Miles Away Again

2012-05-26T07:00:00.000+01:00

2012-05-21T17:53:00.000+01:00

Can adders swim?

2012-05-19T10:01:00.000+01:00

These swans and their six cygnets came to visit. I fed them some bread. It's hard to resist but it's not good for them to eat too much. They get 'angel wing' and can't fly. You see it sometimes on Canada geese. It looks as if they've been savaged by a fox or dog, a wing or two all bent backwards and useless but it's caused by poor nutrition due to stuffing themselves with too much bread. Granary bread is not so bad for them as white.

Perhaps the cygnets better watch out. The other day as I was unhitching my mooring ropes at Hopwood, a long, thin creature suddenly snaked across the water. At first I thought it was a big eel - as I'd just been writing about eels for a science news piece for a magazine (did you know, European eels are the only fish discovered so far that don't have any genetic markers that give clues to the geographical origin of the population? Probably not?) but, before it reached the other side of the canal, I realised from its, well, snaking movemnet and its heart-shaped head that it was definitely a snake. Quite a sizeable one - at least a metre long. Was it an adder I wonder? Or a grass snake? I gave a little woop of joy. Definitely my most exciting wildlife spot so far.

Cuckooflower

2012-05-14T12:24:00.000+01:00

There are few things as wonderful as the English countryside in spring time. I’ve just come back from a jog. The other side of Shortwood tunnel, in a deep, wooded cutting, with no sound but the wind in the trees and the birds, I stopped. I’ve never noticed horse chestnut trees with such long, weeping branches. High on the side of the steep cutting, their thin tresses hang down, liana like, their platters of large tear-drop leaves twirling slowly in the breeze. Sun shone through new greenness: the colour of an English spring. Birds were singing and calling, chirping and whistling.

I’m not good at identifying birds from calls. Two, with a chirruping, almost cicada-like call seemed to be echoing each other. I stood quiet for a time waiting to see if I would spot one or the other among all the fecund greenery, as lush as any tropical jungle. Eventually, the sound seemed to come from a sycamore on the opposite side of the canal cutting. On a branch, a russet-breasted chaffinch, hopped from flower to flower, making its call, like a metal comb being rubbed.

Running back to the boat, the sun peeping through clouds, the canal banks and woodlands were full of white stitchwort and bluebells. Ducklings and their mother plopped into the water to escape this mad, thudding animal. Moorhens scuttled across the surface. Under a hawthorn hedge, the speckled shell of a bird’s egg lay on the grass. I picked it up. It was still wet with albumen which slipped out in a glassy strand. Had a cuckoo ejected the egg? Surely it wouldn’t have hatched with all that goodness left inside?

On the canal bank were flowers I didn’t recognise: a delicate light pink, four petalled specimen with tiny bract-like leaves. I picked a stem and took it back to the boat. Cuckooflower or Lady’s Smock apparently. Full of mustard oil and vitamin C says the book. I nibble a piece of stem, it’s lovely and peppery like watercress. Richard Mabey confirms in ‘Food for free’ that it's edible. I think I’ll pick some for salads next time I’m passing. It’s lovely to be back in the countryside proper. I need more time here before I hatch.

This picture was taken a few days ago, near Dickens Heath. I'll see if I can get one of a cuckooflower.

St George's mushrooms

2012-04-26T20:27:00.000+01:00

...At least that's what I hope they were because I've just eaten them for dinner...stir-fried with garlic, ginger, celery, spinach and noodles. I found these sturdy mushrooms growing by the towpath and consulted my little book by Richard Mabey, 'Food for Free'. They tick all the boxes for St George's mushrooms (Tricholoma gambosum), so-called because they pop up about St George's Day. They were a welcome addition to the larder, which, after returning from a week away in Scandinavia (travelling one way by train and ferry and the other with SAS which implements fuel-saving flying techniques) was rather bare.

White bluebells

2012-04-18T12:11:00.000+01:00

I'd not seen white bluebells before but perhaps I've been going around with my eyes closed. It amazes me the things I keep noticing for the first time - this morning it was the strange, stringy flowers of ash trees (I think?) White flowers are, apparently, very rare in the native bluebell but not so much in the Spanish one. The sure way to tell an English bluebell from its Iberian cousin, is that English ones have white pollen. The pollen on these was light blue. There are many of them along the towpath on the Stratford canal.

