GT. HAYWOOD---SHUGBOROUGH HALL

This is Shugborough Hall which was the ancestral home of Thomas Patrick John Anson 5th Earl of Litchfield better known perhaps as Patrick Litchfield (1939-2005) the well known photographer of royalty. Mainly because of death duties it is now owned by the National Trust and run by Staffordshire county council.
Today it cosists of 900acres but back in 1624 William Anson purchased 8acres and a manor house. In 1693 the grandson also called William demolished it and built a 3 storey house that forms the basis of the hall today
George Anson(1697-1762) a decendant of William joined the navy at 14 and became an Admiral. During his famouse circumnavigation of the globe he captured a Spanish treasure Galleon that netted him £400.000 pounds part of which helped to develope Shugborough and buy more land.
It`s very interesting to read especially as we can relate it to Parick Litchfield take time to read the history by clicking here.
Above and below are pictures of Essex Bridge Grade one listed and built in 1550 for Queen Elizabeth 1 so she could hunt in woodland around the village. Only 14 of the original 40 span arches remain. Couldn`t get a horse & coach over there.......read on.

Below standing on Essex Bridge the rivers Trent&Sow join.

The bridge below was built by the Anson family of Shugborough Hall but quite when i have not discovered, it was one of 2 bridges that enabled the family to drive to church in their horse drawn carriage that would not fit over the Essex Bridge pictured above. If anyone finds any info as to when these bridges were built please let me know. The Trent&Mersey canal that flows

under this iron bridge was completed in 1777 so it is safe to assume it came later but i would love to know. It`s strange that when you are working these things don`t form part of your life but when retired and travelling with time to spare you have time to investigate.
Anyway the 2 pictures below show all that remains of the second bridge that spanned the River
Trent and made this epic journey to church possible for the Anson family.
The story goes on in as much as when his lordship had a disagreement with the vicar at the village church he built a roadway to the next village Little Haywood so he could attend church.
So if you venture this way walk across the iron bridge and bear right and you can follow through the woods what was his road to the second church.


The houses below were built by the Anson family when they decided that the village people were
to close to the hall and they wanted more privacy so the village was moved. So if you`ve rotten neighbours build them a house somewhere and when they get back from work tell them they`ve moved and their demolished house is now part of your estate.
Just the time now to say goodnight with the sun setting as i sit in the boat and the one below is because i could be bothered to stand on the front deck so you could have a better view.

VIDEO & DUCKLINGS

Just a quick blog as the first ducklings of 2008 have been spotted and i`m still experimenting with video on the camera.These duckling pictures were taken by Tina on board "YTENE" as i missed them and i must stress they are the copyright of the photographer, please don`t nick them, Tina beat me arm wrestling in a pub last year so i don`t want any copyright problems!!!

Video of NB VALERIE rising in Stoke on Trent top lock.

STAFFORDSHIRE

Travelling along the Trent&Mersey we will be passing through Stoke on Trent on upto Preston Brook along the Bridgewater Canal skirting Manchester through Wigan, Blackburn and Burnley.
The final destination will be York but our first aim is to get to Skipton for the boat festival over the May bank holiday 3/5th.
You may have noticed the Neocounter at the top right of the page, i installed it on the 5th April and the totals are now 776 visitors from 22 countries and this got me thinking how many countries do i need to be worldwide and it appears that there are 195 countries in the world
so i need a few more yet then the web being addictive as it is i went on to find which of these countries are the largest and the top 3 are Russia,Canada&USA but the population of the world came up with China as most populated followed by India&USA.
Anyway if you go abroad can you only go to a country not on my list and whilst there log into the blog so i can achieve worlwide coverage.
In the pic below can be seen Armitage tunnel, well use your imagination as the roof was taken off
this 130yd tunnel around the early 1970`s due to subsidence, suppose boaters couldn`t duck down anymore.

Speed cameras on the cut? well the sign gives that impression but no sign of a camera but it did what i think its intention was and made me aware that just ahead men were working on a floating platform under a new railway bridge that carries the East coast main line. A lot of work is taking place to install extra tracks to take more lines along this stretch


Cruising in to Rugely long before you arrive the power station can be seen on the skyline. It generates 1,000 Megawatts of electricity enough to supply 1/2 million homes and each of those towers could house the dome of St. Pauls Cathedral.
Having a couple of days rest waiting for some post to arrive via the Royal Mail Poste Restante service at the local post office. Taken the time waiting to touch up some of the paintwork and change the fuel filters.

JUST WHEN I THOUGHT SUMMER WAS HERE

Woke up this morning in Staffordshire to a blanket of snow covering the boat and surroundingcountryside. The sun soon put everything back to normal and in fact within 2 hrs other than some snow on high ground it had all gone. Still it did look nice for a while and the pic below is the northern edge of Cannock Chase.

