Saturday, November 29, 2014

Where did all the boats go?

It’s been really quiet up here. We saw two boats pass on Thursday after we’d moored near Knowle, then nothing. No-one at all yesterday, and nothing so far today.

We didn’t move yesterday, we hadn’t planned to anyway, and it was just as well. I wasn’t feeling 100% when I got ready for my run first thing; by the time I returned I was feeling considerably under par. Meg had a walk, I went up into the village for some essential supplies, then returned to bed for a couple of hours. I feel a lot better today, the aches in my joints have mostly subsided and my head is no longer full of cotton wool. A fleeting, minor dose of the ‘flu, maybe.

With only a short lock-free cruise today we weren’t in any hurry to get going. It was gone 11:00 by the time I started the “donk” and untied.

Footbridge no. 73aIMG_2564

It was an uneventful trip, a handful of towpath walkers to say hello to, a couple of anglers to be ignored by, and that was about it.

An indication of how uninteresting it was is that the highlight was passing under the M42!IMG_2565

Just about an hour after getting away we were tied up again, this time on the visitor moorings at Catherine de Barnes.

Moored at CdBIMG_2566

We’ll be stopping here tomorrow, then getting an early start (by our standards!) on Monday. Plan is to reach Star City, near Salford Junction.

Incidentally, there isn’t, and never has been, a “Catherine de Barnes” . It appears that the name is a corruption of Ketelberne, the name of the lord of the manor in the 12th Century. The locals know it as Catney Barnes, or even more concisely, Catney.
Ketelberne de Langdon was granted the estate after the Norman Conquest, and seems to have been one of the more benevolent of the Norman Barons, his descendants building a Benedictine Priory near present-day Copt Heath in 1159. It was dissolved and demolished in 1536, during Henry VIII’s reign. 

Locks 0, miles 2½

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