Clever animals and Mr Tesco's colly at Great Haywood

Moored Great Haywood, Staffs & Worcs Canal

Most amazing.. the Canadian geese land in the wide here at Tixall.. (correct spelling this time Tony  ) in the late afternoon.. quite normal towards dusk.. but then about 11pm they all take off in the pitch black and off they go.  This had happened two nights in a row.  How on earth they can see at night like that I don’t know.

Talking of strange animal behavior, my girls Lucy and Meg have dried food constantly at their disposal.  They are far from greedy dogs, and it suits them to have small meals throughout the day.  Lucy is unreal.. if Meg’s bowl is empty she will sit right by it and squinney and whine, staring at one or other of us to get our attention to that fact.  Once Meg’s bowl is refilled, she then goes to her own and starts eating that!  It does make me laugh when she sits there bolt upright staring at Vic in the chair, especially when East Enders is on.. nothing catches his attention normally at that time!

Great Haywood Junction on the Trent & Mersey Canal..

We had popped up from Tixall Wide to meet Mr Tesco for some needed supplies and took the opportunity to put on water, visit the butcher and the Farm Shop for a cauliflower.. Yes a cauliflower.  Well Mr Tesco had brought me one you see, but I had to pay a premium price for it.. £1.45 or I could have gone for a bigger one at a massive £1.80. 

Well when I got it I couldn’t find it among the foliage!  “No way do I want this thanks, it won’t even do one meal!” “No problem, I’ll get it refunded”.. That was OK, but when I signed his bit of paper to say he was taking it back it said “Brockolli”… Gawd, I had to laugh.. “Hey it was a cauliflower!”.. “Well I can’t spell that” “Ya can’t spell broccoli either!”.. ha, we both rolled up!

And yet more ice as we cruise to Tixhall Wide

Milford to Tixall Wide, Staffs & Worcs Canal, 1.5 miles 1 lock

I couldn’t believe it this morning when I pulled the curtains.. ice!  Yet another good covering good grief!  It was so cold too when I took the girls out for their morning walk, but it didn’t stop us filling our wood stocks to the brim for the woodburning stove.. It was just round the corner you see, I had spied it the other day, we just had to wait for the ice to melt a bit or narrowboats to break through it.

So we spent all morning cutting and chopping and storing… hard work and I knew I had had a good workout.. Vic has crashed this afternoon, he did really well…

Just one lock today, and as per my new years resolution ‘twas me who did it.. well nearly, look at sir again, he’s off the boat, he can’t help himself doing something!…  The only boat on the move this morning, and this time it was us crunching the ice..

Just gonna relax now for a day or so and catch up with Chas and Ann aboard Moore2Life and hear all their news.. We’ll have an evening together tonight probably..

Happy Birthday Tra la la la

Happy Birthday Wends… Have a great day and an even better on on your night out! xx

Free from snow and nearly from ice at Milford

Moored Milton, Staff & Worcs Canal

Lazy day today, but hey look….

No snow!!  Don’t look to the right of No Problem though, that is thick ice.. it looks like it has melted but that is the remnants of the rain we had this morning sitting on top of it.

We walked the dogs on Cannock Chase returning just after lunch when I heard a crunch, crunch and sure enough a narrowboat appeared from behind us.. not too bad for him because that is where we had broken the ice a few days ago, but he did struggle to get round the corner once past us in the virgin ice.

That opened the flood gates, and two more boats appeared from the Great Haywood direction, so hooray we are off tomorrow!

Just trying to get the blog moved from blogspot and set up on my own server again, so one or two problems have reared up.  One main one is that readers having a problem with the RSS feed in a couple of the readers.  If you hare having trouble trying to discover the feed, type in http://www.choiceforum.co.uk/blog/atom.xml That is where the feed can be found.