Above and below signs of summer approaching swans have started nesting and below wild flowers coming on fast in Hopwas woods.
This is a carving made by use of a chainsaw around the old reservoir that has been turned into a pleasant nature reserve with bird hide and good walkways. It`s opposite the BW office at Fradley Jct.
My last picture is of the Armitage Shanks factory at Armitage near Hansacre and shows some of the bathroom fittings they make at this site, so really just a bog standard picture.
Well we`ve travelled a bit lately having left Rugby passing through Atherstone, Tamworth and at Fradley Jct. we now find ourselves on the Trent&Mersey canal with Stone and Stoke on Trent ahead of us.
As i finish typing this at 6.45 it has started to snow again. Summer Summer where are you?

60 NOT OUT AND ON THE MOVE PROPER

Well I`ve just before the Easter w`end celebrated my 60th birthday and below you can see me blowing out the candles on a chocolate cake aboard NB YTENE the home of my friends and travelling companions Andy&Tina. Thanks guys that was a nice thought much appreciated.
So Easter w`end being the closest to my birthday I went down south to Bedfordshire and took the kids and the G`children out for a meal, ended up 14 of us and the debit card didn`t exactly melt but got a little warm. So below at rear left to right Jordan, Nicole with Keira on her lap and then Lena-May. In the foreground the boys sticking together Keirnan, Jack & Teo who decided the balloon was more important than looking at the camera.
Arriving back from the birthday meal with the kids, below you can see John on NB TUI has caught us up after being delayed by late running maintenance on the Buckby flight of locks so now we can start travelling.
Below the Barley Mow at Newbold (Rugby) that has been our local for a fortnight while waiting for John. It is now under the management of John&Tina and i can highly recommend the food and the hospitality of both John/Tina. No not that John(TUI) and certainly not that Tina(YTENE)
The original route of the canal went right past the door of the Barley Mow above.
So after filling up our water tanks we set off through the Newbold tunnel complete with its lighting. This tunnel was built in the 1820s when the Oxford was straightened, the original tunnel can still be seen in the churchyard across the road from the Barley Mow.
Came across this list of Oxford canal bye-laws and in case you can`t read it some are listed.

Coal vessels on Thames below Oxford will be confiscated.
Pleasure boats first 2 miles free.
Horse leaders must be over 10.
Boat steerers must be over 18.
Oxford bound boats have priority.
No boat to have cattle frightening horn or equipment.
A lot of the bridges in the Rugby area are decorated, beats graffiti.

Above and below are pictures of Charity dock boat yard on the Coventry canal near Bedworth. More like a scrap yard than a boat dock, in the top pic you can see a Dell Boy yellow 3 wheeler sticking out of the tree.

The last post was a joke, after all it was April 1st, Sorry.

A BAN ON BLOGGERS PICTURES

I left a land base to have a life of relative freedom from the pressures of councils and government bodies but it seems i am being hastled even when cruising the canals and passing on a few details and pictures of life afloat.
It has just been announced that British Waterways are claiming copyright on pictures taken along their waterway system. WHAT!!!!! Yes it seems that in a bid to raise funds following a large redution in funding from DEFRA they propose to charge a fee for photographs of their system.
I have seen in the past in places like Biminghams Gas St basin that permission to film professionaly must be obtained from BW but i assumed this was more a safety thing than revenue raising.
Don`t know how they are going to charge you people out there who take snaps on a visit to the canals but it seems they are aware of just how many boaters do blogs and publish pictures and i suppose that like the poor old motorist the boaters blog will be easy pickings.
Can you imagine a group of BW employees will be tasked with reading blogs all day and producing a bill to send to us with our annual licence demand, lets face it like the car owner being identified by his registration plates we boaters also have a licence plate.
Well i`ve never been a one to get up a petition but this has got me wild so please click on the comments button below and back us bloggers. PLEASE

