A day at Great Haywood, and a day on the move

14th & 15th January

As forecast, it was cold again the night before last, so our decision to get to Great Haywood early was validated. The cut was lightly frozen over next to the boat in the morning, and when we took a walk to Tixall Wide later in the day, we were able to see that it had been much thicker there.

Leaving Sheila on anchor watch with the engine running, I made a quick trip to the shops, buying a nice but rather small and pricey loaf from the Farm shop and a newspaper in the village.

When I got back, Sheila was proofreading once more, though the weak internet connection gave her some grief in the course of the day, with pages loading only with difficulty. I got on with the fender, doing the other half of the tricky bit through the crotch of the thing. I'm beginning to be quite hopeful about the final result; I've just got the ends of the arms to do, so hopefully it should be finished by the end of the weekend.

The weather stayed cool and misty all day, so that we began to wonder if the further thaw was going to happen, but during the evening it did indeed begin to warm up, and by this morning the ice was all gone. The weather pattern at the moment offers a choice of boating challenges: either it's cold enough to freeze the cut, or it's warm, wet and ... windy.

This was the forecast for this morning, with gusts up to 30 mph. As we planned to water, then back off the water point, go through the junction and reverse onto Anglo Welsh's service wharf, this was a bit alarming. In the event, things were nothing like as problematic as I'd feared, which just shows the importance of avoiding premature pontine progressions (don't cross your bridges until you come to them).

It was Sheila's turn to steer, but by chance she has steered the last twice we've stopped at Anglo Welsh, so out of regard for my amour propre, she said I could do it this time.

"Otherwise, dear," she said sweetly, "they'll think you can't steer the boat."

She duly took Sanity up to the water point, and I left her watering and running another washload whilst I nipped into the village for a more plebeian but substantial loaf, a litre of milk and a paper. When I got back, things were still chugging along, so I went into the yard to check where I should aim for when coming in for services.

To my relief (I'm not proud, and anyway, I know I can steer the boat) I was told that they could do the pump out and diesel if we just pulled back a bit on the water point so that the hoses would reach from the service wharf across the towpath to us. Apparently, BW only lets them do this in the winter, as in the summer "there would be too many walkers and cyclists going by".

This is classic BW inconsistency, of course, as there are many places where boats are serviced across the towpath all year round in exactly this way, the Trading Post at Higher Poynton being the example we know best, and if anything a busier towpath than that at Great Haywood.

No matter, the important thing was that we got it done. It is, as I've said before, a very friendly yard, and strongly recommended. Just to prove my ability, I did the reverse off the bank and turn into the junction for Sheila, which went faultlessly, there being no one around to see it.

We boated on through Tixall Lock, crossing with a struggling AW boat heading back to base, They'd cilled the stern at Deptmore, and the rudder was now bent over at an angle, giving them some serious grief steering. Round the outskirts of Stafford we plodded. Radnor Bank is the closest approach, with a bridge with a nasty arch on the offside, well scarred from contact with cabin roofs.

To avoid future incidents, BW have just fixed one of the ugliest bits of channel narrowing I've seen for a long time. It's a galvanised steel and timber baulk construction, suspended by galvanised chains from the abutments and the underside of the arch. It makes the channel a bare seven foot wide, if that. Despite lining up as carefully as she could, Sheila managed to hit both this thing and the towpath edge at the same time.

By twelve we were approaching Stafford Boat Club. I made mugs of soup to keep us going, which we'd drunk by the time we worked up Deptmore Lock. We've tied at the top for the night, in steadily increasing wind, and will go on to Penkridge in the morning.