In defence of idleness

2012-03-23T08:17:00.000Z

This British Waterways (or now Canal & Rivers Trust?) cottage near the canal is at Lower Bitell reservoir between Alvechurch and Hopwood. There's water all around it almost - you can see the sluice gates that control the flow between the canal and the reservoir - but, at the moment, with widespread drought, there's no worry that the canal level needs lowering. In fact, restrictions are already in place on various canals, such as the Grand Union, with locks being padlocked for a number of hours each day to restrict water flow through them. Boaters should also always travel together with another boat through double locks. I'm not cruising much at the moment and what I am doing is lock-free, within striking distance of Birmingham for a few weeks now, until I put the boat in for blacking at Tipton in a few weeks. In the meantime, time slips by as easily as a duck landing on a frozen canal. As American philosopher and author Henry Thoreau, who lived in a simple cabin in some woods, near a lake, writes in Walden: "The day advanced as if to light some work of mine, it was morning and lo! now it is evening and nothing memorable is accomplished....This was sheer idleness to my fellow townsmen, no doubt; but if birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm and will hardly reprove his indolence." For I, like Thoreau, "love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning...I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise til noon, rapt in reverie while the birds sang."

I heard my first cuckoo the other day, April 13th (I'm writing this a month after posting the picture...) Summer is here, yet it's gone chilly again.

Litter rant

2012-03-22T08:22:00.000Z

The Marine Conservation Society has today announced that litter on Britain's beaches has reduced by 11% over last year, based on a weekend's litter pick by 4,000 volunteers. However, they found that balloons and plastic dog poo bags have increased.
It's a topic I was ranting about with a dog walker just yesterday. Why do people think they are being responsible pet-owners when they pick up their dog's mess with a plastic bag and then, instead of taking it home or to the nearest bin, they fling the poo-filled bag into the bushes or leave it next to the towpath? It would be better if dog-walkers carried a trowel and scooped the poop away from where others may step in it. It is organic material that will rot down on its own, adding nutrients to the soil. Inside a plastic bag it just becomes an unsightly litter problem and, as MCS has found, some of it ends up on our beaches.
Litter, especially dog poo in bags, drives me (barking) mad.

Alvechurch morris

2012-03-21T21:24:00.000Z

There was a sound like sleigh bells passing by on the towpath tonight. I opened the side hatch and poked my head out into the chill, starry night, to see two shadowy figures disappearing into the distance, accompanied by a silvery rustle like sea-washed pebbles. “Are you Morris dancers?” I called out into the wood smoked blackness. “Yes,” came the reply. “We’re off to The Crown.” Later I ventured out to have a look. Outside the local pub, on a dimly lit village lane here in Alvechurch, men were dancing. There was the rhythmic beating of a drum, the squeeze of an accordion and clopping of sticks. Men with blackened faces, ribboned rag jackets, hats with pheasant feathers and bells around their knees were bashing long rolling pins together as they skipped in formation. “Is this because it’s the first day of Spring?” I asked a man holding – but not playing - an accordion, a mass of white hair poking out from under his top hat. “No, it’s because it’s Wednesday,” he said, as he sipped from a pewter tankard. “We practice every Wednesday.”

“Oh, there I was thinking you were celebrating the vernal equinox…” I said, “…and getting back to your pagan roots.” “Oh these?” he said, pulling at his snowy locks, “I must do something about that.” He was a musician for the women’s ‘side’, the Aelfgyther Border Morris, he explained. “Aelfgyther is the old Anglo Saxon name for Alvechurch,” he said. “It means the gift of the elves.”

You couldn’t get much more English than Morris dancing outside a village pub next to a canal where narrowboats are moored. I especially liked that the dancers - men and women taking it in turns - didn’t move out of the way for cars. If a car wanted to pass, it had to wait for that dance to finish.

Happy springtime (or Wednesday). Thank you elves.

city moorings

2012-03-15T16:40:00.000Z

Some of the boats moored on permit-holders' moorings in the centre of Birmingham. It's all very colourful but there's not much of a view out of your windows when moored like this.

2012-03-13T18:13:00.000Z

There's no denying that the canals, when clean, are one of the main attractions of Birmingham's city centre. Some of the old Industrial Revolution era architecture has been well restored and this pub, The Malt House, facing south and overlooking this four-way junction, is the perfect spot to sit outside and be a gongoozler (a narrowboat watcher). Other pubs and cafes line the waterways where, just a few decades ago it was all derelict.