It is interesting reading some of the comments from the last blog about continuous cruisers now being given ‘travellers’ status by the Government.. have a read by dropping down to the last blog post’s comments.  Another reader of the blog sent me an email with a very detailed description of what might actually happen.. He might put it in a comment?

It's No Problem being a traveller.. well if we could!

Moored Milford, Staff & Worcs Canal

It’s official we are travellers.  A report on Narrowboatworld tells of a new ruling from the Government making continuous cruisers officially travellers, and should be treated as such by local councils under Section 225 of the Housing Act 2004.

I guess they may have to provide more 14 day moorings in some parts just for us to use, that will be handy.. hope they put some bins out and keep the towpath tidy too…

I remember a couple of years ago we were walking with the girls, oh they had their scarfs on at the time, we were in our boating gear.. you know, not really scruffy but a bit, and we passed a family walking in the other direction.  When they had passed, I overheard one say “They look like new age travellers”.. someone replied “More like old age travellers to me”.. I have never forgotten that… loved it!

It’s an interesting read on Narrowboatworld, and I agree after the long consultation about the moorings at Bathampton and the decision that BW want to take about cutting or restricting moorings for all those boats, it may well be that they will have to provide more for them.. remains to be seen

Of course we can’t be travellers yet we are a bit stuck, but walking today I checked out the lambs by Tixall Lock..

They were happy enough, very lively in the chilly weather.  This is the second time I have seen the first lambs of the year in this field, saw the first ones last year here in January.

We are always looking for wood to go on the roof, but prefer not to do it this way.. I can’t post a picture here because of copywrite issues, but please take a look…. clicky for wood on the roof.

Just so pleased nobody was injured.

Beaten by ice, but not before a treat at Radford Bank

Acton Trussell to Milford, Staff & Worcs Canal, 6 miles 2 locks

The only thing that spoiled it was the wind… Such a lovely mooring close to Shutt Hill Lock, in fact we were mesmerised yesterday by three buzzards searching the field next to No Problem.  They were there for a good couple of hours very close to the boat.. wonderful.  The wind spoiled the peace though, it was in the north bringing the sound of the M6 right across us…

Down it came again last night, we were worried that we would miss our carvery at Radford Bank today.. but we need not have worried too much as a boat came past before we pulled the pins this morning and left a nice path through the not too frozen in canal..

My pleasure to do the first lock today.. but sir has to do something doesn’t he, and while I grab the camera for a quick pic he dives off the boat and shuts a the gate!!  “Hey I am s’pose to be doing this one””..

The lock cottage is very run down now and has a notice of planning permission on it.. presumably and hopefully for restoration.. but it has no access road to it that I can see, in fact we met the lady who used to live here back in February 2008.. “Lived here for 40 years” she said.. this was her mode of transport…

Down the cut to Radford Bank to catch the bus to Stafford.  But she is not there any more, nobody is.

Our target was also Radford Bank, and the carvery was absolutely superb, although there was no beer today.. their air had run out, so no beer on tap nor soft drinks.. how unusual, “We were suppose to get an emergency delivery of gas today.. but it didn’t arrive because of the snow”… OH WHAT!!!! Any excuse!!

It wasn’t quite a pub with no beer though, and vic had a Bud while I had a glass of very good wine.. lubbly dubbly..

Pity…. The narrowboat that had broken the ice earlier must have been moored at Radford Bank last night for now it was us who would be breaking ice towards Great Haywood this afternoon.. but it was beginning to get much thicker … and thicker..  and thicker!

We gave up just after we passed Tim of Staffordshire Canopies who was watching out the window probably wondering who the heck it was trying to cruise the ice bound canal.. waving as we passed we realised that it was pretty useless going much further and we might get stranded in the centre of the cut.. enough was enough for today!

*Please, please change your bookmarks for this blog*

I have been trying to run the blog on two urls because so many of you have not changed your bookmarks to http://www.choiceforum.co.uk/blog/noproblem.html

Lots of you are using http://nbnoproblem.blogspot.com/

If you read this blog in a feedburner then you also need to change the url to the feed or you will not get any new posts. 

