Nottingham to Atherstone *6

Today on The Kite Experiment I present a day in pictures as we rest for the night at the village of Alrewas...































and a moment in poetry...


As we pass under bridges
I wonder of the memories felt
the spirit of a thought caught
in between the brick cracks.

A touch leads to crumble
trying to catch the wind in my hands.
The dirt under my finger nails
tells me all I need to know.

Nottingham to Atherstone *5

As Leigh and I went through the day in a cold-fueled delirium we each had spurts of energy followed by a deep fatigue. Leigh set out in the morning for some supplies and returned half hour later with a bag of milk, eggs, fire-lighters and bacon. By mid-day I had enough of grumbling and decided to leaf through the book, kindly given to us by mum called, Food from your garden by Readers Digest. There is a section on Food from the Country which details some foods found in the wilds. I decided to head along the towpath and see what free foods I could find.


There were bountiful blackberries and so I set to riffling through the bushes, being pricked and stung whilst I reached for the juciest berries under leaves.


Following the guide in the book, I discovered Elderberry and picked bunches of these to enjoy.


I had collected enough and wanted to get underway with making the produce into something lovely, so decided upon a crumble. I had read that Elderberry combined with blackberry is a good choice. So from the stalks of Elderberry I used a fork to remove the berries easily. I rinsed all the berries and piled them in a large glass oven-proof dish. We were pretty much out of butter so I made the crumble with olive oil and flour we've had for a while and I threw in some Whetgerm and Oats.

This is how it looked before putting in the oven, I added some walnuts on top...


And so for dinner we sat and ate our berry crumble with vanilla ice cream, mmmmm......


By early evening we were both feeling more chipper so decided upon a short jaunt to charge the batteries for light in the evening. We said farewell to our hedgerow-side mooring and I ran ahead to open up Dallow Lock ready for Leigh to steer her in.


It was a very narrow lock, for one boat at a time. Leigh did complain of a surge from the boat as I opened the paddles but I thought it was a nice little lock with easy gates to open, not at all threatening. It's funny how each lock has it's own characteristics.


We passed some gardens leading on to the canal edge, waved to the house owners and looked ahead...


We pass Shobnal Fields and under bridge 33


We approach a boatyard, with a sign neither of us recognise until we moor, of course, pump out...


We are in need of emptying the tank so tomorrow we will make enquiries.

Day off

Today has been a day of resting on the boat and I have been underway with the curtains in between reading a brilliant book. I found machining the heading tape on to the top of the curtain hard to keep in a straight line even with pins. Why is it that Mothers always make things like that look easy! When I was working on them at Mum's she machined the header of one expertly with no problems, where as I initially had the wrong colour thread coming through the front so spent ages unstitching, then the tape kept riding up to the very top of the curtain. Still, I've finished that one off and it hangs really well. The wobbly stitching can barely be seen inbetween the ruffles!


Here is how they look so far...


So only one left to finish, just the bottom hem and one side to do!


We are out of, well quite a few things of late, but most importantly clean smalls. It's been an age since access to easy washing machines and with limited water resources on board I was putting off a big wash. However this evening I decided to give the Wonder Wash a go.


It worked well. After filling with some hot water and detergent, in went the clothes and the spinning began. This is where Leigh came in, the machine did move around somewhat, so next time I'll use it on a truly flat surface. The pressure closure works a dream and no water leaked during the spin. It took about 1 minute of turning, they suggest 1 turn a second and then we inserted the short draining pole to allow the water to drain out. This took a bit of experimenting with to get out all the excess water in the drum. Initially the water was very dark and upon several rinsing attempts it did seem to clear. However it didn't run clear, it would've take up alot more water than we could offer up to this pursuit. Leigh wrung the the clothes out and hung them about the boat to dry ready for tomorrow.

Nottingham to Atherstone *4

Day Four


It's Sunday and I'm home. It's been a blur of a day, we both have some sort of cold/virus so it's been a struggle today. We left our mooring along from Willington in need of water. We don't have our own hose so we can only use the BW taps along the canal to fill up our water carriers which will only last a few days. We are already looking into when we will need to fill up again soon and where the next water point is.


We passed under the first brick built bridge of the day, bridge 26, High Bridge.


We saw some lovely boats with colour schemes that we both admired on the trip today and both agree that our boat sure does need a good paint job but it will have to wait until we've raised some funds!


We approached our first Aqueduct, which wasn't as impressive as it could've been. There is an amazing one in Wales which looks as frightening as a high-rise fair ride! We continued along the canal following the route by map over to page 165 of the Colins waterways guide 3 (Birmingham and the heart of England).


We were heading towards Burton-upon-Trent and passed under bridge 28...




As we continued along we passed a pub offering two meals for a tenner just after bridge 29a we heard our bellies rumble and jumped at the chance of hot food. Leigh guided the boat towards the towpath and I lept off the boat with the centre rope and pulled her in. We hammered in the mooring pins and ran the ropes through and tied off on the boat. Delia had escaped through the bow doors and under the cratch cover much to our dismay and was too cheeky to come back toward the boat even through we rattled her crunchies. So we left her to it and went for lunch.

When we came back to the boat, Delia was in the bushes and soon enough in Leigh's arms. She went inside and we set off again. We had just over a mile until the water point. We were looking out for bridge 32 as we knew it was just after. When we were on the approach, Leigh dropped the revs and we slowly passed through the bridge. We spotted the water point, in use and moored up on the towpath side.

The couple using the water point were errecting a temporary cratch cover as the clouds were grey and there was a gradual pitter-patter of rain on the surface of the canal water. They soon left and we were preparing for reversing (without steering) and turning the boat (against the wind) using the barge pole. It wasn't an easy job but we did it! And filled our bottles with water.

