“Of what” you may ask. It is 19th years to the day since we moved from Australia to Canada expecting to do a two-year stint – well, we all know that didn’t happen. Of those 19 years, we think we have probably spent at least two of them outside of Canada travelling.
Talking about travelling, we spent six hours battling very strong winds to do just nine miles. It has been a struggle all day just to keep the boat on the canal let alone in the middle of it.
We came off the Trent and Mersey Canal and hung a right onto the Staffordshire and Worcester Canal.
Starting at bridge 109 as we head in a south westerly direction heading to the city of Worcester. There are 46 miles and 43 locks for us to negotiate on our way. We hope to spend some time in Worcester with friends Dave and Janet from nb Ella who we met back in 2019 in Paddington Basin in London. We then met up with them again on the Kennett and Avon Canal a little later that trip.
It was wind jackets on and a very steely reserve to keep going.
A picturesque scene of the Sow Aqueduct which goes over the Sow River.
One of the few times we actually went in a straight line today.
For those of you not familiar with the canals, this is a signpost guiding you in every which way. What did surprise us, was to see substantial earth works happening to reopen the old passage from the Staff and Worsc to the River Sow at this signpost location.
It is only a distance of a mile, but it will open up a reasonable cruising area. We have circled the area where the link is.
You do pass a lot of marinas on the canals, and we would rank them from dastardly to perfectly satisfactory. The one just out of Acton Trussell where we pulled up tonight most definitely fits into the perfectly satisfactory. They have gone out of their way to make the surrounding area inviting to non-boaters.
By now we had had an absolute gutful of the wind and our ears were starting to ache. Even though we had the M6 less than half a kilometer from our mooring, we decided it would be better to cope with that than battle on further. Actually, looking in advance on the map, the M6 is going to shadow us for the next three cruising hours anyway, so better to pull in now and cope with that tomorrow.
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