To the cutting

The mile of canal from the 48 hour moorings near Hunting Bridge No 7 to the winding hole by Upper Hattons Bridge No 5 has an embankment, a cutting, a couple of bridges, a rather smelly farm, some open fields and a Motorway -its a microcosm of the entire canal.

The winding hole at Upper Hattons is a rather large elongated affair, and considering its the first winding hole north of Wolverhampton Boat Club it is rather silted up and turning round in it produces rather a lot of black silt and unpleasant smells.

Like the previous day there seemed to be a burst of activity first thing in the morning and then things went quiet. There was a small queue for the lock at Wheaton Aston, but nothing like it had been on Easter Sunday when we had to wait for over an hour to get through. As we needed to water and get rid of some rubbish we pulled in below the lock at the sanitary station and had lunch at the same time.

Kathy had an idea that she might stand a better chance of getting a good photo or three of the bird of prey in Grub Street cutting if we moored over night and she could go and wander round. So we moored up for the night just north of High Bridge – a good mooring in that it was nice and deep up to the edge but it was a pain putting the metal hooks round the piling rail as the rather soft bank had covered over the top of the piling, but some enthusiastic work with a mooring pin soon cleared space. There is another problem with this mooring and that’s the midges – rather nasty ones which cause very large swellings.

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