After the excitement of yesterday, today has been mostly uneventful. We started the day with a treat, a full English with Soda Bread toast. Ian makes a mean Soda Bread taught to him by a friend of a friend when we were in Ireland. It was way past 10 then, when we eventually set off.
There is a massive amount of offside vegetation still to be addressed along the route to Fradley. Every time we had to move over for an oncoming boat to get past those bloody bushes and branches intruding into the channel we ended up in the silt on the towpath side tipping and nearly getting stuck. And then just past Streethay Wharf, that long straight between bridge 86 & 87 where we had the misfortune to lose our chimney because of that offside growth, I couldn't believe that C&RT had gone against their word and not done anything about it. To see what happened to us click
HERE and the letter they sent to us after we had complained
HERE
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| Branches stretch halfway across the canal |
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| Reeds encroaching the channel |
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| Bridge 86 in the distance and not a cut branch in sight! |
Took nearly 4 hours to do the 10 miles to Fradley, slow going in places due to insufficient water under the hull. Pulling a wash we had to slow down to a tad over tickover to stop that from happening. Glad to see on arrival that spaces were to be had. Only three boats moored near the swingbridge so we pulled in behind to become the fourth boat.
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| Notice there are no other boats near us when we arrived. That's us at the back |
Fully expecting the moorings to fill quickly it beggered belief then when we went for a walk later in the afternoon to see this!
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| That cream coloured boat was there when we arrived. Why moor right in the middle effectively stopping anyone else from mooring |
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| That's FS on the right and that selfish boater on the left. Maybe a cruiser could fit in the gap? Certainly no other narrowboat! |
I am sure it is only a small number of boaters that do this and maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt as they may not know any different, never having had it explained that this is common practice in popular areas. It still annoys me though. Should I go and say something? That for me is a difficult question to answer.
And wildlife today,
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| Wren |
2 comments:
You may not have had the offside bushes cut back, but coming in to Nantwich from the north they have cut back about half a mile of them. What a difference, lots of space when boats come round the bends. Also been busy at Wrenbury by the church lift bridge. Single handers can now get to the side to open the bridge. They are also improving the boggy towpath and putting new piling in by the Hire boat lift bridge.
Steve NB Tumbleweed
Seems to me it's a regional lottery as what gets done first. Hopefully, next time we come along this section we will be pleasantly surprised.
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