Busily through Fazeley

19th & 20th November

We made a lazy start yesterday, as we didn't want to leave Alrewas until the post had arrived at Will and Jane's. Sheila has had a new order for some crochet curtain edging, and had had to get some supplies sent to her to be able to fulfil it. It was a windy morning, but we were able to lock down, wind Sanity and return without too much hassle.

Once Sheila was back with her cotton, we set off up the cut for Fradley, turned into the Coventry and stopped on the water point there to refill. By now it was lunch time, and we were just able to get sandwiches made and eaten before the tank was full.

Towpath patrols were much in evidence as we did so, it being BW's "boat check" week when they try to note the licence state of every boat on the system. It's not clear just how much difference this makes. There still seems to be an awful lot of boats around with no, or out of date, licences. We've tried reporting some using the web page I mentioned the other day, but of course you get no feedback as to whether that achieved anything, so the motivation to do it disappears quite quickly.

No doubt in due course, BW will use the limited response as evidence that people aren't that bothered about the issue.

After lunch I did a long afternoon on the tiller. We had a fair bit to do around Fazeley today, so I wanted to be reasonably close to there by the end of yesterday. We made it to Hopwas by ten past four, just as it was getting dark, and quickly moored and buttoned up the boat for the night.

I'd bought some shin beef at Barton Turns the other day, so I made a classic stew with some of it, which was very welcome on a cold evening. Winter does have some compensations.

Today was a different sort of day. Sheila did one of her flying starts, getting the boat under way as I made the first thing cuppa. I relieved her on the tiller as soon as I'd had breakfast, and she'd just finished as we approached the shopping mooring by Sutton Road Bridge.

Back from restocking at Sainsbury's, off we went again, and turned onto the Birmingham and Fazeley to go down to Fazeley Mill Marina. The wind made reversing onto the service wharf even trickier than usual, but Sheila did it, with the aid of a bit of line pulling from me once Sanity's stern was inserted under the towpath bridge.

It's nice if you can complete a manoeuvre on engine alone, but the old boaters never hesitated to use a line or a shaft when necessary, and neither do we.

We pumped out, and bought a new gas cylinder and 10 bags of Multiheat. Out of the tricky entrance we went again, and headed on towards Bodymoor Heath.

We've tied just at the foot of the Curdworth locks, and plan to spend a couple of days here, mostly bird watching and geocaching. We've done a bit of the latter this afternoon, with mixed success. Of the three we looked for, one was found straightaway, but the second eluded us at first, as did the third. On the way back from this last, I had a thought about where the second might have been hidden, and was right, so the final score was two out of three, not so bad after all.

There's really not a lot of traffic about now, and these moorings, normally very busy in the summer, are deserted. There's a handful of odd boats (not all with licences) tied between here and Drayton Manor, looking like they plan to stay there for the rest of the winter, but it's hard to be sure.