Our Part-Time Life on The Little Green Boat

Day 18 Wednesday 8 October
Goldstone to Brewood

It was nice this morning to wake up & see the sun shining....pity it didn't stay like that!

Last nights rural mooring at Goldstone

Today was to be an easy day as far as locks were concerned which gave us a chance to look around & see what we were passing as we went along & having been this way before we knew what to look out for.

This stretch of the canal is very rural with very few people using the towpath as it's miles from anywhere, so it's surprising to all of a sudden come across a factory with a wharf.

Factory & wharf at Knighton SUC

This factory & wharf were opened by Cadbury's in 1911 & was a centre for processing the milk that was collected from the local farms, this milk was then taken by boat to Bournville. The thing that amazed us was that they were still using the canal to transport milk until 1961! Also Cadburys were one of the first companies to have motorised boats. At the factory today they make Birds Custard Powder

Plaque on wharf wall

After passing the factory the canal passes along another high embankment - imagine living in this area back in 1830 & looking out onto acres of land & shortly afterwards not being able to see the rising sun as a canal embankment had been constructed.

So there we were chugging along, when Stuart said he could see something big in the water! Unfortunately we are used to seeing dead animals (rabbits, fish, birds, pigs, deer & even dogs) so we were surprised to see this pig swim past

If pigs could fly...it would have got out a lot easier!

This poor chap must have fallen in & was struggling to get out & this is a problem for animals which find themselves expectingly in the canal as the edges are often straight up rather than having a shallow edge like a river has. We reversed to try & help as we'd seen the pig struggling to try & climb out & then fall back in again. Luckily by the time we'd got back to where we'd last seen it the pig had managed to climb out & I could see it back on land but panting loudly. We were pleased as we didn't really know how we'd have got it out!

The SUC has many unusual bridges. Last night I photographed one of the high bridges in Woodeaves Cutting, so here's a couple of other unusual looking bridges

Bridge 40 SUC

Bridge 40 is in Grub Street Cutting which is a mile long, they used the spoil from these cuttings to construct the embankments. Looking at the bridge we were sure the sides were not parallel,

Bridge 39 SUC

Bridge 39 is unusual with these double arches & also it houses this tiny telegraph pole; there used to be a line of telegraph poles along the edge of the SUC. This whole area was said by the old boatmen to be haunted by a monkey-like creature!

After passing what felt like miles & miles of moored boats we reached Norbury Junction. No longer a real junction as the Newport Branch Canal was abandoned in 1944, but it used to go down 17 locks to Shrewsbury, Now the small stretch that is still in water is used for mooring.

Norbury Junction SUC

After this the rain started to come down BIG-TIME! So I didn't take many more pictures. But after another 3 hours, after passing through the 81 yards long Cowley Tunnel & the lone Wheaton Aston Lock we reached Brewood (Pronounced Brood) which is the last suitable mooring on the SUC.