Sir John Smith
Today we are on our way by car to Torbay but thinking of the memorial service this morning in the chapel of Eton College. Of course his memorial will exist well beyond our lives and his:
Through The Manifold Trust he was instrumental in bringing HMS Belfast to London and SS Great Britain to Bristol.
He founded The Landmark Trust which rescues and restores vernacular buildings and makes them available for occupation as holiday lets.
As a director of The National Trust he is credited with persuading that body to take on the Southern Stratford Canal and restore it for leisure use and, arguably, giving impetus to all subsequent canal restoration projects. He also reunited the founders of IWA after their rift. His contribution to the inland waterways may never be fully appreciated. (Recently The Manifold Trust contributed substantially to the Lichfield and Hatherton Canal Restoration campaign)

For a fuller obituary go to The Independent Online

A Barrow Ride
Just as we set off from Loughborough this morning we received a call from our Landmark friend Joe to say he was coming for a ride.
Barrow-on-Soar to Loughborough on the Ivanhoe line - 4 mins.
Loughborough to Barrow-on-Soar by canal - 90 mins.
I wonder why the canals declined as a mode of transport.
After a relaxing walk around Bradgate Park with John and Joe we enjoyed a marvellous dinner at The White Swan in Sileby. (01509 814832). If the bar snacks are anything like the restaurant meal we had then this should be on your list of Good Grub Pubs. To top of the exquisite food and charming company the landlady/chef, Teresa decorated our table with some Geckos from here collection.

Who has seen Big Ben?
I am not keen on water with a mind of its own. I like it to stand still whilst we navigate Gecko. But today we have travelled several miles down the River Trent from Shardlow and even more miles up the River Soar. And survived! The waterway to Loughborough has so many weirs it was difficult to know when we were on river and when on canal. However it only needs a weepy film on tv to generate enough waster to cause the Soar to flood. Then it's easy to tell. The first locks we encountered after leaving the Trent were obviously replacements as there was evidence of older locks alongside.


Kegworth Old Lock
Loughborough boasts the largest bell foundry in the world - Taylors - where Great Paul, the 17ton bell at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, was cast. Local residents may also tell you that Big Ben was cast here but this is another of the many stories which surround this bell. It was actually cast in Stockton-on-Tees and weighed 16tons. As the tower was unready Big Ben was first hung in Palace Yard but it cracked in use. The metal was recast at the only other bell foundry now existing in England - Whitechapel Bell Foundry in the east end of London. In this process it appears to have lost 2.5 tons. Along with most natives of this country and all tourists - I have never seen Big Ben but I am very familiar with its sound and with St. Stephen's Tower which houses it.

1947 was a very good year
If you endured the Big Freeze or the floods which washed away the Cavendish Bridge near Shardlow, you might not agree whole-heartedly with this statement. However, those of us who were born in 1947 and also within the Chinese Year of the Golden Pig stand by it.
On our many trips to the Derby cousins in the Standard Vanguard Phase II (not the egg-shaped Phase I) we children would start the journey up the A5 by playing pub cricket but would gradually fall into the torpor induced by four hours without exercise.
The wake up call was provided by a clanking and rattling a few miles outside Derby as we crossed the River Trent at Cavendish Bridge. In 1941 Sir Donald Bailey developed the giant Mecanno like bridge which bore his name and when the stone bridge here was washed away it was replaced by one of these amazing structures. The design brief was to produce a bridge that could span up to 200ft, be carried in a 3 ton truck and assembled quickly by six unskilled men using no specialised equipment. This particular example was erected in 1947 and finally replaced in 1957.

The original Cavendish Bridge





There is now no bridge here as the A6 bypasses the village but the position of the bailey bridge is still visible ( with the bypass in the distance)

Toast & Top Hats
As a child breakfast consisted of cereal, milk and sugar. That is, real milk - from Channel Island cows - not the white water which currently masquerades as milk. I recently bought some 'Gold Top' milk in a supermarket trying to recapture the taste of my youth but was perplexed that the label proclaimed only 4% fat. The point of Channel Island milk was the richness of its cream which is hardly achieved by restricting the fat content! I suppose if I look hard enough I shall find low fat dripping and lite suet. Ugh!! When we visited our cousins in Derby we encountered a strange product called Sterilized milk. This homogenised and creamy flavoured milk is still available in its distinctive bottle with the Crown Cork closure. Whilst the cousins benefited from the egalitarian creaminess they never had the experience of opening a new bottle of real milk and, by very careful pouring, depositing an unfair share of the cream on their cornflakes. Nor did their bottles develop a top hat in the winter when the frozen cream would rise out out of the bottle by about two inches pushing the gold top up with it. Sometimes on a Sunday Dad would make rasher sandwiches liberally sprinkled with vinegar and pepper. But for some reason we never had toast. This was a mystery to me until we visited the cousins. Here I discovered that the technique practised by Aunty Dot was to toast the bread under the grill until it was black and then take it into the back yard and scrape the black off with a bone-handled knife. Not until I left home did I discover that toast could be produced with less effort by removing it before it burnt.
Over the past few days we have met each of the cousins again and in the process started the BBQ season.