It was the first time I had moored my boat in a city and I was looking forward to enjoying the cultural offerings. The art gallery and museum, with its extensive collection of pre-Raphaelite art, is definitely worth a visit and so is some of the theatre and music (I went to see WNO's Marriage of Figaro at the Hippodrome) but I became rather deflated when someone thought it would be fun to stab my brand new bike tyre. When a condom floated past the boat, along with yet more plastic bottles and beer cans, I realised I'd had enough of city life. I much prefer a view of fields and trees rather than apartments and pavements anyway.

Ruins of times past

2012-03-07T13:07:00.000Z

Nearing Birmingham, under fly-overs and beside train tracks, there are abandoned warehouses and factories, that, overgrown with ivy and with the sky behind their glassless windows, look sadly near to collapse. Couldn't they be converted into beautiful waterside apartments, rather than allowing new housing to spread like a canker across the countryside?

Five hours after leaving Merryhill, I moored up in Birmingham city centre. It had taken me about 14 hours cruising over two days from Stourton junction to Birmingham, a distance, by road of 14 miles. Narrowboat travels: less like 'life in the slow lane' and more like life at a virtual standstill.

Sun and shade

2012-03-07T13:06:00.000Z

I continued on to Birmingham that day, in sun and shade, wind and calm. My occasional First Mate tried to find the boat but got lost in an industrial backwater somewhere and so gave up and went home which meant I was solo again. Two-mile long Netherton tunnel, that I remember from my very first narrowboat trip on a holiday boat about four years ago, as being terrifying, turned out to be nothing to worry about. Compared to other tunnels I've been through since, it is wide, with ample headroom and has towpaths on either side. It's not lit though so it was a good job I'd managed to repair the headlamp.

I like to look up - fleetingly - at the ventilation shafts that you pass beneath while chugging through the darkness. It's like being at the bottom of a deep well, with just a small circle of daylight visible high overhead. Water seeps through the weight of earth above and drips with flashes of silvery light.

Bumblehole

2012-03-07T13:05:00.000Z

Bumblehole is a pleasant lunchtime mooring spot just before reaching Netherton tunnel, that burrows under the hill ahead for two miles.

This area near Dudley, used to be full of the steel industry, its furnaces - specialising in nails and chains - belched sooty smoke into the sky and led to the area being dubbed the Black Country. It's said that when Queen Victoria rode through these parts in a horse and carriage, she drew the curtains across the window to block the view, so disturbed was she by what she saw. Today, the occasional remaining chimney (as seen in the distance here) belches out nothing but clouds it seems.

Uphill struggle

2012-03-07T12:52:00.001Z

My 28 lock, ten hour solo cruising was not completely smooth sailing. At one point, that I didn't even notice (perhaps when I was clambering up a ladder out of a lock chamber) the boat must have continued its forward motion a little too eagerly and met the end of a lock chamber with more force than was good for it, because, as I was opening a lock gate, I noticed that the boat's headlamp was suffering from whiplash and was lying, face-up, on top of the cratch cover. Pointing skywards, it won't be much use when going through the two-mile long Netherton Tunnel.

Then, just as dusk was falling with new drizzle and I was about to enter the final 28th lock of the day with not far to go to moor for the night, the boat became stuck. The water level of this stretch of canal between locks was, I noticed belatedly, rather low. A way to solve it would be to open the paddles of the lock in front of me and let some water through from above but I was fifteen feet from shore, marooned in the middle of a muddy pound.

Above me was a busy road bridge with a modern red brick wall, partially demolished. I think the missing masonry from Brierly Hill bridge is now in the canal and it was on this that I had run aground.

"You'm not going nowhere," said an old man in a strong Black Country accent, tugging at his bulldog on its lead. I called over to ask if he could help. "You'm stuck am yer?" he asked. I carefully threw a windlass (lock key) onto the towpath and explained what I needed him to do. I hoped he understood. Before long, the boat was floating free of the bricks and I could move forward into the lock.

Finally I moored up above the (surely ironically named) Merryhill shopping centre, with a view of Argos, Primark, Sainsbury's and a car park. The peace of the night was disturbed by loud, tinny announcements, reverberating above the car park and meant, I think, to deter criminals or warn car-owners. All I could make out was 'crime' and 'area'. It's all very different from bucolic Staffordshire...but handy for the supermarket. The next day, I moved a few hundred yards into the basin (pictured), surrounded by office blocks and waterside cafes.

28 locks solo in one day

2012-03-04T15:10:00.000Z

The wooded banks of the twisty Staffs and Worcs canal now seem far away, like some magical fairy glen, where the wild thyme blows, where the oxslip and the nodding violet grows, quite overtwined with eglantine. (Sorry, I’ve just returned from London where I saw the playful new version of ‘A midsummer night’s dream’ at the Lyric, Hammersmith.)

