Brindley's Mill, Leek, and walking further than you realise

We drove the ten miles to Leek today just to have a look round (and to look at the canal, of course).

One sign which caught my eye pointed to Brindley's Mill. And here it is.

A plaque on the side of the building says that James Brindley, canal engineer, worked here 1742 - 1765.

Unfortunately the mill wasn't open to visitors today, but, interestingly, the much enlarged building is still used by a clothes manufacturer.

We walked in the heat to the end of the Caldon Canal. It was much further than I'd remembered. In fact, even though yesterday was the "walking" day and today was the "looking round Leek" day, we walked further today: 8 miles, compared with 7 yesterday.

Three Derbyshire dales, strange hillsides and 40-year-old memories

Today we had good walking weather, dry and not too warm, so walking is what we did. From the cottage we walked through Hartington to where a footpath took us down Beresford Dale and into Wolfscote Dale. Had we continued south we would have reached Dove Dale, but we turned left into Biggin Dale.

Along the way I spotted a good location for a self-timed photo: of the two of us on a bridge over the river. It took several attempts before I was satisfied. The first and second were overexposed; on the third I hadn't quite got into position(!); I can't remember what was wrong with the fourth; and I've uploaded the fifth (and best) in a bigger size.

The sides of the valley were very steep, and some had strange horizontal lines. I don't know what caused these; they look more natural than man-made.

At the end of our walk, 6.25 miles after we started, we came to Hartington Hall Youth Hostel where we had a cup of tea.

The last time I was here was exactly 40 years ago, when I'd stayed here on a youth hostelling trip with a schoolfriend. I remembered the old wooden interior of the place, more or less unchanged since 1934 when the Youth Hostelling Association acquired it.

Meeting Casper the dog

We went to Sheffield yesterday to visit Andrew and Bekka, and to see their recently acquired dog Casper.

We arrived at their house at coffee time, and set to work on their garden. We seem to do this every time we visit! Yesterday was hot and sunny, and we drank lots of water as we weeded and trimmed. I never seem able to take photos of their garden, so you'll have to take my word that it looked better when we'd finished.

At lunchtime we went to Graves Park to walk the dog and eat in the café there. Then it was back to the heat of the garden, after which we walked up a nearby hill for some more exercise (as if we needed it!)

Uttoxeter Branch Canal

We drove to Froghall yesterday so that I could try to find the Uttoxeter Branch of the Caldon Canal. Well, I found the basin below the first lock all right - we winded here in 2005 a week after it opened - but the rest of the canal was rather more elusive.

The canal looks as though it should continue beyond the footbridge, but the undergrowth looked impenetrable, especially as I was wearing shorts and trainers.

We gave up temporarily, and walked up the route of the tramway which led to Cauldon Lowe (more about this anon).

When we got back to Froghall we walked round to the railway station, where little was happening, and had a good cup of tea at the Railway Inn next door. Then Jan went back to the car to rest her weary head while I set off by myself along the Churnet Valley Way footpath hoping to find traces of the canal.

It wasn't until I reached Oakamoor that I eventually found what I was looking for. An interpretation board drew my attention to the road next to the Cricketers Arms pub: the arch of a bridge over the canal was just visible.

On the other side of the road, full of trees, was a bit of actual canal - just.

The OS map indicates that there are a couple of short lengths in water further south, between Alton Towers and Alton vilage, but we'd run out of time and we were hungry. Jan drove to Oakamoor and we ate in the Lord Nelson pub before returning to Hartington.

Today we're off to visit Andrew and Bekka in Sheffield.

Lazy Sunday morning

The church just behind where we are staying had just one service yesterday - at 8.00am. We didn't go (well, we are on holiday, after all!) After breakfast we read and went on the computer, and I had coffee and wrote a blog post. Then we walked the short distance into Hartington village centre and installed ourselves at a table in the shade outside the Devonshire Arms. Gradually the expected Morris dancers began to appear, and we ordered our lunch to enjoy to the accompaniment of the music and dancing.

There were bells but no sticks.

Four or five musicians helped things along.

A German team were visiting - their dances seemed slightly tamer than the English versions.

The whole event was a good build up to the afternoon, when we stayed in and watched Andy Murray do quite well in a tennis match. It was too hot to be out walking, anyway.

As soon as the tennis finished (well done, Murray) we made sandwiches to take with us on a walk in to cool of the evening, except that, on opening the door of the thick-walled cottage, it was like walking into an oven. Even though the sky had clouded over the walls were giving off vast amounts of heat.

