Friday, February 23, 2007

We had a pleasant stay near Curdworth, but decided to move on today. The day started fine, but with showers forecast later, we were away by 10:00.

We filled with diesel at Fazeley Mill Marina, only 50 litres but it was only 47p/lt. Got 4 bags of smokeless while we were there, too.
Then up to the junction and turned left again, serviced at Peels Wharf and stopped for lunch and a visit to Focus near Sutton Road bridge.

The showers had started by now, and stayed with us through Hopwas and on to Whittington, were we stopped just past bridge 80.
We’ve been offered as much wood as we can carry by Chris on a nearby boat, we’ll sort it out tomorrow.

A lot of the bridges on the Birmingham and Fazeley have these doors built in to the sides.

I have a theory that when the canal was built, the local troll population moved in under the bridges as they are wont to do. This caused considerable consternation to the boatmen and their families, and led to hold ups on the navigation. A meeting was held between the Company and a representative of the troll community, which resulted in the building into the bridges of “troll caves” in which they could reside. This solved the problem, and the navigation was able to perform its role as an important link from Birmingham to the Trent and Mersey.

Of course, they could just be for storage of stop planks.

Locks none, miles 8½.

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