Tixall Wide to Hazelstrine Bridge 96

A stormy night. Really quite windy. This would most probably have woken us both up at some point, but we’d normally have been able to get back to sleep. However, there was a tapping noise near to our bedroom window. Was it one of the window catches? No. Mick went outside to see if he could find out what was making the noise. A popper on the cratch cover wasn’t pressed home as well as it could be. He pushed it and came back to bed. A few minutes later it was doing it again!

I found some bluetac and tried that to hold it firm. This lasted about ten minutes, more bluetac was deployed, then some more pushing. I don’t know if we just got used to the noise or whether the wind dropped a bit but we both managed to get some more shut eye. The poppers on the boat for the cratch were new ones put on by Tom and they aren’t as snug as the original ones, we’d already noticed this when rolling up the covers. We’ll have to see what we can do about it.

It was raining as we had breakfast, it was still raining when we wanted to set off. Should we wait a while? No, waterproofs on, it wasn’t that bad. We pushed off and I walked ahead to Tixall Lock. I’d looked at a walk round to the gatehouse yesterday and hadn’t understood why my OS map was taking me to the next bridge beyond the lock. There was no obvious way off the canal. The moored boats have access, but that’s not a public right of way.

I hopped on board now to catch a lift to Deptmore Lock. This route is half familiar, half not. The railway comes close, no trains timed correctly for us today. You go over the River Sow. At a bend near Stafford is where a lock is being built to connect the canal to the River Sow and provide a route into Stafford. We once moored along here in our NB Winding Down days, I got a seriously early train to Hull for a read through of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, showed my model, then came back to the boat to complete the four counties ring, hopping back on board in Stone, having missed out Tixall Wide.

It was now obvious that we were following another boat, we were gaining on them. The rain started to come down again. Up ahead we could see another boat, we’d got a convoy going on.

The towpath has recently been mown, large amounts of greenery floated about in the canal. The lead boat seemed to get stuck. A crew member at the bow did their best to try to move the grass trimmings out of their way, we however thought that they were possibly stuck on the bottom and the best thing to do was to back off. The hire boat behind them managed to get past, they didn’t offer to lend a hand at all, but their movement helped pull their stern out into deeper water and they were soon on the move again, only for the hire boat to pull in a couple of minutes later opposite Stafford Boat Club.

It was heaving it down all this time. We didn’t have that much further to go to our planned for mooring today, but the thought of waiting at Deptmore Lock for the boats ahead of us to go up wasn’t appealing. We pulled in after the next bridge for lunch and to decide whether to carry on.

A phone call from Dawn in the Frankness group. She and Lee were planning to visit Frank to move things about for him and hopefully give him some food he’d like to eat. A while later there was another phone call from Dawn. Frank had decided he’d rather move to a care home. Thank goodness for that! I’d been trying to steer him towards this decision, Dawn, as only Dawn could, helped push him across the line.

We’d opted to stay put. Time for me to prepare the Cutweb Boat Club accounts. But the afternoon was taken over with Frankness phone calls. Strike whilst the iron’s hot etc.

This evening I made up a batch of gluten free Staffordshire oatcake mix I’d bought from the farm shop. I chopped up some sausages and mushrooms, added in some cheese. Very tasty and we can have the same again another time. I really should have a go at making them from scratch one time, as that would be far Far cheaper, and I don’t think you HAVE to be in Staffordshire to enjoy oatcakes.

1 lock, 5 miles, 1 soggy day, 1 seriously annoying popper, 1 ex-Senior Stage Manager, 1 puppet Man, 0.5 of a fish pie, 1 Frank eating, I decision, 3 Frankness members jumping into action, 2 certificates, more still needed, 1 cat half interested, 1 grounded boat, 3 boat convoy, 1 set of accounts set aside for another day.

https://what3words.com/battle.oath.bounty