With the new comment system I have discovered that there are comments left on the blogspot url that I have not seen, nor are they showing on the main page.  I’ll reply to as many of those I can this weekend. 

I gonna have to close down the blogspot one, it takes me much longer to post blogs anyway, having to do it twice.

So please, please change your bookmarks, and just as importantly your links on your own blogs to this blog so that I can shut down the blogspot url.

So…..

http://nbnoproblem.blogspot.com/ will not be available in a couple of days time.

Oh and just talking to some of the family tonight I agree with them when they tell me the new comment system is horrid, I agree.  It wasn’t me that changed it, it was haloscan themselves who upgraded.  I’ll take that off too and go back to blogger comment system.. only trouble is I don’t think I can migrate the comments from one to the other so old ones will disappear..

Time for change folks! .. Time to do it now!

A joy through Teddesley Park

Penkridge to Acton Trussell, Staff & Worcs Canal, 2.5 miles 4 locks

We left our overnight moorings once Rock n’ Roll had broken the ice left the waterpoint.  A full tankfull taken on for us too in case there was another mini freeze of the canal.

Before that this morning we popped into Stafford to get hold of some batteries for my digital scales, but once found they cost more than the scales did originally!  Sorry Annie, I got you some of those scales as a present not long ago!

Into Wilkos then to buy another non digital set costing just £3.99, they will do very nicely as a replacement.

Once on the move we were lucky that a boat had already broken the ice through the glorious Teddesley Park, although I was surprised to see it was a good inch think in places, it must have been really cold last night.

We managed to pick up quite a bit of wood at each of the four locks today…

It should burn well, and at least there will be no trip hazards by the lockside.  I believe these things are suppose to be seats while the lock is waiting to fill, but BW forgot to make the tops flat, it’s sort of pointed, so they are useless being there anyway. 

I guess we will be iced in tomorrow when I pull the curtains back.  But it is a favourite mooring of mine so I don’t mind too much except we were going to Radford Bank, a mile or so along, for lunch.. but instead I might have to put a bit of beef in the oven tomorrow..

Plenty of exercise as we join the Staff & Worc..

Today – Moat House Bridge 74 to Penkridge, Staff & Worcs Canal, 6 miles 6 locks
Yesterday – Hunting Bridge 7 to Moat House Bridge 74, Shropshire Union and Staff & Worcs Canals, 8.5 miles 1 lock

It didn’t take long to find some.. in fact it was sussed last night as we walked the girls…

That little lot will do us for a bit!

Gosh it was bitterly cold today, and the same yesterday as we made our way along the final bit of the Shropshire Union Canal to Autherley Junction.  I think it is ‘up’ to the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal, I say I think because the difference in water levels from one canal to the other was no more than an inch and half.

The lack of water flow on the Shroppie is probably due to the stoppage below Wheaton Aston where they have ‘dammed’ (is that the right spelling!?) the canal both north and south to be able to work in between in a water free environment on the embankment strengthening.

After cutting and storing the wood collected this morning, we made our way to Penkridge where we were greeted by Carol and George of NB Rock n’ Roll.  Only a brief meeting for now as we were trying to moor in a bit of a difficult place.  Was nice to meet you both, and hey I don’t have your blog on my blogroll yet gawd knows how I missed it!… But I will remedy that in a minute!  

When we visited the Bathampton on the Kennet & Avon Canal back in 2003 we were amazed at the amount of boats moored around that area, some were looking completely sad, one I remember covered in pallets.. well it seems BW want to change some of the mooring rules.  It makes interesting reading.. but BW are going to find it difficult to do that, some of those boats have been there for a decade or more.. This one is worth watching.

Happy Birthday to you tra la la la....

Happy Birthday Tony, a very special one too, have a great evening. See you soon. xxx