Panic stations this morning – my iPad was dead!! I had been using it in bed last night and had
put it away as usual but when I went to switch it on this morning –
nothing. I had charged it up yesterday
so it couldn’t possibly have run out of battery, but I put it on charge just in
case. I went back to it half an hour later and it was still dead. A quick look on good old Google and I found
something that said I needed to make a hard restart by pressing and holding both
the home button and the power/sleep/wake button until the Apple logo appeared –
IT WORKED!! Phew 😊
We had planned on 9 locks today and it was one of those “I’m glad to be
alive” days. The South Stratford is a
beautiful canal, especially on a sunny day with the light coming through the trees. I hope my photos do the morning justice.
It was cloudy after lunch which did help cool the afternoon down. We passed the new Hill Farm Marina which now
has boats in it. Last year it was just a
mess! I took the third photo as we
passed 12 months ago.
All the locks were against us today and we finally found the culprits
at lock 8! We were so close to them that
even when a boat came up the next lock was empty!
This South Stratford canal begins at Kings Norton, a leafy suburb of
Birmingham and ends at the lovely old town of Stratford on Avon. The original plan for the canal was for the
transportation of coal from the River Severn up to Birmingham, and the canal
was built between 1793 and 1803 from the junction with the Worcester and
Birmingham at Kings Norton, then right through to Lapworth and Kingswood. By 1815 the canal had reached Stratford on
Avon, from where it was linked to the River Avon, which was then navigable all
the way to the confluence with the River Severn.
Inevitably, with the advent of competition from the railways, trade
declined rapidly, and by 1890 the amount of commodities carried on the canal
was less than 25% of that when the canal first opened. By 1950 the canal section at the Lapworth end
had badly silted up, and several of the lock gates were leaking and in dire
need of repair. There was a move to close the canal altogether, but these
proposals were met with loud protests from canal societies and a campaign was
mounted to "save the Stratford Canal". In 1959 the National Trust were successful in
leasing the canal, and restoration then commenced in earnest. Much for the work was done by prison
labourers, and volunteers who belonged to the National Trust and other bodies
like the Inland Waterways Association Waterways Recovery Group. The formal
re-opening ceremony was in 1964.
6.46 miles
9 locks
No comments:
Post a Comment