North again: Day 20

Tixall Wide is on lots of people’s lists of favourite moorings, and you can see why.  The views across the water are great, we also had a view on the towpath side, and it’s lovely and quiet.  No-one seemed in a rush to get away this morning, with very few boat movements.  Our modest target for the day meant we were also quite late to get going, in fact it was gone 10 before we pushed off, with one last view of the Tixall Gatehouse, which you can rent for holidays once the current renovations are finished.

It’s only just over five weeks since we came this way, so this time we remembered that Tixall Lock is further round than you expect.  When we got there, there was a boat about to come down.  The cottage has a sign with some distances on it.

Milford Bridge, No 105, is a turnover bridge that takes the towpath from one side to the other.  It doesn’t seem as elegant as the curvy ones on the Macclesfield Canal, but it still has its attractions.

A bit further on we came through a bridge that had a boat moored just beyond it, and a hire boat was coming the other way, but hadn’t yet reached the moored boat.  Instead of just slowing down and steering, he went hard into reverse and of course ended up across the canal.

I just hung about until they’d sorted themselves out, which involved deployment of the pole.  The steerer then hit both the bow and the stern on the towpath as he went through the bridge, after which I saw his daughter (or possibly daughter-in-law) took over the tiller!  Another boat behind them was mooring up, and as we passed said he was stopping for half an hour so he didn’t have to follow them any more.

We carried on in lovely sunshine through Baswich and the outskirts of Stafford.  We followed a boat up Deptmore Lock, then moored just ahead.  There’s a nice view and the M6 isn’t yet too close.

This afternoon we haven’t been entirely idle, because we took everything off the well deck and gave it a clean.  We even removed a length of redundant cabling which goes to the non-working horn — although we’ve left the horn itself there because the front of the boat would look odd without it!  And we’ve been listening to a cuckoo, which must be the third we’ve heard in the past few days.

5 miles, 2 locks.  (128 miles, 80 locks)