No.1 daughter called on her way to work so we were alittle delayed getting underway this morning, but only by 15 minutes. The sun was out, and last night it had gone down to a balmy -0.1deg. Only one boat had gone past too.
By the moorings is this derelict building in the grounds of the sports centre. It reminds me of a station but was in actual fact a sewage farm!
For those of you who read yesterday's blog I can confirm that the mum swan is now on the four laid eggs. Lets hope that they didn't get too cool whilst she was off feeding.
After passing down Aston Lock, where a single handed was heading down, with the help of Helen, and after the marina was a field with several pairs of lapwings or peewits. Not the best photo, but It is on th red conversation list but when out and about on the canals we seems to see it quite often. Maybe it is as canals go through their best habitat.
By Bridge 86 is Burston Villa and the old corn Mill.
At the next bridge is Burston Hall, a listed building.
As we approached Sandon I spotted something I had never seen before. On the way up I had seen the Trentham Tower and now I was seeing the Sandon Hall itself. I had thought it down in a dip so wouldn't be visible. Nathaniel Ryder, 1st Earl of Harrowby took Sandon as his seat by 1780. However the house burned down in 1848. It was rebuilt by 1852 by the 2nd Earl and the family still liv e there. It is now earning its keep as a wedding venue etc.
As you approach Salt on the west side of the canal you draw close to the valley side of the Trent and can clearly see the various levels of the river as it subsided following the ice age melt. The river terraces correspond to various stages of the river as the run of lessened towards what we have today.
I was a little worried when the single hander ahead of us again at Sandon Lock offered to show Helen his puppy! I was releived when a little white 10 week old pup was revealed. The lock bridge is always quite photogenic with little tunnels, cobbles and steps. It is good that the rope rubbing bands are still in palce too.However when the lock is full it is leaking out on to the approach footway under the bridge and will have to be remedied at some stage
As promised yesterday I had another look at the track side sign that I had seen yesterday. It is on the left above and is not a curve indicator but is a mile post. It seems that they are need so as to be able to report incidents, such as using bridge numbers on the canals. Also in the Railways Act of 1845 it required the Railway Companies to do this so that customers could verify that they had been charged an appropriate fare for the length of their journey. On the right the two black dots indicate a half mile marker. One black dot is a quarter of a mile marker. The Zero distance is marked from a major station, and in this case I expect it is from Birmingham as it is approx. 32 miles from there.
You can just about make out another track side sign, just to the left of centre. It is an incline marker. These came in following a n accident o Eastern Railways in 1845. They should appear where there is a change of gradient. Hopefully you can see that we are at a dip in the line where the track raise to the left and also to the right. You can just about see that to the right the gradient is expressed as 1 in 320. The smaller the second number the steeper the gradient. 1 in 80 is normally the steepest gradient for a railway.
As we approached Weston on Trent we could see Weston Hall on the other side of the Trent. It was originally built as a Dower house in 1550. In 1660 it was extended into a three gable home. At the end of the 1800's it was bought by the Shrewsbury Settled Estates and they added the fourth gable. In 1950 it was bought by the Godwin family and they converted it to flats! In 1992 a local businessman bought it and spent 9 years creating a restaurant and function rooms.
Our first ducklings, twelve of them! It is 1st April and expected to below freezing tonight!!
Just after Bridge 78 and behind some trees is Wychdon Lodge. It was built in about 1807. It seems soon after William Moore a banker from Stone moved in with his family. He also was the owner of the Shirleywich Salt works nearbyHe became a JP and the Sheriff of Staffordshire. He died in 1869 but the property stayed in the family until 1875 when it was bought by Thomas Hughes, a master potter who had developed his fathers business into a massive concern buying Davenports business and ending up with several factories. It became Thomas Hughes and sons when his son Allan Edward joined the business. Thomas retired in 1900 and died in 1909. It was rented out for a while but the widow and daughters lived there until around 1925. It then was bought by Clifford Thornburn who was a shoe dealer from Tamworth. In 1942 an airfield for bomber command was built at Hixon just to the north. The end of one of the runways was just 400m away from the house and a plane crashed into the servants tower and a later extension. After the war Wing Commander Thorn lived there. The airfield closed in 1957
By Great Haywood Marina we passed Ben Cruachen. It looks nothing like the ship I think of that hit a freak wave off South Africa!
Ships were advised not to sail along the 100 fathom line off that coast after this as there was a greater frequency of these ship killer waves there.
As we were at Haywood Lock these merry men trudged past to play in the river. I'm not sure who they were but they were going to practice rescues by line from water.
This is another thing I had never seen before as we passed this way. Hadrian's Arch at Shugborough. It was built in 1795 to commemorate Admiral Anson who was in charge of the Navy during the 7 Years war and circumnavigated the globe. Shugborough is the Anson, Earl's of Lichfield family home. It is a copy of the Hadrian's Arch in Athens.
We were enjoying ourselves so kept going until we crossed the aqueduct over the Trent by the Bloody Steps on the outskirts of Rugeley.
No comments:
Post a Comment