Cleaning, elsewhere

Sunday 30^th May; Hopwood to the Crown Arm

That road was certainly a noisy one!  If we hadn’t needed the good edge and short grass this morning we would have stopped much further back and banged in pins if necessary.  Boats started leaving at 7 and by the time we were having breakfast we were almost on our own again.  When I let Meg out first thing, a black sack from the fly-tipping was gleaming in the sun.  Overnight it had floated close to the boat (there always seems to be a bit of a current from Wast Hills tunnel).  I hooked it and had a deal of trouble hauling it out – the contents (prunings) had pierced the plastic and it was half full of water.  In a few hours it would have been lurking just under the surface, waiting for someone’s prop.  Dave pulled another bag out during the morning, with plastic bottles in this one.  CRT have been notified so we left them there.

This morning my first job was to clean the oven.  It’s not exactly my favourite job, but it’s come up well.  Then I moved on to clear and clean the well deck.  I hauled the lockers and hosepipe out onto the towpath, lifted the matting and swept out all the bits of grit, leaf and grass that had accumulated since the last lockdown.  Dave had already cleared the  paint locker of old tins, or at least some of them, but I still had to sort out the locker where I keep useful things like the mooring hook, pins and chain for the bow end, and some cleaning equipment.  There were a few bits and pieces to come home – Meg's ball thrower which a neighbour gave us one year at Calcutt, for example.  I wish I’d taken a photo, the well deck looked wonderful when I’d done it!  By mid-morning we were alone again apart from the two liveaboards way back behind us.

We had lunch and then got going straight away – we needed to run the engine for the sake of the batteries, and it’s really too close to houses here for that, very antisocial on a sunny day when people would be out in their gardens.  There were no fishermen at Lower Bittell – instead there were circular patches of bubbles at regular intervals where the aeration system was in operation.  But someone was enjoying the reservoir on the offside – a lone fisherman in a boat on the far side.  And I haven't tweaked the photo to enhance the colour of the water, promise!

And yes, it was a real person, I saw him move!  Definitely not the ‘fishing’ mannequin that there used to be here.  We will go into Alvechurch marina tomorrow, but wanted to enjoy the canal for a bit longer today, so once we had passed under the M42 and gone round the bend we moored just before the non-navigable Crown Arm on the outskirts of the village.

In spite of working hard I had been feeling low all morning, and thought a walk would cheer me up.  Meg would appreciate it anyway!  We walked as far as the pub, where there was space to moor but it was rather noisy and busy with walkers.  Walking back to the arm, I realised we had actually got the nicest mooring between Hopwood and the marina – very little passing foot traffic, motorway noise muffled by trees, good wide towpath and the canal wide enough for boats to have a lot of room to pass (which turned out to be very useful as all the new hirers started passing later on!).  The cow parsley was in full fabulous bloom

And the May blossom foamed in the trees.

And oh look, what a lovely boat!

What also makes it a good mooring is that the woodland by the towpath has a footpath through it leading to the far end of the Crown Arm and back along it to the towpath.  On the other side of the arm is a lot of newish housing which extends along the canal and down towards the pub.  There are several access points through to the houses but it’s quiet where we are, and also litter-free unlike Hopwood – several plastic wrappers ended up in my empty coal bag yesterday.  Meg and I enjoyed the stroll back towards the canal, along the beautiful arm which is mostly shady, and in water, though closer to the canal it’s carpeted with duckweed.

Luckily Meg didn’t see the moorhen family or she would have had rather a surprise as she discovered it was wet under the weed!

 

 

I busied myself inside, sorting out the galley cupboards and packing up the tins and packets we would be taking home, while Dave washed and cleaned the cratch board and windows, then touched up the gangplank paintwork.  We hardly ever use it, but it does look nice sitting on the roof!

I got loads of stuff done, packing and cleaning but keeping busy wasn’t lifting my mood.  So I thought, to hell with it all, and went for a run, twice round the footpaths in the woods and along the arm.  Not far, but it did the trick, or maybe it was the lovely shower afterwards! As there are no neighbours to annoy we had run the engine for a couple of hours when we stopped, so there was lots of hot water.  As I cooked tea I had the side hatch open and just leant on it, watching the world go by – several boats but mostly birds and this little flotilla.

We just chilled in the evening.  The car is going to be rammed when we go home, so we felt it best to reduce the number of beer cans (all low alcohol, I must point out) and wine bottles (erm, not). Before we went to bed we watched the bats from the side hatch, at least 2 kinds and not the tiny little pipistrelles either.

Less than two miles cruising, no locks, no tunnels.