Siddled up to Swarkestone.

The trains started at 05:19 this morning but other than that it was fine!!! Before setting off we walked in to the village to get some stuff from the Co-Op. On the way back I checked with the coal boat when they were leaving thinking they could chuck a couple of bags over as they passed us, but they barrowed a couple up for us as they were staying put. I thought I had a bag of coal left but is turns out it was full of logs!

All that remains of the Willington A and B power stations are the cooling towers. 'A' was opened in 1957 with 4 x 104MW generating units. They burned 1000 tonnes and produced 200 tonnes of ash. 'B' was opened in 1962 with 2 x 200MW units and 2000 t of coal and 400t of ash. It was sold to National Power in 1990 and was closed a few years later. At the turn of the Millennium the main buildings were flattened but the cooling towers survived. They were going to be demolished for a housing project but it did not get planning permission. There are plans submitted now to build a new gas powered generating plant on the site but they didn't win the supply auction, so the cooling towers still dominate the skyline. It is a shame nobody can come up with a way to convert them to flats like the gasometers at Kings Cross. That would be spectacular. 

In the bright sunny, but cold, weather there were plenty of walkers out along the tow path after Mercia Marina.

When we reached Stenson I realised why as they all seemed to peel off to the cafe next to the lock! There were voluntary lock keepers on so making life easy. They have been on for two weeks already, but at Frradley they don't start until next weekend for some reason. It is a big beast of a lock at 12'4" deep and the first wide lock of the year and Trent and Mersey canal, but nice and tame on the way down.

First wide beam of the year and nearly as far as you can get I suppose. Plenty of room, but not much fun navigating the canals in these in my opinion. (not that I have every driven one).

The butterbur is nicely out round here. It is related to the sunflower! Apparently it is a complimentary medicine that is used for upset stomachs, ulcers, migraine and headaches, whooping and ongoing coughs, asthma, hay fever, chills and fever, insomnia and bladder and urinary tract spasms, and plague!! I'm surprised that the NHS don't give everybody this as it would save them a fortune!!

We moored just before the water point at Swarkestone and after lunch went for a walk. We could see in the field a ridge in the field that was likely to be the line of the canal connection with the Trent. This was a connection made in 1796 a year after the Derby Canal was built to join the Trent and Mersey, opened 1777, here at Swarkestone.

One of the original mile posts that were erected apparently to make the charging of tolls easier. There are also those that replaced those lost in WWII and have a different plaque at their base.

We walked across the fields and over the railway line towards the Trent.

Swakestone Bridge over the Trent is part of a 3/4 mile long causeway, with 17 arches, that dates from the 13th Century. It  is the longest 'bridge' in England. This bit though was rebuilt in the 1790's. It is said to have been financed by the local Belmont sister that were both betrothed and were to have a joint wedding. There future husbands were both drowned trying to ford the Trent in flood when trying to get there. The sisters paid for the bridge to ensure it didn't happen again. They never married and died paupers having used all their money to build the bridge.

This is the remains of the lock down into the Trent, and there is still the bridge above the lock as the village road goes over it.

In the pub garden of the Crewe and Harpur pub is this monument that commemorates the furthest point south that the followers of Prince  Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, during the Jacobite Revolution. They got here on 4th December 1745 and this monument was raised in 1995 250 years later. It is amazing to think that only 22 years later the Trent and Mersey Canal was opened. The two histories seem to be from completely different times.