The old and the new - together

Wednesday, 18 March 2009 21:08

We were woken by the bird song - in the middle of Penkridge! I am impressed by this lovely market town. It retains its "olde worlde" charm but it provides all that is necessary for its residents and visitors. JRR Tolkein once lived in the area, so it must be special!

I was also impressed by the efficiency of the Health Centre, blood tests - no problem! I was even more impressed by the Whitehouse Pharmacy in Market Street. Unlike a certain large chain of chemists (these ..... are made for walking!), they turned around my prescription in less than 24 hours. One item had not arrived, it was reordered and the Pharmacist took my phone number, phoning me about 4pm to say it had arrived. I shall be patronising the independents as often as possible from now on!

We had a wander around the large open air market. We resisted buying a cockerel or some laying hens but gave in to fresh donuts! Fruit and veg were also on offer, as was meat from the meat auction wagon - he had a great line in patter!

Time to set off and we went through Penkridge lock (very heavy bottom gates with bent beams) and stopped at the boaters facilities immediately above. We had another 6 locks to go through before we arrived at Gailey. Well known landmarks were ticked off as we enjoyed the South Staffordshire countryside.

Our first "old and new" was at Filance lock. The Staffs and Worcs is a very old canal and it is great to spot a little of the legacy it has left.

Old bollard, note the rope marks

"New" bollard, far less interesting
The M6 comes very close at Otherton. There is a marina as well as a lock here. The motorway runs parallel and at Rodbaston it roars by so loudly that even shouting is not loud enough!

Rodbaston lock

At Brick Kiln lock we had to negotiate around the fishermen

Just around the corner the well known round tower of Gailey appeared and we almost felt as if we were coming home! It was a funny sensation to go ahead and do the lock and then see Epiphany, not Twelfth Night appear from under the bridge!

Epiphany in Gailey lock

Davis Matthias (the "D" of JD Boat Services) waved as he saw John (once seen never forgotten!) and as I had done two washes on the way up we stopped on the water point to top up.

Here is our second "old and new" ...boats

We then moved a little way further on and moored on the visitor moorings before we went over to the office for our post and a chat to David. He will be over in the next couple of days to check our electrics as he thinks he can improve the efficiency of the battery charging. 

JD Boats will be craning in the rest of the hire fleet tomorrow, so we will move if we are in the way. John now had some more LEDs to fit as they arrived here for us from Bedazzled. We will then be completely "LED-ed" apart from our wall lights and the two bendy lights over our bed! The new 15 LEDs are really good and give a bright light.

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