Star City

In view of the forecast hot weather we decided to push off a little earlier at 0845hrs. this turned out to be a good thing as we hadn’t long left lock 7 and another boater came up behind us, mind you it wasn’t that long before we met a boat coming down so it wouldn’t have been too bad, as it was they were all with us except the one with the leaking top gate.
I took a couple of photos as we passed where HS2 is crossing, to the south is what I think is a long accessroad, to the north not much has changed canal side but there are large cranes just the other side of the motorway. It was actually quite cool this morning with a cool breeze and didn’t really warm up until lunchtime ish.
There has been a lot of talk on the internet about whether towpaths should be mown or left for wildflowers. The volunteers on the Curdworth flight do boat, 2 years ago the decision was made to leave the offside of locks for wild flowers, which they have, but they have also kept the edge by the lock mown, so the best of both worlds.

We just cleared Curdworth tunnel when we met a boat, the steerer madly waving at us, as I don’t wear my glasses when boating I didn’t have a clue who it was, when they got closer I could see it was Seyellas a fellow blogger, Having been on holiday fro 3 weeks I have lost track where people are, I have 130 unread blog on the machine. Just past The Cuttle Bridge Inn on the offside they are building a huge industrial estate, earth works have started and building on the very far side.

There is a recreation ground adjoining the development, its been there for many years, it looks as if they may have some new buildings, but what caught my eye was two groundsmen marking out the pitches, In my day you pushed a small tank full of white liquid along a string line to paint a white line, today they use a robot and follow it around with a smart phone, or maybe it knows where to go and he was just doing Facebook.

We carried on to Salford Junction, on the way the offside bank in places is just a mass of Blackberries, around our way in Suffolk they are all in flower, a lot of these are in fruit and we even spotted a few black ones. At the junction we turned a very hard left up the Grand Union to moor for the night at Star City, since we have been here only one boat has been passed.

Today’s Journey

10 locks 8 miles in 4¼ hours