South on Staffs & Worcestershire Canal

At 6am I was lying awake listening to the heavy rain drumming on the boat roof.  Soon afterwards the central heating came on and I went to look at the fire.  It was nearly out, and half an hour later it was out completely.  More practice needed!

By 10:00 the rain had stopped and so we set off in breezy weather but with blue skies and mainly white clouds.  At the junction we left the Trent & Mersey turning left onto the Staffs & Worcestershire Canal.  At Tixall Wide we were pleased to note that the bank had been much improved since we were there last year, and all along the canal the towpath had been recently mowed.  It was looking attractive and well kept.

The Stafford Link starts here

New signpost

About four miles and two locks after leaving Great Haywood we passed the point at which the Stafford Link will one day join the canal.  Here there is a new signpost hopefully pointing towards Stafford across low lying fields.  There are plans to canalise the River Sow to link Stafford into the canal network providing a new destination for boaters and adding to the tourist attractions of the city.  Two miles later we moored up for the day at around 1pm.

The environment on a narrowboat is hard on electrics.  Last night the lights in our saloon started flickering.  We had seen such problems previously due to light switches failing, perhaps because of corrosion from condensation.  We have a few spare switches so I replaced what I believed to be the faulty one and now the lights work perfectly.  Another electrical peculiarity has appeared: the charging voltage of our doemstic batteries is rather low.  But we dont yet seem to have any problems with low power, but its something we will have to watch.