Cannock Chase.

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 at Little Haywood.
The forecast for today was for a clear sunny day, so M got up early to watch the sunrise.

A strange wavering light approached along the towpath. It turned out to be a lady, wearing a head torch, out walking her dog in the dark. She and M chatted for a while -  yet quite unable to see each other in the dark!

The sunrise, when it came, was lovely and the colours in the sky changed from pink to gold as the sun made its appearance.

Before Rugeley, we passed the Armitage works, famous as makers of toilets and clearly still working (the factory and the toilets!).

The Armitage tunnel was cut through sandstone rock but eventually, the roof had to be removed because the tunnel subsided due to mining works beneath it. Since then, part of it has become a tunnel again when a wide road was built across it at an angle. It remains very narrow, just wide enough for one boat to pass at a time.

This always makes us chuckle! It looks as if the massive power station cooling towers are actually the chimneys of the houses.

The flooding caused by the recent heavy rain was evident as we crossed over the expanded River Trent on Brindley's aqueduct.

Colwich Lock is another of our favourites. The nearby railway bridge over the canal is having serious work done and we had to squeeze through the narrow channel.

Shortly afterwards, we moored up for the day in a lovely open space with views of Cannock Chase.
Guy thought wistfully that if he had longer legs he could have come walking with us. In the last eight years, we have often passed Cannock Chase but never made time to walk there. Today we decided to take advantage of the good weather and walk up on to the Chase while the washing dried on the line.

It was one of the first "Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty" and covers a vast area. From "Seven Springs", we climbed gradually up a path through a mainly coniferous forest. It was very quiet with virtually no birdsong or signs of wildlife.

As we got higher, the trees thinned out and we could see the Rugeley power station cooling towers in the distance.

In all, we walked about five miles before returning to our starting point. It was a beautiful walk but we clearly only saw a tiny fraction of the Chase.
As we walked back towards MM, we crossed the Trent again and it was difficult to see where the original river bank was, as it had spread itself across all the neighbouring fields.

We returned to MM to find that the washing was almost dry.

At sunset, we saw a lovely crescent moon over the Chase.

Today: 8 miles, 1 lock and 3.9 hours.
Trip: 433 miles, 170 locks and 217.0 hours.