If brindling is the word for wandering along a contour line with no concern for how soon you get to a destination, then there should be another word, Telfording, meaning to head straight for your objective regardless of the engineering costs. Thomas Telford designed this stretch of the canal, and it shows. Long dead straight sections, with cuttings or embankments to make the canal level.

Sometimes the trees come together over your head in the cuttings, so you are cruising through a green tunnel.

Yesterday it rained almost all day so we lit the stove and didn’t move. By mid afternoon we were able to do a couple of hours of travel in the soul-eating cold drizzle that motivated Clive of India to go off and conquer somewhere warmer.

This morning it was cold and windy with a few patches of blue sky, so we set off southwards again. We stopped for diesel at Wheaton Aston, as all old canal hands do. There is a filling station there that also has a dock on the canal, and the fuel is 5p to 15p a liter cheaper than anywhere else on the canal system. If you’re buying a hundred liters at a time that’s a fair saving. Diesel is not actually that big and expense, though. We only have to fill up every three weeks or so.

Next came Wheaton Lock. It’s just a single lock, but it took longer than quite a few flights we have been on, as there were six or so boats waiting ahead of us. The bottom gates were leaking badly, which meant it was slow to fill and hard to open the top gate. Still, I have the fine art of waiting for a lock down pat. Folding chair on the towpath and French lessons from Duo the Owl.

I’m not sure how Stretton Aqueduct got to be more ornate than all the others.

Perhaps that because the A5, originally a Roman road, is telfording underneath.

Tonight we are in Brewood (pron: Brood). I can tell we are back in the West Midlands. The local butcher’s shop sells pork scratchings and has a Wolverhampton Wanderers flag outside.