Rowkin Rovings Blog

Monday 13th^th June 2016

Di’s official day off today as it is her birthday. Unfortunately she has to celebrate it in the wintry wet weather at Bugsworth Basin. Our canal friends W+M from Bremen also pulled into the Bugsworth Basin last night and this morning they popped over with a lovely bunch of flowers, bottle of German white wine and a gorgeous towel with the Bremen city logo. Horst and Elfi, you will definitely recognise this. W+M gave Di a towel it reminded us of the story you had told us. It relates to the Brothers Grimm fairytale The Bremen Town Musicans – for those interested we have added in a

This morning was spent by Fras who tramped around in the rain whilst Di caught up on the blog as well as some reading.

Bugsworth basin is the site of a large transhipment basin where limestone, gritstone and other materials where brought down from the quarries via a tramway system. The tramway system involved running loaded wagons down rickety L shaped rail tracks with just gravity and then hauling the empty wagons back up again via horse. Frasers walk took him along the route of the old tramway, where there was still much evidence of the old tramway.

He followed the tramway as far as Chapel Milton where the course of the old tramway went under a rather impressive fork arrangement of railway viaducts which were built after the tramway.

As the tramway got higher up and heading into the peak district, fields with dry stone walls started to appear.

The afternoon was spent with a high tea for Di on the NB Lucy, complete with scones cooked by Fraser, strawberry jam and clotted cream. The ladies wore hats of course!!!