Cleaning

Saturday 29^th May; King’s Norton to Hopwood

First thing today of course, Meg expected a good run in the park.  Dave obliged while I popped up to the Co-op for some supplies and the Saturday paper.  Then it was down to work.  Dave tidied up the port gunwales and I gave the bow deck and gas locker lid a good wash.  During the morning we had a visit from the first goslings we have seen this year.

Then I spent a while under the well deck – not literally, but that is where we store the remaining coal and kindling during the summer, carefully splitting the coal into bags either side of the water pump so as not to affect the trim.  It is usually about a quarter of a sack on each side.  Once all that was sorted I had an empty coal sack which was going to prove very useful – the soot from the stove flue was waiting, safely wrapped up in newspaper, then Dave sorted out his paint locker and promptly half-filled the sack with old tins!

We had lunch, then after another play in the park for Meg we set off towards King’s Norton Junction, where we winded.

 

The lovely Stratford canal with its disused guillotine lock .... but not today

I don’t think we’ve ever turned here before.  On the offside on the very corner are some interesting looking footpaths  which we've not really noticed in spite of all the times we've come this way.

Then it was waterproofs on and back through the tunnel.  After the procession of hire boats and timeshares passing this morning (we guessed they had mostly moored at Hopwood last night), we met nobody.  We pulled in on the Hopwood 48 hour moorings, which were completely empty, as far from the main road as we could.  We had a cup of tea and carried on variously cleaning or sorting cupboards, getting the dried-on mud from the centre ropes and fenders off the roof and washing the port side, and some varnishing touch-ups inside.  During the afternoon and early evening the canal was very busy, and the moorings between the road bridge and the one behind us soon filled - I counted fifteen boats apart from us, bow fender to stern button all the way along.

I walked Meg up towards the tunnel in the evening.  Two live-aboards were moored further up, and starting to retrieve some of the 15 or so black dustbin bags floating along the canal – at least the ones they could reach.  Apparently someone had fly-tipped the lot from the road bridge before the tunnel.

 

Rings were shared all the way along, though we had to invite the new hirers to do so.  We had bagged the ones furthest from the road.  Boats on the water point overnight too.

 

3½  miles, Wast Hill tunnel