Friday 18 August 2017

Gloucester and Sharpness Canal. Splatt Bridge to Saul Junction via Gloucester Docks

We took Legend back up into Gloucester Docks for the weekend. Anne was coming to stay the night and we thought it would be nice to go to the park and watch the firework display marking the end of Gloucester Festival. Our plan had been to go straight to the services before mooring but they were being used, so we backed up and tied up on the visitor moorings just ahead of Sula, the huge red lightship.
(Sula is for sale by the way. We might have mentioned that before.)
When Anne arrived we had a wander round the docks. Where the food festival had been two weeks previously, there was now a beach with deck chairs, a Punch and Judy show and about 50 tonnes of sand with a load of kids digging in it. Within minutes of turning up, Anne and Ann-Marie were in there in the thick of it...
instantly surrounded by a small gang of awe-stricken children who couldn’t believe how you could make a CASTLE out of SAND!
Later that evening the fireworks in the park were some of the best we’ve ever seen. No, scratch that, they were the best. We were in the perfect position with perfect weather conditions, and for a good half hour our entire world was filled with crescendo after crescendo of perfectly synchronised dazzling light. It seems that after several deleted attempts to describe them, mere adjectives verbs and nouns just aren’t adequate. You will just have to take our word for it that they were Really Good.

All that afternoon there had been lots of hustle and bustle on the quay-side by our boat, as energetic and enthusiastic people came along to register and collect their numbers for the Gloucester City Marathon, which was taking place the following day. We were woken in the morning not, for a change, by the seagulls, but by the chatter of 1500 people all preparing to face their own private challenge.
Some were doing a half marathon, but most were going for the full 26+ miles. We went over to Lanthony Bridge to watch the start.
All the physical effort made us feel hungry so we strolled back to the boat for breakfast. By the time we returned to the quay-side the first of the half marathon runners had made it across the finish line. We walked up past the lock to the bridge over the river, about ¾ of a mile from the finish, and cheered on some of the half marathon mid-field. After saying goodbye to Anne, we went back to the bridge just in time to see the 3:15 pacemaker go past. We stayed there cheering on all the runners for the rest of the afternoon till there were only a few straggles left then walked along the course back to the boat. We were quite pleased to find that the advice we’d been giving everyone was actually correct; there was less than a mile to go and the bridge we were standing on really was the final climb before the end.

In the evening Kim, Luke and George popped in on their way back home from Cornwall. Ann-Marie fed them Lasagne, then we had a lovely evening chatting and reading Dr Seuss to George.

During the week we had another crack at the Thames and Severn Towpath walk. This time we drove to Stroud and walked to Nutshell Bridge and back...
 
 
...before carrying on to Griffins Lock where the sandwiches ran out once more.
 
 
 
 
 
We spotted a pair of Kingfishers on the way in a courtship ritual and managed to get some lovely photos.
 
 
Stroud itself is really pretty. It’s really interesting with some fabulous buildings and loads of quirky little shops; definitely worth a return visit, but after a 13 mile towpath walk a quick look round was all we were up to.

Keeping our visits to National Trust establishment above one a month has been relatively easy this summer. The latest one was Newark Park; a Tudor hunting lodge turned Georgian stately home.
 
We had a very interesting basement tour and a wander round the house and grounds, but the biggest selling point of the place was the view.
Anne’s moving day finally came around almost a year after first deciding to buy her own flat. So it was with great excitement that we drove down to Bristol to give her a hand to move out of her bed-sit. She wasn’t going to be getting the keys to the new place for a week so all her stuff was going to be staying in the van until then, but as she works away all week and lives out of her car, she figured it wouldn’t be any different. When we first saw the VW Transporter that she’d hired we were sure it wasn’t going to be big enough, but with the girls carrying everything down three flights of stairs while Dave played sideways Tetris we managed to get it all in.
Just.

The next day we resumed our Thames and Severn walk, this time we parked at the Ship Inn at Brimscombe and walked back to Griffins Lock...
...then forward through Brimscombe Port to Chalford where, even though our sandwiches hadn’t run out, we stopped for a cuppa at the delightful Lavender Bakehouse and Coffee Shop.
 
 
 
We promised ourselves a return visit to see more of both Chalford and the Lavender Bakehouse on the final bit of our T&S walk when we’ll get all the way up to the Sapperton Tunnel.

