as part of the Rugby's celebration of the Hindu Festival of Light, Diwali, the lights still operate during the day and provide a fascinating background to what is usually a rather gloomy part of a canal cruise. Here by comparison is the Braunston tunnel – the light is an approaching boat (isn't there some saying about the light at the end of the tunnel?) This picture was taken about 20 minutes before we emerged from the tunnel. Braunston is longer, of course.

The lights are turned off at night for the bats. The tunnel is pretty well semicircular so the reflections form a full circle of light. 

Great – but is it art?

Bridges on the Canals

We've just spent a few days on the Oxford and Grand Union canals. The bridges on this stretch show a range of interesting engineering – and artistic – enterprise. I snapped lots of them: I'll post these bridges over the next few days.

Let's start with the classical accommodation bridge which, although fairly basic, was a significant engineering task in its day and has a simple elegance. There are dozens in this style – the minimum width to allow a boat to pass and a towpath for the horse.

The cast iron bridges – this one is over the branch to Rugby Wharf – are amongst the most beautiful constructions along the canal.

This bridge is listed – the details of the listing can be found here.

Car park signs at Church

Installed today

Wyred apple juice – from tree to bottle

… well, from picked to bottle.

Wyred, the Church youth group are generating donations for their trip to Africa next summer. They've been offered apples to make apple juice to sell. The apples are on trees so they have to pick them. They're then transported to Chiltern Ridge where they are pressed and bottled. Chiltern Ridge have a wonderful service: they press, pasteurise and bottle apple juice from apples delivered to the farm.

The Wyred apple juice is selling like hot cakes - £3 a bottle or 4 for £2.50. It's available after services, at cream teas or from the Church office. 

Wyred's planned trip is described in more detail on the Church web site missendenchurch.org.uk

The apples

The press at Chiltern Ridge

Bottling the juice

Bat watch

Great fun tonight: a bat watch up at Church. After hearing a fascinating talk about bats and seeing some specimens, we were given detectors and waited for the bats to appear. Eventually we heard some pipistrelles and then saw them flying round the outside of the Church. In spite of evidence in the Church – bat droppings – we failed to detect any inside. 

Pipistrelle bat

The IBM PC is 30 years old today

and is still with us – just about! It's demise has been forecast for some time, particularly with the advent of smart phones and tablets however, I think the PC in some form will be round for some time. To misquote Mark Twain “the report of its death was an  exaggeration.” There's an interesting article quoting one of the original design engineers Mark Dean here. Mark's point is that the interest is moving from the technology itself to what is behind it. We've seen that in the recent riots where communications through social media enabled the mobs to gather rapidly.

My view about the 'improved' communications that the new technology enables is that it often inhibits good communication between people: because they can be in touch all the time, they don't communicate. A case of less is more (or the reverse.) I'm not arguing for going back, rather for learning to live better in this new joined-up world.

Speaking of Mark Twain, one quote of his I like is “I don't understand all this fuss about giving up smoking: I've done it dozens of times”

It's a bit calmer in Little Hampden...

no riots here – yet. Don started the harvest this afternoon. I hope the weather lasts but the forecast isn't too good.