We finished the last stretch of the Staffs and Worcs today, winding through narrow sandstone cuttings down to Stourport. We’ll be staying with my brother and his wife for a few days. Meanwhile, here is a puzzle for you. Our boat makes a screeching sound when the engine is going at about 1200 RPM. It starts at 1000 RPM and dies out around 1400 RPM. It happens when the engine is in forward or reverse, but not neutral. It does…
It was a beautiful sunny day today, and we went through some lovely countryside on the way south on the Staffs and Worcs. There were quite a few locks at irregular intervals, though, so I did not have much time for photography. I couldn’t resist this one, though. The old toll house at Stewpony Lock. Nobody is quite sure where the name Stewpony came from, or even how it is spelled. Apparently “Stewponey” is also acceptable, and there was a…
Our regular readers may remember our visit last year to Wightwick (pronunced WIT-ik) Manor, which houses a large collection of terminally boring Pre-Raphaelite paintings. I’m not going to inflict that on you again, so here’s a picture of the great hall there, which had hardly any Pre-Raphaelites visible if you look at it from here. The gardens are nice too, and there is next to no chance of being bored to tears by Pre-Raphaelites there. But oh, dear, since we…
We filled the diesel tank today. It cost about £131 ($171), which seems like a lot, but the last time we filled it was May 26th near Leeds, so that means we are spending about £3.45 ($4.50) a day in fuel. In fact our fuel costs are cheaper than the cost of traveling by train to the same places. We also stopped for groceries at Gnosall Heath, a fact which I mention only because it is pronounced NO-zull. The Shroppie…
Tyrley (pronounced TUR-lee) Locks must be some of the prettiest in the country. There are five of them, with the lowest cut into sandstone bedrock… … and the upper one with a pretty cottage. They are also difficult to get into because of the vicious side weirs which push you off course, the worst we have seen yet. The first one was particularly nasty, and it was only a couple of locks later that I worked out what I should…
Today was a hard slog up twenty two locks, with a flight of two, a flight of fifteen, and a flight of five. We have climbed from the Cheshire Plain to the Shropshire Plain, over a distance of about ten miles. These were all narrow locks with only room for one boat, and only a few inches clearance on each side. It took both Paula and I a few tries to get our precision steering chops back, especially as most…
I’m not sure what this gargoyle is meant to represent. Perhaps it’s a dreadful warning of what happens if you have sex with sheep. We visited Nantwich last year, but did not have time to visit the church or museum, so we rectified that this time. At first glance the church of St Mary looks like a typical old village church… … but there are some lovely details in both the stone and wood carving, including this delightful study of…
The English royal family doesn’t have that many names for kings and queens, and some of them they give up on. For instance, there has only ever been one King John, for as every A A Milne fan will tell you, King John was not a good man There is never likely to be a Queen Jane, because then the powers that be would have to deal with the tricky question of whether Lady Jane Grey was actually queen for…
When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. The weather forecast hasn’t changed much since Shakespeare’s day. The rain looked set for the day, so we stayed in Chester this morning. Greg and Karen went to the Grovesner Museum, and Paula and I hit the thrift stores. By lunchtime it was down to the familiar soul destroying…
This morning it rain, rain, rained, like wet stuff falling from the sky. We waited to elevenish when the rain was down to the soul-destroying drizzle that does so much to create the British sense of overwhelming pessimism, and set out back to Chester. The journey back though the weeds of the North Shropshire Union (which is of course in Cheshire, not Shropshire, if you are keeping track) was interrupted by another stop to remove weed from the prop, and…