It's been a most pleasant few days. Everything went on hold for The Masters snooker on the telly. Jill does love the game and I must admit to enjoying the skill of the top players.
We stayed for a couple of days at Norbury Junction and booked Armadillo in for bottom blacking in the autumn.
As the weekend approached I got the sudden urge to move on a little, so on Friday morning we pulled pins and set of for High Offley.
The entrance to Grubb Street Cutting is framed by the renowned High Bridge with its brick strut holding up the old telegraph pole. The bridge is reputedly haunted by a black, ape like creature, apparently the ghost of an old boatman who drowned here in the mid 19th C. Why he should appear as an ape is beyond me, unless he was somewhat hirsute and spectacularly ugly in life. He doesn't seem to have been seen lately but with the amount of traffic zooming over the bridge he probably spends all his time dodging the lorries.
High Offley church stands high above the canal with just the farms and cottages around it.
It must have rained really hard.
Of course the real attraction of the village is the wonderful Anchor Inn and Olive, its inestimable landlady. I'm sure she won't mind me telling you that at the end of February she will reach four score years and still presides over what to me is the last pub on the canal system. Just good company, good beer and a cheese sandwich if you ask nicely.
Today dawned grey and murky as we headed back to Gnosall, we have to be here for tomorrow, it's the visit to the dreaded toothwright.
The fog lifted as we pottered along and, as we wanted to be facing back towards High Offley when we moored at Gnosall, we had to go all the way to High Onn to wind, that is the first winding hole after Gnosall. For anyone unfamiliar with canalspeak, to wind is to turn the boat to face the opposite direction and it is pronounced as in "Blow, blow thou winter ...." and a winding hole is a widened section of canal which enables one to perform this delicate operation.
Watch this space.........
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