A Rainy Morning.

Monday 26th September, 2016 at Gailey.
We awoke to an overcast morning and a forecast of light rain in the morning and heavy rain in the afternoon. We decided to cruise the seven lock-free miles to Gailey and moor up there as we saw no point in doing a lot of locks in heavy rain. There are five locks immediately after Gailey, so we'll tackle them tomorrow when hopefully, the weather will have improved.
We went into the office to say goodbye to Annie (Pete wasn't in this morning) and untied MM in light drizzle.

Autherley Junction is a pretty spot. It is necessary to negotiate the "stop" lock, which is only 4 inches deep, but is designed to stop the Staffs & Worcs Canal taking any water from the Shropshire Union Canal. When the canals were originally built, the proprietors jealously guarded their water supplies!

Then it's through the junction bridge, farewell to our old faithful friend the Shroppie and hello to the lovely Staffs & Worcs Canal.

Almost immediately north of the junction, you enter the "Pendeford Rockin" (as the old working boatmen called it). This is where Brindley's navvies had to cut a half mile of the canal through a solid belt of sandstone that breaks through the clay strata at this point.

The channel is only just wide enough for one boat to pass through, although there are a few passing places. It must be a baptism of fire for novice hirers fresh out of Autherley - mind you, that included us back in 2010 when we passed through here on our first ever hire boat!
MM was almost scraping each side of the sandstone cutting.

By now, the earlier drizzle had become more serious rain and, for the first time in weeks, out came our trusty "Eddie Stobart" umbrella. We have been so lucky this summer; it has rained on us rarely, and mostly at night. But the Staffs & Worcs is beautiful, even under the umbrella in the rain.

There is one section that is not so lovely, that is the section past the S.I. Chemical works. The smell was awful and the large warning notices forbidding narrowboaters to moor, or even to stop, were probably unnecessary as no-one would choose to moor up next to such olfactory horrors. Pooh!

Our mooring for the night was just south of Gailey Wharf, almost in the same place that we moored on the first night of our first cruise on nb "Emma" in April 2010. Happy memories.

Despite the cold and rain, we walked up to the Wharf and its iconic Round House, which used to be a toll office but is now famous canal shop with a wonderful cornucopia of canal ware.
To our surprise, we found a fridge magnet depicting the lockside cottage at Kinver on the Staffs & Worcs, which we seriously considered buying in 2014. It looks quite big in this picture but, in reality, it was much too small!

M needed to post some letters and was expecting to have to walk a long way in the rain, but she was delighted to find that there was a post box just behind the Round House.

As the promised heavy rain arrived later, we took the afternoon off and stayed where we were.

Today: 7 miles, 1 lock and 3.8 hours. 1 kingfisher
Trip: 454 miles, 309 locks and 315.2 hours.