We set off continuing along the canal and I was feeling worse than ever so we decided to pull up and call it a day. I went to bed and so our journey waits until tomorrow...

Nottingham to Atherstone *3

Day three


We upped mooring pins - like tent pegs and set off passing Barrow upon Trent and going through Barrow bridge 16. Once again we had forgotten to remove the chimney before leaving our mooring so I clambered along the roof and hauled it off, the sooty smell puffing up my nose, and tied it up with a bungie on the roof. We had heard stories of folk who had left their chimneys on and going through some very low bridges bent them straight over!


The canal was trailing the A50 road, or rather the road was trailing our route and we noticed that to the opposite side was the train track. It was fascinating to see the three forms of transport, people moving from A to B along the same stretch.

We passed through Stenson Lock and the boat yard there and continued on route towards Willington. We had decided to moor along this stretch so that I could access the village train station, I had a funeral to attend this weekend and needed to get back to the car in Nottingham.


We passed the winding point (turning area) at bridge 23 and realized very quickly that we wouldn't get much quiet as there were trains after trains racing by. So we continued, passing by other moored boats, wondering why they all choose to moor there and moored just before bridge 25, the Coach and Horses bridge. We were along the canal where hedges of blackberries lined the towpath and beyond this was a wide expanse of nature reserve. Delia was in her element until facing off a dog, then she chose to settle down on the deck chair on the stern.


Leigh and I grazed on the berries as we explored the area.

We decided to chop up the pallet on the roof as it was getting in the way and we could do with the wood, so out came the saws and the workbench.


Tomorrow I will leave Leigh on the boat setting off on a bitter-sweet journey ahead. Stay linked to The Kite Experiment fore the journey will continue on Sunday.

Nottingham to Atherstone *2

Day Two.


Delia spent the journey basking in the sunlight spots, streaming into the boat through the windows. She has been exploring outside the boat during our tea-break stop today and is now in and out the hedgerow along the tow path whilst we moor for the night.

This morning, after a trip to the amazing Chandlery at Sawley we set off with a new mop/brush/hook on a pole and fully stocked with milk. We passed through the flood lock, already open and looked forward to the next stretch of the Trent and Mersey.


Following the directions on the map, we kept to the right to aviod any problems from the weir, indicated by the chain of large orange buoys.


We passed under the bridge for the M1 motorway and noticed we were at Junction 24 - one that I have driven passed on many occasions.


Continuing along the wide stretch of the canal, there were only a few other boats passing on route.


We passed a sign at Derwent mouth


and found our path through the overhanging bushes, gently pootling down a waterway stretch which was like a secret entrance to Britain.


We came across the first lock of the day and shared the lift with another boat well staffed with crew.


We followed on in their waves all round delightful Shardlow, passing many moored boats at the marina and noticing some gorgeous historic boats.


Leigh found out that this area is very popular and we would be hard pushed to find a place to stop over night, he wasn't joking! Boats were moored each side making some corners real sharp turns. We heard stories of a boat getting stuck yesterday and so took it slow. Leigh did a sterling job at steering, he makes it look so easy! We wanted to make a good distance today so didn't pull up to explore, we were happy to absorb the view of the village from the cut.

The architecture was fascinating...


Nice to see British Waterways (BW) giving the foliage a hair cut!


We came upto the next lock and again shared this with the boat in front. We had to rope both boats up as there was alot of movement in the locks.


We headed out the lock first leaving the other boaters to stop for lunch and steamed out into the countryside, passing Hicken's Bridge (4).




As we went along, we spotted two herons stood like twiglet statues on the canal edge looking for fish.


This stretch of the canal has moorings and a tow path on one side with trees and fields beyond. We passed through bridge 5 and took in the vast expanse of greenery. We were enjoying sharing the steering...


We came up to Aston Lock and decided to go over manouvering the lock together. So I did a quick tie-her-up trick and Leigh and I went up the hill to the lock gates. After closing the top gates and their paddles we began the cranking at the lower gates to allow the water to flow out. Leigh turned to head to the boat only to find her rope dangling loose in the water and her nose wide into the canal. She's on the loose! We rushed down the hill and both lept aboard to rescue her and the trailing rope. Leigh dropped me off and I went up to open the gates. But they wouldn't open. I pulled and pushed but I couldn't open them at all. I noticed that water from the top gates was forcing through the upper flaps, this pressure must be forcing the gates shut I thought. I signalled to Leigh who came to my rescue. They were stiff gates and needed real strength to open them, not my best skill but certainly Leigh's! We reported the difficulties to BW and after alot of banging about, sloshing water and heave-ho-ing, we managed to get the boat through the lock unharmed but we were both rather stressed.

We continued a little father and pulled over for a well deserved break. We had completed 5 miles and it was still early, 4pm or so, so we had another few hours of cruising left.

We took the straight run up through Weston lock and on to Swarkestone Lock where a bunch of kids were playing in the water. One of which had no fear or you could say no brains and bombed into the lock water just as Leigh was setting off on the boat into the lock. After a bit of loud mouthing the kids played ball and lent a hand. This was a big lock and took quite some time to fill up. I took the paddles gradually so as to prevent excessive banging about of the boat in the lock and Leigh having to pump the engine.


We came out alot higher in the countryside and were heading towards the sun, after passing bridge 15 on the Trent and Mersey canal we decided enough was enough.


We had managed 8 miles and I was feeling a migrane coming on. Too much sun. We moored up for a beautiful sunset and settled for the evening. After curry and cleaning up, Leigh fixed up some new fire cement on the wood burner as we had discovered it was cracking and breaking off the flue.


And so we sit by the fire after a good sunset, wondering what is in store tomorrow and looking back at today as a joy and adventure. We would love to cruise for ever.