Burton on Trent to Tixall

Saturday 5 April 2008
Burton on Trent to Tixall Day 16
Trent and Mersey Canal

Miles 22
Locks 15
Hours 10

Another 9.00 am start in spitting rain. We rapidly caught up with a couple of slow moving hire boats, which obligingly let us past.


The increase in traffic resulted in a few minutes delay entering the Alrewas river section and again at Fradley, but nothing of note.


The weather deteriorated into rain, sleet and snow as we passed Armitage and Rugely, clearing as we approached Great Haywood. We passed a single hander en route to Llangollen at Armitage, accompanied by a tiny scampering dog which will spend the entire trip rushing up and down the towpath.

We had an enforced crew change at Great Haywood with Jeff departing at the Anglo Welsh base at Great Haywood, being replaced by Tilly allowing Jeff to attend his friends baptism in Sutton Coldfield.

We finished the day mooring just beyond Tixall Wide on the Staffs and Worcester, immediately below Tixall Lock with just the owls, bats and geese for company. During the day we had struggled to power Bagman’s chunky laptop from our very small inverter as it refused to both recharge and run the DVD simultaneously. By the evening we overcame its limitations by effecting a full charge whilst in standby in advance. In this way we were able to settle down to an evenings entertainment beside the roaring log burner. Sleeping arrangements were varied so the two girls shared the double bed and Bagman and Capt Ahab used the saloon with the bunks configuration up front.