Yesterday, finally, I started to leave my rural idyll and move to new waters: to the city of Birmingham, directly east, rather than head southwest to Bristol, as I had originally intended, following what that champion of simple living, Thoreau, called the ‘westing’ instinct that Richard Mabey writes about in his book Nature Cure. “Thoreau confesses in his journals that whenever he was torpid, and in need of regeneration, he walked invariably towards the southwest. ‘The future lies that way to me,’ he wrote, ‘and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side.’…he thought he saw portents and signs in nature of an inclination towards the west. That was the way the sun moved and, he believed, migrant peoples and animals. It was ‘the general movement of the race’. He saw ‘westing’ as a kind of primal instinct.”

But I ignored that instinct and thought that, as I’m quite near (just 14.1 miles says Google maps), I might as well visit Birmingham, Britain’s second city and, listed by New York Times in its ‘Top 45 places to go’ for 2012. After a spell of warm spring weather, during which I sat on the towpath in pale bright days, with the sound of crows for company, winter is forecast to return and perhaps that’s the best time to be in a city full of cafés, cinemas, bright lights and, more to the point, people and noisy traffic?

Starting out at seven, the journey began well, with the four locks at Stourton in my favour and I moored up for breakfast after the last one, still in rural surrounds. There’s nothing like a bowl of hot, large-flaked (‘old fashioned’) porridge, made with water but with a banana chopped into it and served with a spoonful of honey and some Onken yogurt. I like my simplicity with frills.

Friends I’d invited to join me for the day to help crew hadn’t responded to my invitation. I hope it was because of the weather forecast but after some drizzle, the sun began peering through a mantle of greyness as I headed on towards Wordsley junction and the Stourbridge flight of sixteen locks. The junction with the Stourbridge Town arm was a swirl of floating litter – plastic bottles, a broken bucket, bits of polystyrene. Welcome to urbanity it seemed to say, to carelessness and consumerism and lack of consideration. The first lock was against me and I had to moor up and empty it; more detritus belching out into the wide grey junction. Kids played football on adjacent fields and, already I was blaming them for half the rubbish, I mean, look, the playing field is scattered with discarded drinks bottles. Then I realised that all the uniform bright shapes dotted over the grass were, in fact, slalom courses laid out by their teachers.

The next lock leads to a scene of urban decay: an old brick warehouse, its windows broken or missing, its walls and roof crumbling, a courtyard full of rosebay willowherb, cocking a snook at it all.

Then, before I knew it, I was a tourist attraction. People were standing on the canalside, taking pictures of me and beckoning to their children to come and see. “Is it yours?” called one woman, who sounded American. “Yes, I live on it,” I called back as I sped past at 4mph and so missed the ending of her next sentence that began “My father lived on a boat in East Anglia…”

The next lock – I’d lost count by now - under a brick bridge over which buses pass, brought me to Dadford’s shed, a wonderfully maintained creosoted wooden barn next to a tiny marina packed with a phalanx of narrowboats, including a vintage cargo boat. The houses on the opposite bank are old and pretty and village-like, trailed with roses, roofed with aging tiles. In the background is the stupa-like shape of a brick-built furnace, known locally as a ‘bottle kiln’. This is ‘Redhouse Glassworks’, a wonderful example of restored Industrial Revolution era architecture, open to the public as a functioning glassworks, and the reason the tourists were there, not for my cruising by, even if I was the only boat on the move...
Continued in next blog post.

Grand Contour Canal

2012-02-22T14:46:00.002Z

The declaration of drought in the south of England has led to calls for a national water grid. This is something that was suggested back in the 1940s, with the idea of a ‘Grand Contour Canal’ that would follow a 310ft contour line, thus not needing any locks along its route, as it meandered between major cities such as Newcastle, London and Birmingham. (There would be locks down to sea level at marine ports.) The canal was initially proposed to be 100ft wide, big enough for sizeable cargo ships. Would such a major infrastructure project boost the economy? It would certainly provide a solution to water shortages, take hundreds of lorries off the roads and provide some new narrowboat routes, although they wouldn’t quite have the character of the Industrial Revolution era waterways.

Flying frogs

2012-02-21T07:35:00.000Z

I’m sad to be leaving Kinver. It’s an interesting little village. Thousands of daytrippers used to come to ‘The Switzerland of the Midlands’ in the early 1900s. If you’re imagining jagged peaks, fields of cows with bells, wooden houses with geraniums and lots of chocolate, think again. The gentle escarpment of Kinver Edge takes ten minutes to hike up. (However there is a chocolatier: Louis Barnett, who started his business at the tender age of 12.)