Later in the week, Mum and Dad had to go to a funeral at Weston Super-Mare. As the service was in the morning, we went to have a British Seaside afternoon with them. It was a lovely clear day and before we met up we had a paddle in the sea and a walk along the beach.
 
 
It reminded us a bit of walking along all the beaches in Spain and Portugal. When Mum and Dad turned up we walked down the prom in the sunshine, watched the donkey rides and the kids playing on the beach and had an ice-cream. As Legend was only about an hour away we decided to all go back to the boat for dinner. As usual Ann-Marie produced a roast chicken dinner for four from our tiny galley at the drop of a hat before we almost had to kick them out so they’d get home before midnight.

Next morning we cast off and moved about a quarter of a mile to Sandfield Bridge via Saul services. While we were taking on drinking water we went to use the showers but they were freezing.

After breakfast we packed up some sandwiches and headed out in the car for our fourth and final assault on the Thames and Severn towpath (Western Approach). We parked right outside our new most favourite place; The Lavender Bakehouse and Coffee Shop, and walked up the last two and a half miles of towpath to the Daneway Portal of the Sapperton Tunnel. Compared to the rest of the canal, this section is very overgrown and derelict.
  
Unsurprisingly, hardly any restoration work has been carried out up here; until the CCT achieve through navigation to Stroud and Brimcombe Port, all their effort and recourses will be concentrated there. As the canal and the River Frome wind their way up the valley, it becomes more wooded and secluded. Through Siccaridge Wood the overhanging trees meet each other, large willows tower up from the middle of the canal bed and, where there is water, it is only inches deep.
From the Daneway pub, (whose car park sits directly over an in-filled lock) to the tunnel mouth, the line of the canal and its adjoining river become a nature reserve; the trees and undergrowth edge closer and very little sunlight manages to penetrate the Beech and Willow canopy. The tunnel portal, when it appears with its castellated copings and turrets, is like something out of a fairy-tale.
We could well believe that there might be trolls living in there.
The locks on the Thames and Severn Canal are quite unique and to explain why a potted history is called for.
Are you sitting comfortably?
The Canal runs from Stroud, where it joins the Stroudwater Canal, through the Sapperton Tunnel and then down to Inglesham Lock at Lechlade on the Thames. At the time of its construction, the Sapperton Tunnel was going to be the longest transport tunnel in the world; there was neither the money nor the engineering capability to dig a bore big enough to accommodate the huge, fifteen feet wide Severn Trows. Thames Barges, however came in smaller sizes, and a twelve and-a-half foot wide tunnel was both possible and - it was thought by the engineers - affordable. A large inland port was built at Brimscombe, where goods could be transhipped between the Trows and the Thames Barges. From there the locks towards the Severn were 15’6” by 72’ and towards the Thames they were 12’6” by 90’. Of course during  construction the money ran out several times, it took longer than expected and no-one had given much thought about how the summit was going to be kept in water before the planned feeder branch to Cirencester was completed. This feeder was to be the only supply to the summit, no reservoirs had been planned, but when it was completed it soon became obvious that the promised supply from the river was woefully inadequate; reportedly by a factor of ten.
Never profitable, from its outset the T&S was plagued with problems. Springs burst through the clay lining leaving holes which leaked in dry spells, porous limestone lost more water, and the miserly supply meant that it was closed to navigation more often than not. In an attempt to reduce the wastage of their precious water, the company reduced the length of the locks from 90’ to 72’ by extending the cill into the lock chamber and installing a second set of gates.
And so it is that the modern day towpath walker, on looking into one of the derelict lock chambers, will firstly notice that it is neither wide nor narrow in the traditional sense and due to the lack of a proper water supply, unlike derelict locks on other canals, there is no constant flow over the weirs.
Secondly, when you get a glimpse through the undergrowth you notice that there are two sets of header gate recesses...
...and there is a strange looking arch under the cill...
...an engineering solution to the problem of how to shorten the locks and still use the original paddle gear.
Although it is not going to happen in our lifetimes, at some point in the future this canal will reopen for navigation. When it does, its odd looking locks will no doubt be a very effective attraction for future generations of boaters.

