Grassman

Yes that's us.

It was good to bump into you (not literally 🙂) as we exchanged locks in the Meaford flight on Friday.

We ate there 2 days ago and it was excellent. I had to Google to find out who Neil Morrissey was though 🙁

I've never known Stone so busy. We've managed to get on a private towpath mooring (with permission!) opposite Canal Cruising as we're booked in there for blacking tomorrow. Barlaston was particularly busy the other day too.

Getting back onto the topic 🙂, we've just spent the last month doing the 4 counties ring with a detour to Llangollen and back, and it's definitely been quieter than usual for this time of year. Even at the busy end of the Llangollen there were only a few boats on the move, and they were mostly hireboats.

That was the worst part for us. We had to wait 20 minutes outside the lock, the wind suddenly increased a lot and it became very wobbly!

In 1994 on the Caldon Canal in Milton two kids threw stones at us. Then 20 years later when approaching the same spot, as I was reminding my wife of this, two young scroates appeared and began hurriedly assembling stones. This time I had a phone camera and when I pointed it towards them they dropped the stones and watched us pass by. I reckon they were probably the sons of the kids who’d done it in 1994. Coincidentally on both occasions it was the same date August 14th

I've read them all and they were good. I'm not sure I'll like the move away from the UK canals though, but I'll have to wait and see,

I reckon the main reason that GoBoats in Brum didn't last was probably down to the eye watering prices. Fine for London because of the amount of tourists and the wealth in the area, but way too much for any other city.

The Caldon Canal has its challenges mainly due to poor maintenance, but it's well worth doing it. Strangely some don't bother with the Leek Arm and they miss out on one of the nicest stretches of canal in the country. Plenty of quiet and rural moorings at the far end too.

Recently when we were doing the offside veg cutting we had one of CRT's ecology persons tag along with us for the day. It was a nightmare because they kept saying you can't cut this, you can't cut that, even in parts where trees were causing a major problem, not just to navigation but also where they were compromising the safety of boaters too.

For me, Birmingham is better by a long chalk. No matter what time you arrive you're pretty certain of finding somewhere to over-night. Not so with Manchester especially since they've turned some of the VM's into permanent moorings. Birmingham seems to encourage visiting boaters where as Manchester doesn't.

That's the problem. It's like when the first time we booked a 3 days mooring in Little Venice, I was moaning about it to friends and family, and they pointed out that where else can you stay in the middle of London for £10 a night.

When we did the Mersey into Liverpool in 2021 and booked the locking off the river at Brunswick Lock into Liverpool Marina, they asked if we wanted to stay there for a few nights at £60 a night! Having already pre-booked a week at Salthouse we obviously declined the offer.

All have been based around our canals and rivers and the details of the locations have been spot on. If it's as good as his previous novels it'll be a good read.