Chased the Dull Weather away.

 We lit the stove for the first time last night, of no sorry, second time. I had forgotten that after replacing the fire cement around the collar I had lit the fire a little to dry it off. Despite all the extra work and dust etc etc I still think you can't beat a proper fire. I'm sure an oil burning stove is very efficient and a nice looking think sat there, but it isn't a fire. I have never had a house without a fire of some sort in either.

I hadn't kept the fire in over night, but there was plenty of residual heat in it, on top of a frost free morning, to make it easy to get up this morning. Outside may not have been cold but it was wet so there was no rush to get off today, and when we did it remained dull and overcast for a while, but no rain.

This guelder rose small tree or shrub was like a beacon among the greens of the rest of the hedge. The leaves are starting to turn to their wine red and the beautiful shiny red berries are like Christmas tree lights. The leaves and bark are poisonous and another name for the tree is 'crampbark', however it seems that you can eat the berries when cooked or made into wine, with a slight 'acidic' flavour!

Weston Pool does't seem to be connected to an old mill, or anything I can find, but is a fishing pond now at Weston on Trent (north).

There was nobody on the water point at Great Haywood so we stopped to top up. When I checked they have recycling bins here so I dropped out stuff off too. We were soon on our way. After dropping down Haywood Lock we moored up before Colwich Lock. After a bite to eat we headed off for a walk about 3 pm

We walked over Little Haywood Bridge over the Trent and straight over the A513 up to the Seven Springs Car park for Cannock Chase, Last year we were at the eastern end of the Chase at Beaudesert, Cstle Ring where the Iron Age fort is. It was first really established during the reign of William the Conqueror as a Hunting Forest. It was then gifted to the Bishop of Lichfield in 1290, but by 1546 it had passed to the Padget family that lived in Beaudesert Hall. They were to introduce the blast furnace to the area a few years later, and coal mining had gone on around the Chase since 1300's. By the 1600's most of the oak trees had gone from the Chase to make charcoal to feed the furnaces. Sheep were then put to the cleared land and that was when the heathlands appeared. Rabbits were introduced to the area in massive warrens as a cash 'crop', until riots took place to get rid of them in the 1750's. 

The heath land has to be managed and we passed two of these beasts cropping the bracken, saplings and old heather to help rejuvenate the heather. The 'mowings' have to be collected and removed so as not to over feed the land and to avoid incubating nasty bugs and parasites.

In the sunlight some of the old hardwood trees look spectacular and we could be on the set of Middle Earth and wouldn't be surprised if a Hobbit popped out from behind it!

There was a good view from the top there were views across towards the Blithfield Reservoir and Abbots Bromley.

The Chase has been the site of two major military training bases in WWI and a large RAF training base in WWII, but was taken of as one of the largest Forestry Commissions forests in 1921. It became an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1958 and the forest today is managed today and produces around 19,000 tonnes of sustainable timber a year.

Cannock Chase attracts about 2.5 million visitors a year which means that it has a density of visitors 4 to 5 time higher than the Lake District. Today there were few people about, and we had a nice long chat to the old feller who was waiting to pick up the heath land mowers in a big tractor trailer.

The lichen on the hedge on the road back to the canal seems to indicate that the air is pretty good round here.

The Ivy flowers were attracting plenty of late bees to them. Watch out for the webs Mr. Bee!

We got back to the boat and lit the fire once more and 'bangers and mash' for tea. Heaven.