ALONG THE WAY

Still waiting on John on board `TUI` to catch up so we spent some time in Braunston and then decided to visit friends at Calcutt and that was when we had those couple of very windy days. The Wind generator really got a chance to show what it was made of and it wasn`t to long before the batteries were fully charged in fact i took advantage of all this free power and washed the boat curtains plus ironed them and within an hour the batteries were again fully charged. Normally the engine would have had to be running to cope with the power demand of both washer and iron but the wind genny coped very well.
After a couple of days at Calcutt we decided to drop down through one lock to access the marina`s diesel pump as we had noticed the price at a very reasonable 56p a litre but when we went to fill up it had risen to 66p......such is life but compared to the litres i used in my van back in my other life i am happy that these days a litre of fuel gives me so much happiness cruising through England`s green and pleasant land instead of driving across factory estates.
Talking of fuel it`s just been announced that the duty will rise approx 47p in November but Customs&Excise will allow boaters to pay a reduced tax on fuel used for heating and electric generation but the full duty on fuel used to move the boat. OK before anyone starts hitting the comments button remember on your fuel bills at home the tax if i remember correctly is 5% so it`s only fair that our heat/electric bills are not taxed at the VAT rate of 17.5% So be nice if you comment and as long as the comment is clean i will publish and answer. I say that because some comments have been not worthy of publishing and as i decide what you get to see i am able to spare you.
What else along the way? Ah yes Keith&Jo on HADAR passed by and as there were no moorings nearby it was a quick hello but they did pop back later and over coffee we had a nice chat. I first met Jo last year at Stone and just managed a quick hello then so it was nice to meet Keith this time. Tried to get a picture of their newly built boat but my camera told me to change the batteries or it wasn`t playing the game. Visit the site it`s a lovely boat.
Came across a boat Electro Fishing, they were removing Zander from the canal using an electrical current that stuns mainly larger fish that are netted and put in a tank to recover and all but the Zander are returned to the canal. It appears the Zander are eating to many of our native fish which is not on as they shouldn`t be here anyway even though they were introduced in the East Anglian drains some years ago.
Just cruising away from a lock rounded the bend and there it was NO PROBLEM
the home of Sue&Vic. I first met them July 2005 when i was looking for a boat and had been a keen follower of their blog, click on it for a good read and then follow the links to other boaters blogs and you will see many styles of blog. We bloggers publish in so many formats some you`ll like some you won`t but that`s blogging folks. Since i`ve had the boat we have met up every now and then but it`s ALWAYS good to see these 2 lovely people. Well Sue i know i thanked you but i now do it publicly or should that be Bloggerly, that was a smashing dinner and a nice evening together with Chas/Anne from More2life see you on the road, be safe.



Seems to be more and more damaged bridges on the system and a lot of them still the same condition 2 years on.

This is Napton Jct. where the Gd. Union meets the Oxford and as you can see on the sign Braunston, Oxford or Warwick are your choices plus you could pass behind the sign into Wigrams Marina.

NB No Problem and as always Lucy posing on the towpath.

A lot of hedge laying is being down along the canals, the hedges are cut part way through and
laid over to form a neat hedge that will carry on growing. The pic above of the finished
product doesn`t show the full height as i snapped it to close up but perhaps the horse

gives an idea of height.

Sad to see an old working boat burnt out, i`m sure someone was at one time living on it.

Electro fishing comingand going

ON THE MOVE

It`s nice to hear from readers and among several E-Mails of late was one from Bente in Norway who with his wife is shortly coming over for a 2 week canal boat holiday. Hi Bente hope you enjoy your trip .
We have been hanging around the Foxton area for some time and after attending the music night and boater Lynne`s birthday party so it was nice to move again.
The weather has been very varied lately with high winds, sunny days and the canal frozen over for 3 days. I think it was Wednesday just gone i was sitting out on the front deck reading in warm sunshine and as i type this the wind is really blowing and the wind genny is going crazy so i don`t think i will be running the engine for long this evening if at all.
Along the stretch i am moored at the moment are several boats on reserved winter moorings that will be home to them for maybe 3/4 months paying rent to BW on top of their boat licence fee, not my idea of boating but each to their own i say.
So plans have been made and we have all decided to go to York, Andy/Tina on Ytene and John on Tui. At the moment John is stuck at a stoppage north of Milton Keynes and as of this week he will be further delayed by the 2 week extension at the Buckby flight. The flight should have re-opened the same day as the Milton Keynes stoppage but upon draining the canal(pic lower down) further problems were found. Still John will put in some long days cruising and catch us up along the way.
Well my big 60 arrives in March and i will be going down south for a few days so that should give him time to catch up. SIXTY, where did the time go
In the days when young and bold
never a thought of growing old
looking back on times good and bad
things i should have done, people no longer here
makes me feel sad
but hey chin up life goes on for us still here
the grandchildren are smashing and get my vote
I`ll cruise with Valerie the rest of my days
growing old gracefully
on our boat.

