Well, we are off again, and reporting a day later. We drove down on Tuesday and had a slight detour as when we were crawling along over the M62 Ouse Bridge the warning light for a low pressure tyre came on. We pulled off and went to the 'famous' Glews Garage. Glews garage is unrecognisable today to what it was when all traffic had to cross the Ouse over Boothferry Bridge. Funny that! We went to check the tyre pressures but the air pump wasn't working so we drove in to Kwik Fit Goole. They were great and fitted us in despite being belly to ground. They checked round and could find nothing amiss. Blew everything up to the right pressures and reset the alarm and charged us nothing. Luckly Helen had been over the road and bought a load of doughnuts as a thank you.
Once everything was transferred from the car an d the getting everything ready we were away and heading to Calcutt locks. As we approached we could see a boat just leaving but they were closing the gates. I tooted and indicated that they should leave them open. It took a while but they did so. It turns out they had picked the boat up at Napton and it was their first three locks. Four Americans loose on the canals. I hope that somebody tells them that they should drop the paddles when they leave a lock. There was a boat coming down the next lock and started filling. I could see that the bottom paddles were up but they were oblivious. Helen went up and dropped them for them. They were new continuous cruisers it seems.
We were soon at the junction and turned left. We didn't go too far before we found a spot and tied up for the night.
It had been a lovely late cruise, but at 6 in the morning a realised that I hadn't positioned the solar panels for the morning sun. As I need to pump ballast anyway I got up and did both jobs and took a couple of photos too.
The first looking for'd and the second looking aft. Lovely light.
QWe were alittle late setting off as I did a few little jobs, but it was a great day again. This big house can be found between bridges 101 and 102 on the Oxford, but Helen tells me that you can't see it on Google Earth. I suspect that you have to be seriously rich to have it scratched off that. I wonder who lives in a house like this?
This section of the Oxford Canal is shared with the Grand Union from Braunston Junction to Napton Junction and so it was partly up graded for wide beam boats. There are stretchers of concrete edge just like that on the Warwick stretch. Every now and then are these 'signs' imprinted in the concrete. The arrows indicate where the message is relevant. It then tells you how deep the bank piles have been driven 7ft 3" in this case and then, to avoid the side being undermined by dredging, states that any dredging should only be undertaken to a depth of 4ft 6". It is great that the date has also been added, 1933. I'm not sure why it was needed but it is history. They must have started at Braunston as towards Napton the year is 1934!
It always seems to take longer than you think to get between Napton and Braunston. So many boats moored and permanent moorings. But eventually we get to see the rocket ship that is All Saints Church at Braunston along with its booster rocket that is the old mill.
Willoughby Wharf was looking good in the sun. In 1857 they were selling Scotch potatoes for £3 a ton. You could receive a sample of one peck on the receipt of 24 postage stamps. I still remember having to send stamps sometimes. I'm sure that you will remember that a peck was equivalent to 2 dry gallons, and that four pecks make a bushel. Things moved on and in 1962 they were hiring out canoes!
The fields were full of sheep. There were lambs from this size to much larger
I don't remember ever seeing this fortification before. It is above Barby Wood Farm and close by Dunchurch Pools Marina. It is actually an underground covered storage reservoir to supply Rugby. The water is pumped up from Draycote Water and so provides a head to create pressure in the taps at Rugby. Dunchurch Pool Marina has two prisons next to it, not one but two. The first was HMP Onley that was built in 1968 and housed young offenders and the like, but now is for Category C adults. Next to it is HMP Rye Hill. This was privately built in 2014 and has always housed Category B, sexual assault, offenders.
All along the offside of this part of the canal the bushes and trees have been grubbed up and deposited in the field. This isn't recent, and whilst it gives good open views, I don't understand why they would have done it, and just left it there. I wondered whether it was to give access to the cattle, but this doesn't seem very likely. I would have thought that the tree and shrub roots would have stabilised the bank to stop erosion. I wondered if it had been done in readiness to pile the very long length, but it just hasn't got done yet!
I spotted a line of old Oxford Canal Co. concrete posts on the towpath side that are weathering nicely.
The Barby Straightis just that, straight and when you get past it you are soon at Tarry's Bridge and an old wharf there. The buildings on the left are converted stables that have rooms rented out to traders people by the week. There is always something interesting to look at here with lots of odds and sods around the place. On the right was the old Fox Inn.
I spotted these lovely carnations on the offside just near the Hillmorton top lock. Couldn't see the inscription in full but I was left wondering whether it was a cat called Kat, or a female personage.
One lock ahead of us was a single hander but we didn't catch him up. There was nobody coming up and as usual the volunteer lock keepers were at the bottom lock. There was nobody on the water point so we stopped and topped up before heading off again, for Rugby.
The old Clifton Wharf spanned from this warehouse near to the road bridge 66 to a railway line that crossed the canal round the corner. It was a branch of the London and North Western Railway that left Rugby station and headed to Peterborough. This is just before the mooring arm that was originally one of the cut off loops of the original contour canal.
We moored up just before the park close to Tescos and went shopping after a cup of tea to get some stuff that we needed, plus a bit of salad from Tesco's. You can tell it is warm if we are eating salad, especially as only the tomatoes were from the UK. Rather than the phrase 'Make hay when the sunshines', I am going to amend it to 'East salad when the sun shines'.
2 comments:
1. Try comparing Bing Aerial and Google at the location just north of that stretch. Something strange about the difference between them. I just wonder if what you saw is actually a new build.
2. It has long been my understanding (but I cannot immediately quote a source) that the concrete edging works were part of the Keynesian regeneration project. J M Keynes debunked the free market theories to explain why a widespread depression did not automatically correct through a free market but needed state intervention to kick start. It seemed to work at the time but does, of course, mean greater public spending and less in the pockets of the very rich. Monetarism (a modern equivalent of free market?) beloved of Thatcher, was the reason/excuse for 'removing the nanny state' on the basis that 'you cannot beat the markets' From the opposite end of the lens, Truss did her best to prove that and left Sunak with having to live uncomfortable with policies that owe as much to Keynes as Thatcher. The canals are a microcosm of that history and current difficulties.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comments.
1. I remember that when we have passed this way before the house was in the process of being built. This time it looked completed but somehow didn't looked lived in, but hard to tell from a distance and often posh houses don't look lived in, perhaps as they aren't all the time and that they have staff to keep everything looking like new.
2. I once again bow to your superior knowledge. I do remember that in times past, certainly Victorian and I'm pretty sure earlier, benevolent rich landowners and/or Governments would create a construction scheme by funding it directly or indirectly to create employment. I suppose this is creating a false demand so some may argue that this is the markets adjusting, but not natural stimulus. It is still nice that date stamped it for posterity.
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