After the canal (of course), Kinver’s next main attraction is, arguably, the Holy Austin rock houses, carved out of sandstone, like something you may find in Cappadocia, halfway up the escarpment. They were lived in from the late 1600s until the 1960s. At one time eleven families lived there. Today, one of these rock houses (pictured) has been restored by the National Trust to how it may have looked in the early 20^th century – with its rough, whitewashed walls, fireplace and bread ovens, it’s all rather cosy. There’s also a little tearoom and exhibition. Meanwhile, underneath Kinver Edge, there are, so I’ve just learnt, tunnels where weapons (or was it aircraft?) were manufactured during the war. It’s only as I’ve decided to leave Kinver, heading south towards Kidderminster, that I stumble upon some of these facts. Perhaps I’ll turn around and explore a bit more? A boating neighbour at Beeches Bend, poet, Emma Purshouse, told me another wacky fact: in Kinver, which used to be a hive of industry, with many steel mills, making nails and chains, after-work entertainment was ‘frog lifting’. The rules: take one trestle, one sledgehammer and one frog. Place frog on trestle and bash other end with hammer and see how high you can make your frog fly. They’d never do that in Switzerland.

L'atalante

2012-02-03T12:59:00.000Z

My neighbours at Beeches Bend were a family of five who live on three boats. One is a historic wooden former cargo boat that they only use in summer I think, as it just has a simple tarpaulin cover. The man, an energetic guy in his 30s, who rides along the towpath with trees over his shoulders, ready to hack up for firewood, lives on his own little boat. I think they found living together too claustrophobic. It's a theme that plays its part in the 1930s French film by Jean Vigo, L'Atalante, which I saw in Wolverhampton this month. It's all about a young married couple sailing off for a life together on a working barge on the French canals, including passing through central Paris. It makes me want to go boating on the French canals. As well as a bevy of cats on board, the couple have an oafish, bumbling 'first mate' who provides comic moments with his eccentric behaviour and collection of souvenirs from around the world. But I think it's for the then-innovative underwater sequences and aerial shots that the film gained its reputation as a classic.

Beeches Bend

2012-02-02T17:40:00.000Z

But after being away, especially to the big city, it's always lovely to get back to the tranquility of life on the boat. Here I am at my favourite mooring, Beeches Bend, above Hyde Lock, near Kinver, where the only sound is the caw of crows and sometimes the baaing of sheep in the field opposite. The sun shines onto the boat all day. It was the perfect place to be iced in during the recent cold spell.

Around the world in London

2012-02-02T08:24:00.000Z

I went to London and found myself in Soho just after Chinese New Year. I popped into a little cafe for a cup of tea (£1) and an unidentifiable pastry - some kind of pumpkin filling I think. I was the only non-Chinese person there. An old man with long, whiskery eyebrows slurped at some tofu from a bowl, two girls compared smart phones and the brusque assistants in blue tabards delved into the glass counter to retrieve various pastries for the line of customers, most of whom were taking away. The great thing about Britain is that we don't need to fly to get culinary and cultural experiences from the other side of the world.

Whilst in London for the weekend, I also saw the Japanese play 'The Bee' and, in complete contrast, the very English play, 'Grief' as well as the Landscape Photographer of the Year exhibition. It's great being a country bumpkin in the big city now and again.

2012-01-13T09:51:00.000Z

Burma

2012-01-13T09:46:00.001Z

More political prisoners are being released from Burma. Fantastic news. Things certainly seem to be improving there. Over a year ago, when Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, it started to look as if, after all these years, tourism to Burma would be something that everyone in the travel industry could now promote with a clear conscience, including Puritanical me. I could break my self-imposed no-flying regime: the social story trumped the environmental impact, perhaps. A travel feature that also discussed the ongoing political improvements and the way that Suu Kyi’s authority with the tourism boycott has played a part in bringing about these changes, was, possibly, more important than the issue of carbon emissions, I told myself, hesitantly. I could travel to an exotic destination, without the pangs of environmental guilt (oh for those days when we barely thought about it). Golden temples, river cruises, one-legged rowers on serene lakes, cool, colonial highland towns and smiling people beckoned. I couldn’t wait. I suggested to Tricia Barnett, then director of Tourism Concern, and a long-time advocate of the tourism boycott, that we travel together. Her insights would add to the meat of the feature. After many attempts to plan a trip, it finally looked as if we were off. I even had a visa. But then the tour operator that was supporting the visit (in other words, giving me a freebie in exchange for the feature in a newspaper - that's the way travel writing works) decided that it would pull out of the deal as I made the mistake of mentioning that I would also be writing about issues such as the situation on the Thai-Burmese border. Here, according to NGOs such as the Burma Campaign, the minority ethnic groups are suffering escalating human rights abuses, including rape and torture at the hands of the Burmese army in a strategy to secure the area for multinational oil and gas companies. Although in many ways the situation in Burma is improving, the military regime still wields its power ruthlessly at times... (I've since read that new ceasefires are being agreed.)