The Market Harborough Arm stretches for 6 miles from the basin at the bottom of Foxton locks. Around 1809 the idea was for this arm to reach Northampton but it never materialised and it now finishes just on the edge of the town and the basin was once a busy industrial site with boatbuilding being just part of the scene. Today it`s mostly flats with one old canal building being used as offices and a restaurant.
Mid 18c Harborough was well placed for the industrial revolution being on the coaching routes of London to Nottingham and London to Derby. These routes were established well before the canal and railways came this way.
In 1889 the Symington Bros. built a corset factory in the town and this was the home of the Liberty Bodice. In 1935 they erected a building opposite for their employees bicycles and as in 1930s they employed 25% of the towns people i expect a small shed would not have been sufficient. The buildings are still there today with the factory being home to the public library and council offices while the bike shed is the M. Harborough theatre.

On the way down the Leicester Arm we stopped off at Welford Wharf the end of navigation on the Welford Arm. The arm when first built in 1813 went only as far as Welford Mill. Shortly after the one and only lock on the arm was built together with the Wharf itself and the George Inn now re-named the Wharf Inn, a lot of trading in coal, salt, granite and lime took place here.
Lime kilns were built at the Wharf the remains of which can still be seen. Limestone and coal for the kilns arrived by boat and return loads of lime would leave.

Above is the now open extension to Crick Marina adding 80 moorings. Back last year (see Sept 17th blog) they had just started digging it out. With all these new marinas being built i don`t understand why they don`t include residential berths, so many people are now coming on to the canals that can`t afford to buy bricks & mortar surely it would help them if some moorings were residential.

The swingbridge on the M. Harborough arm that carries one of the roads through Foxton village.

St. Dionysius` church in M. Harborough, the white fronted building alongside is the old grammar school built in 1614 below which a butter market was held. Behind these 2 buildings can be found the Symington Bros. corset factory and bike store.

The canal frozen over with some bread i threw out for the ducks and moorhens but also many other birds flew down to feed.

Above Chas on Moore2life passes by during the thaw.

The boat above chose to break through the ice risking the ice cutting into the blacking at the waterline that would allow rust to form. Not a good idea as it can`t be touched up easily while still in the water.
Above and below the whole of the Buckby lock flight has been drained for maintenance. Myself and Andy/Tina went prospecting along the drained canal and came back with fenders, 2 windlass (lock operating handles) and a coolie hat, it fits on top of the boat chimney to stop rain and wind blowing down it


This boat belongs to the house owner and is moored at the bottom of his garden on the non towpath side.

FOXTON

Well i have just put a large jacket potato in the oven and as i sit here typing the mist is closing in fast. The last few days have been very sunny but the nights have been cold, well outside it has but i am very snug and warm inside the boat thanks to the log burner. Had some heavy frosts the last few mornings and this morning the canal was covered in ice.
I have just recently changed my internet access from Orange to T-Mobile. The problem with Orange was the amount i could up/download was limited to 65MB per mth and this meant i had pictures dis-abled on my laptop and auto system updates restricted as these ate into my MB allowance dramatically.
Now with T-Mobile Web & Walk my allowance is 3 GB, that`s about 3000MB i think so as you can imagine i can now have the pictures & updates on all the time. Hope this is clear to you all as to me all this technology surrounds me like the mist outside that is by the way getting thicker as i type.
So the deal i got via Carphone Warehouse means i pay £15 per month on a 2yr contract, the Orange package was £23.50 for a lot less access. When i phoned Orange to cancel i wasn`t asked why i was cancelling, so much for customer service, but i guess they know the rates of other companys and i would not be surprised to see Orange change their rates soon. Apart from the money aspect the signal is better therefor faster surfing of the net is achieved.


Having left Braunston we travelled to Foxton stopping here and there as time was on our side.We wanted to be in Foxton for Saturday the 9th to attend a music night that was put on in aid of the East Midlands Air Ambulance. Tickets were £3 each and included sandwiches and hot dogs, as it was going to be a ticket only function owing to the limited space of the Bridge 61 pub we had phoned ahead to reserve our tickets.

So with this new internet deal i have emerged from the technology mist and experimented with putting video on the blog. The quality is not good as i used a basic digital camera and the lighting in the pub was low so i have included some photos as well. As you can see the musicians were on 2 sides of the room owing to lack of space. In the lower picture the 2 on the left came over from the west of Ireland just to play this one night.

Hope the video plays ok once i publish this blog and if all is ok i might do a daytime cruising video sometime.
Recently met up with 2 fellow travellers and bloggers, Chas&Ann on More2life & Mo&Vanessa on Balmaha and mo kindly told me how to do links. IF i have got it right you should be able to click on Balmaha above and go to their blog, I`m sure it will work when i publish my blog so thanks Mo/Vanessa and it was nice meeting you both for the first time.

Well i published but the video seems not to be there, all i can see is a square box when i view the blog as you would yet when i composed the blog the video was there. Sorry about that and i will try to find out what went wrong but in the meantime if anyone could put me right i would be grateful.

All is now ok on my PC see comments