On the way back down to Chalford we came across a couple who were taking a photo of something. We approached quietly and they told us there was an otter in the water. What a treat! Neither of us had ever seen an otter in the wild before and this chap seemed completely unfazed by the bunch of humans pointing a collection of phones and cameras at him.

He went for a little swim and then climbed out and went to the base of a tree where he proceeded to scratch himself.


Back at Chalford we celebrated our otter spotting with tea and cake in the Lavender Bakehouse...
before climbing up the steep twisty donkey roads and steps that wind through the village. Chalford is built on the steep side of the valley with houses perched one on top of another.

After Anne’s house move our poor calf muscles really didn’t know what had hit them.   

Wednesday 9 August 2017

Gloucester and Sharpness Canal. Splatt Bridge to Rea Bridge.

The Waterways Recovery Group – WRG - is a (very) active arm of the Inland Waterways Association. We got involved last year after we attended the IWA AGM and met some highly enthusiastic “WRGies”. We went along to two weekend camps; the Bonfire Bash last November and the BCN clean-up earlier this year. On the strength of those we decided to volunteer for two week-long camps this year, one on the Mon and Brec and one on the Grantham.

Although every canal camp is unique, they loosely follow a well-rehearsed and trusted basic formula. Each camp has a Leader, an Assistant Leader, a cook and up to fifteen additional volunteers. They are all accommodated in somewhere like a church or village hall, so sleeping arrangements are fairly primitive, but fun and quite often cosy. Meals are all taken together and there is always plenty of food. Chores are shared out between the volunteers. Each camp gets the use of two of WRG’s fleet of nine-seater minibuses along with a trailer for all the cooking, digging, scrub bashing, surveying and brick-laying kit,  plus first aid and PPE.
All the volunteers arrive on the Saturday afternoon and after dinner there is a safety brief. During the rest of the week, days are spent on site, which is usually, but not always, at the focus of the next big push by one canal restoration society or another. These places are rarely somewhere our boat can go, and in a lot of cases never will be in our lifetimes, but with successful restorations like the Ashton, Rochdale, Droitwich and Huddersfield canals behind them - all of which were, at one time or another, deemed impossible – having only a vague deadline, or even none at all, does not faze WRG in the slightest. They turn up, get stuck in, put one brick on top of another, and low and behold, another impossible-to-restore stretch of waterway gradually comes back to life.

The restoration society we were assisting was the Monmouthshire, Brecon and Abergavenny Canals Trust and our accommodation was in the Methodist Hall in Cross Keys.


Ralph had phoned Dave a few weeks earlier asking him if he would like to drive one of the minibuses. This meant that we needed to arrive at lunch time so that Dave could be assessed and ticketed. While Dave was out on his assessment, Ann-Marie helped to count all the kit into the hall from the trailer, then when he got back we both went off to the train station at Newport to pick up four more volunteers.
This year the two Mon and Brec Canal Camps had a slightly different focus to previous years. Past camps have rebuilt bridges and lock walls...

...but this year Ralph Mills, the camp leader, wanted to bring his two passions together and explore the history of the Ty Coch lock flight with an archaeological excavation of the site of the lock keepers cottage. The cottage was knocked down in the 1950’s but there are a couple of photographs and an old OS map which pinpoint its location.

Apart from Ralph, (who was born with a trowel in his hand) only two of our band of modern day Navvys had any experience of archaeology, so before letting us loose on the real thing, we had a day digging and scraping a test trench a bit further down the site.
The next day Ralph marked out the excavation trench proper and we began removing turf and working our way down. By Tuesday morning we had uncovered a rock fall...
...and in the afternoon, to great excitement, Ann-Marie discovered the foundations of a wall.
Further up the trench, after Ralph had photographed the fallen rocks, Dave removed them and carried on digging down through a thick layer of clay and discovered another wall.
While all this was going on, other members of our team were also making discoveries. A growing pile of finds built up on the picnic bench waiting to be cleaned. Lots of pottery in various colours, various bolts, nails and other metal objects, several pieces of clay pipe plus surprising things like a pot noodle wrapper with a 1980 sell-by date and two plastic toy soldiers from the 1950s.
By close of play on Thursday the trench had gone out sideways, floors and a doorway had been discovered and the pile of find-bags was bigger than ever.
Cleaning the finds.
On Friday it threw it down, so we went for a visit to Big Pit mining museum.