We walked along footpaths through fields to Sheen, following the sound of church bells. A service was evidently about to start, but we would be late as we had a mile or more to walk. Perhaps we could sneak in at the back. When we got there we found a special flower festival praise service under way: instead of the handful of people we were expecting the church was full!

We hadn't missed too much, and we were glad we'd gone. The theme of the flower festival was "Going to the Zoo", with lots of animal-themed displays. The lion was impressive.

It will be even better when the mane is fully in bloom.

On course for Cassiobury

I'm writing this sitting at a table in the shade at the back of a holiday cottage in Derbyshire. It was too hot in the sun, besides which, I wouldn't have been able to see the screen.

We left home on Friday, stayed overnight on Jubilee in Milton Keynes, and drove up to Hartington yesterday afternoon in what seems like proper summer at last. Our IWA stuff relating to our booking for Jubilee at the National Festival at Cassiobury Park came through the letter box on the day we left home - phew! I didn't know whether it would include our entrance wristbands. It could have been a problem if we'd missed those. As it happened, the envelope contained two pieces of paper with our mooring number, boat name and surname; together with some information about what to do on arrival, and details about boating-related competitions.

When we got to Jubilee I sneaked on board our Buckby can and a copper kettle for the stove top. I'd found the kettle in a charity shop in Leighton Buzzard - it polished up beautifully. Sneaked? Yes, Ally considers such things unnecessary clutter.

Back to today: we'll go for a walk this morning; then we've booked in for Sunday lunch at the Devonshire Arms in the village. There's to be Morris dancing from noon which will be interesting. One of my strong childhood memories is seeing the Morris dancing at Thaxted.

And then, as it will be too hot for much else, we might just watch a certain tennis match on the telly.

Top Thirty, 2013 week 28

Here is the UK Waterways Site Ranking (top thirty places) as it stood at 1010 on Sunday 7th July 2013. This is taken, with permission, from Tony Blews's UK Waterways Ranking Site.


1 Canal World Discussion Forums (=)

2 CanalPlanAC (=)

3 Pennine Waterways (=)

4 Jim Shead's Waterways Information (=)

5 Boatshed Grand Union (=)

6 Living on a Narrowboat (+2)

7 Retirement with No Problem (-1)

8 Water Explorer (-1)

9 UKCanals Network (=)

10 Waterway Routes (=)

11 Towpath Treks (=)

12 boatshare (+3)

13 nb Epiphany (=)

14 nb Waiouru (=)

15 BCBM Ltd (-3)

16 boatrent (+5)

17 NB The Manly Ferry (+3)

18 Canal Shop Company (-2)

19 Captain Ahab's Watery Tales (-1)

20 M. B. Willow (-1)

21 Boats and Canals Forum (+8)

22 boats and cruising (+2)

23 Halfie (+7)

24 'Eileen Inlanding' (+3)

25 Seyella's Journey (+9)

26 Narrowboat Dreaming .... Parisien Star (-9)

27 Narrowboat Briar Rose (+6)

28 Herbie (=)

29 Narrowboat Chance (-7)

30 Baddie the Pirate (-2)

31 The Real Life of a Narrowboat Wife (-5)

32 Contented Souls (-)

33 Rock n Roll (-1)

34 NB Triskaideka (-)

35 Narrow Boating Blog (-4)

36 Skippy's Random Ramblings (-11)



The figures in parentheses denote the number of places moved since the previous chart;
(-) denotes new entry or re-entry into the chart;
(=) denotes no change.

There are 110 entries, up fron 108 last week.

If your website has been using the old piece of code linking to Tony Blews's UK Waterways Ranking System then you will find that it no longer works. You will have to update your website to use the ukwrs.co.uk address instead of the coobeastie.co.uk one.

To update my Blogger blog I logged in to ukwrs.co.uk; clicked on the Manage Site option in the top left of the page; and copied the code from the appropriate box. Then on my blog I clicked on Layout; found the HTML/Javascript "gadget" corresponding to the ranking position; and replaced the code there with the code I'd copied from UKWRS.

Rotting hulks near top of Tardebigge flight

Thursday 20th June 2013

We encountered low water levels along much of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal below Tardebigge. In one pound by Tardebigge Reservoir the level was low enough to reveal two ancient narrowboats sitting on the bottom.

I don't suppose CRT will bother to chase them up for failure to display a current licence.