Trent & Mersey canal Br.85, Thursday 3rd September.
We stayed put at Tixall wide yesterday. We were walking up to the junction on our way to the farm shop. Arriving at the River Trent aqueduct, there was an ex Black Prince hire boat almost tied up in the passing space just east of the aqueduct.
A boat went past, the remaining mooring spike pulled out and the boat was adrift.
There were three ropes hanging from the boat, front, centre and back and plenty of marks in the mud where the spikes had been at various times. A passer-by on the permanent mooring side went off to see if anyone in the yard knew who owned it.
Another passing boater said that the ex hire boat had been there for at least two weeks.
On our way back, We were told by a boater that he had woken one night at Rugeley to find this same boat alongside him as it had come adrift. He had seen it in different places; he thought that it was a shared boat and was left for weeks on end at one place before being moved on. It was never moored correctly that he had seen. He had reported it to BW, but of course was given the standard ‘what can we do’ reply.
The farm shop had sold out of the plate sized steak pies and the new delivery had not arrived yet; the assistant was only too happy to put one on one side for us, we walked back in the afternoon and collected it.
The walk did us good and so did the pie! It was a good as we had remembered and did us for two main meals.
We took two hours to walk the length of the wide on the way back as we saw boaters that we knew and chatted to others for the first time.
Today, we moved off at 6.45am to beat the rush and headed for Br. 85 at Sandon. We had light rain and heavy wind which made the handling of the boat interesting. Nothing was moving until we reached Salt bridge at 9.15am, when we followed a boat with gearbox problems; the usual story, they had paid for a repair to be done and it appeared not to have been done properly. It was slightly better than before, however, they were coaxing it as they had to return to their mooring on the Bridgewater canal.
We moored up at 9.45am and some heavy showers arrived soon afterwards; by then we were drinking tea and looking out at the weather, trying hard not to be smug.
2009 Totals: 471 Locks – 873 miles – 35 Bus pass uses.