Mention needs to be made about the food. Ayushi was Ralph’s assistant leader but, as no-one had volunteered for cooking duties; she kindly took on that role as well. Canal camps have a reputation of being well catered and this one was no exception. The meals were terrific and seemingly never ending. Ayushi also provided some inspired evening entertainment, becoming a Transylvanian games master for a hilarious role-playing game called Mafia.
It was interesting and very pleasurable to watch, and be part of a group of complete strangers coming together to live, trust and work with each other as a team. It was all over too quickly and we can't wait till the next one.
Before breakfast each morning Dave, when he wasn’t on sandwich making duty, took himself out for a walk. Here are some early morning photos of the hills around Cross Keys.




Back home after a week away it took us a couple of days of recovering to get back into action.
The automatic plant watering system was deemed a success, there was a lot of dead heading to be done and the petunias were looking a bit leggy, but everything was still alive and green and the batteries were fine.


We had a bit of a hitch with our next boat move. We’d thought that the summer bridge opening times were 8 till 8, so we’d planned to let the washing dry and have an evening cruise from Splatt Bridge to Saul Junction. At just after 7, with hardly a breeze and the promise of a glorious sunset, we set off towards Fretherne Bridge; the only obstacle between us and our chosen mooring. We knew we’d cocked it up when we rounded the corner and instead of either a red or green light, there were no lights at all. A closer inspection also revealed a very definite absence of bridge keepers.
If, Dear Reader, you should travel this way (and we sincerely hope you do) please note that summer bridge opening times are 8am to 7pm. And we’d missed it. There being nowhere to moor near the bridge we turned round. (We are really going to miss the ability to turn a 57’ boat anywhere we like!) About 200 yards away, on the off-side, we found two little clearings between the brambles, no doubt kept clear for fishermen, but conveniently spaced for our front and back end, so we turned around again and, with no small measure of thorn prickles and a good deal of swearing, managed to secure ourselves to the bank with fore and aft access, while the middle of the boat was squashed into the blackberry bushes.
Hardly ideal, but it was only for one night. By half past eight in the morning with, it appeared, a whole new population of spiders who had taken advantage of the proximity offered by the blackberry bushes and installed themselves on board overnight, we were through the bridge and tied up just before the café at Saul Junction.

In the afternoon we went for a rather hot walk along the line of the as-yet unnavigable Stoudwater Canal.
The Cotswold Canal Trust is well on the way to full restoration; it is quite possible that when we come this way again we’ll be able to do this journey by boat. At the moment though, 200 yards from Saul Junction, it is crossed by Walk Bridge on the level. A little further on there is the “Missing Mile” where the original line has been obliterated by the A38 and the M5. There are plans afoot to dig a new channel through the middle of a roundabout and to share a culvert under the motorway with the river.
After that, however, things begin to look brighter. At Duck Lock we came across a WRG canal camp in full swing, rebuilding the steps and wing walls.
We hadn’t realised that WRG were doing anything near to where we were. Maybe next year we’ll volunteer for a camp on the Cotswolds, then maybe at some point we’ll be able to bring our boat through a lock or bridge that we’ve had a hand in restoring. That would be fantastic.
We walked as far as Nutshell Bridge where the sandwiches ran out...




...so we turned round and saved the rest for another day.
Just over a mile from home. Ooh-er

On one of our towpath walks we came across two leisure batteries that some uncaring boater had dumped. We noted their position and when we came past with the boat we picked them up; partly because they’re worth weighing in, but mostly because we hate seeing stuff dumped on the towpath. We see boat life as the perfect opportunity to reduce our impact on the planet, we are acutely aware of every watt of electricity we generate, every pint of water we put in the tank and every ounce of rubbish we carry to the disposal point. So it really disappoints us when we see evidence of other boaters who seem determined to leave as much mess as they can. Anyway, at Rea Bridge we transhipped them into the car and took them to a nearby metal recycling place where we got £25, which we promptly spent on a new bottle of gas in Go Outdoors*. Thank you, Mr Scuzzy Boater.


That afternoon we went up to Gloucester Quays where the food festival was in full swing.

We could easily have spent our £25 again on cheese and fudge in the first five minutes, but we restricted ourselves to buying some lemon oil and sampling all the tasters on offer.