You can read a feature I wrote about Burma (or rather a Burmese exile) for Financial Times, here and you can read the piece that Tricia wrote about our attempts to visit for the Independent on Sunday here.

Time for a change?

2012-01-02T20:47:00.001Z

The New Economics Foundation maintains that the working week should be reduced to 21 hours. What a preposterous idea. Twenty-one hours? That’s far too much. By the time I’ve had tea, listened to the radio, done my (attempts at) salutations to the sun, been for a run, made porridge, moved the boat for an hour or two, had coffee, listened to the radio, cycled off to explore, done a bit of food shopping, had a swim, read the paper, cut some firewood, made a fire, watched the moon rise, made some dinner and listened to the radio, it’s time for bed, to read (John Updike at the moment.) I don’t seem to do much work these days, worryingly little in fact. I need to try to do at least ten hours a week I think. But, hey, 21 hours, maybe I could hack it? Perhaps I’ll go to the free talk tonight at the LSE? I’ll travel on the slow, cheap, London Midland train from Birmingham.

In the same week as a respected economics think-tank says the future lies in everyone working less, the government has announced that the new hideously expensive London to Birmingham (and beyond) ‘High Speed 2’ track will go ahead. One of their main arguments is that the time saved on the journey of 49 minutes, instead of over an hour (or over two on London Midland) as at present, will boost the economy. As many have argued, this completely ignores the fact that people work quite productively on train journeys. They just need to be comfortable with enough room for everyone to sit and move their elbows, not squished together on seats apparently designed for anorexic ballerinas, as on London Midland. (Well, it is cheap.)

I agree with sustainable transport and it’s good to invest in rail instead of flying or roads but I’m just not convinced that wrecking what little that remains of our countryside so that travellers can save a few minutes is worth it. (I know, most of our countryside is manmade and, yes, I know, ever since the canals were first proposed, Luddites have objected to the impact that transport infrastructure will have on the landscape and our quality of life.) But, as Gandhi said ‘there’s more to progress than an increase in speed.’ Ironically enough, I first saw this on a poster at a train station.

Wouldn’t it be better to take what has, rather pejoratively, been dubbed the ‘patch and mend’ approach, and upgrade the existing railway line so it can take longer trains? Big transport infrastructure projects are impressive, yes, and may generate jobs and income, but meanwhile rural transport dies. Why not invest in restoring some of the branch lines axed by Beeching in the 1960s, improving rural bus services and internet access and making the countryside somewhere people can live and work even if they don’t own a car?

Now it’s turned into such a lovely, mild day here on the canal, with the sun shining and birds singing, that I really can’t see myself trekking into London – a two mile walk, a half-hour bus journey and then a two-train trip of two and a half hours – just for the LSE lecture. If only it were available as a podcast or on a video-link up…

The picture was taken a week ago on a day like today, as I moved through the locks at Bratch, near Wombourne.

Offside moorings?

2011-12-28T11:32:00.003Z

This traditional coal carrying vessel passed by today. It had just started its journey, selling sacks of millions-of-years-old sunshine to boaters. I hailed it and bought one. Generally, I prefer burning wood to coal, but there's no denying that a few knobs keeps a fire going for a long time. Talking of which, it's time I moved on from Dimmingsdale really. I've already overstayed this mooring spot's five day limit. I don't feel too guilty. There's room for two other boats and, so far, only one other has moored next to me, for one night.

This is an unusual mooring spot as it's on the non-towpath side and so is more private and tranquil than being by the towpath, where, over the holiday period, a steady stream of cyclists and walkers passes by the windows. In boating terms, that's like living on the High Street. Whereas, here, with the sound of water rushing over a weir and a view of the lock and wintry trees, it's extremely restful and therefore difficult to find the motivation to cruise on. Tomorrow?

I'd be interested to know of other 'offside' official visitor moorings in rural locations. I don't think I've come across any.