We returned to Gloucester Quays the next morning. This time we did buy some of the yummy cheese plus a pasty for the drive to Bristol. Our cousin Libby from Oz was over in the UK for a tour with Maeve as “Mother’s Ruin: A Cabaret About Gin” and we’d got tickets to see them at the Old Market Assembly Rooms. Joining us were Anne, Ben and Anne’s friends Lesley & Pete. We had a VIP table booked, including a cocktail and nibbles (ooh, look at us!) and we arrived early and had a meal before the performance.
The support act was a brilliant close-up magician who did seamless sleight of hand tricks right under our noses, leaving us amazed and baffled...
...then at 10 o’clock the girls swung into action with an entertaining and educational journey through the history of gin.

Raucous, reflective and talented, they packed an amazing amount of entertainment into an hour. Following on from Bristol they are off to the Edinburgh Fringe then London and Birmingham, before going back down under at the beginning of September. If you get the chance, go and see them. it's a fabulous evening.

Back in Gloucester we had a final trip to the food festival and had a look at the historic lifeboats that were gathered in the docks for the weekend...
...before heading for the demonstration tent to see Bake-Off winner Candice Brown.
In an hour she made a cornflake tart, a savoury pancake and a swiss roll, which may sound easy but when you’re trying to do it in front of 100 people whilst being interviewed probably isn’t.

After a weekend of being party-going tourists we thought we ought to get back to a proper boating life. Dave did an oil change on the Lister, and while he was at it he finally got round to fitting the new lift pump that we’ve been carting around since Easter. With that in place we’ll be able to use the bottom 50 litres of diesel in the tank, and hopefully not run out half way through a tunnel.

The next day we returned to tourist mode and went to Westbury Court Water Gardens (NT) which, as the name suggests, were beautiful and tranquil.



As we were west of the river, we carried on down to Lydney Harbour where we had an ice-cream and a walk around.




We stood on the hard and watched a narrowboat following one of the historic lifeboats from Gloucester on their way out of Sharpness and down the river towards Bristol. The lifeboat was hustling along quite happily..
...but it looked like hard work for the narrowboat.
They were only just making headway and, not that we really needed telling, made us even more sure that we will not be putting Legend to the task. (Apologies for the grainy pictures, the camera was right at the end of its zoom)

We didn’t need the car again for a couple of days, so we left it in the carpark at Rea Bridge. We’ve left our car in car parks like that no end of times without problems, but our luck finally ran out. Dave went out to get some petrol for the genny and found the rear quarter-light broken and stuff strewn all over the car.
The satnav, which had been in the glove box had gone, along with the rucksack that lived in the boot containing our waiting-for-a-recovery-truck gear, (two fleece sleeping bags, two hi-viz vests and a lightweight waterproof jacket) obviously taken in case there was anything of value in it. On the positive side, they’d not had the battery, they’d shut the door so it wasn’t all wet and, apart from the window, hadn’t damaged anything. Theft rather than mindless vandalism, but very upsetting and annoying all the same. By 11 the next morning, for less than £200, we had a new satnav and a very nice man called Andy was putting a new quarter-light in for us. We still need to replace the rucksack and its contents, but if that’s as bad as it gets, we’ll consider ourselves to be still on the winning side.

In the afternoon, to cheer ourselves up, we drove out to Wych near Malvern and had a breezy, bracing walk down the ridge path to British Camp, round the Motte and back through the woods on the east side.







The views from the top of British Camp were particularly stunning.





When we came home we parked in Gloucester, on a road with street lights and within view of some very nice looking houses, then walked back to the boat. We went via Tesco and just happened to get there at yellow labelling time. Just as well really; after all the emotion and a ten mile walk up and down the Malvern Hills, a pizza and a film was about all we were fit for.

*Go Outdoors sell Calor gas for a lot less money than most marinas, however it is only cheaper if you don’t have a wander around the shop first and find a new pair of Brashers in the sale, or a purple Berghaus jacket that you can’t live without.**

**Wandering round the chandlery in a marina can make their gas incredibly expensive as well. On reflection, the cheapest gas is from a fuel boat.

New Mills to Cassiobury Park. Grand Union Canal.

The day after we got back from Ireland we did a short hop down the cut to King’s Langley, then walked back and leapfrogged the car to Grove ...