How to make toast
Two months ago we left our winter moorings in Stourport-on-Severn and today we arrived in Shardlow, south of Derby. These two towns apparently share the distinction of being the only inland ports in England developed primarily for the canal trade. Whilst there had been trade on the Rivers Severn and Trent for many years before the canals arrived no transshipment ports existed prior to James Brindley cutting his 'stinking ditches' - not his words. His vision was of a 'silver cross' of canals linking the four corners on England - NW, NE,SW,SE. Sadly he did not live to see it fulfilled. Brindley might still recognise many of the buildings in Shardlow however - salt warehouses and the like - despite many of them now being used for residential purposes. Stourport has a further distinction in the canal history stakes - it did not exist before the Staffs & Worcs cansl arrived - and so claims to be our first canal town.

On Monday we have to get the engine serviced at Dobsons yard but this afternoon we visited the Heritage Centre. For 50 pence we spent a happy couple of hours browsing the fascinating pictures and documents relating to the history of Shardlow and environs. This is well worth the visit but only opens on Saturday and Sunday afternoons between Easter and October as it relies exclusively on volunteers. A little money from the national lottery wouldn't come amiss.


Toast? - I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

Get your kicks on Route 6
Sustrans is an organisation which promotes sustainable transport. A significant part of their strategy has been the construction of cycle routes, the longest of which links London to the Lake District. Route 6 crosses the Trent & Mersey Canal here at Swarkestone where it follows the bed of the disused Derby Canal (closed in 1964) From here we made two excursions - one on foot and one by bike.



The only stretch of the Derby Canal still in water



The pedestrian trip was fairly short - up to the hamlet of Swarkestone to take a look at the Pavillion - a Landmark property we had only seen before in the dark.
This is a fascinating place for two people to stay. There is no accommodation on the ground floor: the bed/sitting room is in the middle; the kitchen is to the right in the picture and the bathroom is in the turret immediately above. To attend to the call of nature it is necessary to scale the staircase in the other turret and walk across the open roof.






After a quick glass of Margaret's elderflower fizz we extracted the two Bromptons from their locker and set off along the superbly paved cycle/footpath into Derby. For five miles or so we followed the Derby Canal bed until we joined the River Derwent for the last mile or so up to the weir. The weather was hot and the path was very well used by walkers and cyclists.

Meetings and missings
When we stopped for water near Endon on the Caldon Canal a week or so ago we passed a little tug - Ivy - which appeared to be unoccupied. Ivy usually lives at Willington where her owners, Trevor and Marion, live. Today we are in Willington and Trevor and Marion are on the Caldon Canal. We have never met yet, but my mother's cousin, Babs, who lives near here knows them very well and I believe they do exist.
We did manage to meet Babs this afternoon and enjoyed her splendid cooking. Yesterday her younger daughter and two grand-daughters visited us in Burton for something of a reunion.

Meanderings
We left Gt. Haywood on Sudday afternoon during a break in the rain which proved to be much briefer than we had anticipated. However we enjoyed the fresh air, mooring just short of Rugeley. On the way we passed Me and er another Severn Valley boat in its distinctive turquoise livery. At one of the locks we also met a couple of campanologists moving their mooring to Stourport. As Craig and Janet, who share their interest, will be mooring there this winter with Rainbow Lorikeet they should settle quite quickly into their new berth by the rug shop.
Having lost my sense of smell a few years ago I was unable to appreciate the aroma here by Marston's Brewery in Burton on Trent. However I can remember waiting for a bus outside Young's Wandsworth brewery every morning for three weeks during my first teaching practice in Fulham in 1969 and how it really set me up for the day ahead.












Passing the brewery last October

A cordial evening
On our way to Great Haywood Jct we learned that Di & Martin had moored Uisce Beatha there whilst they went off to the Crick show. Margaret spent the day making elderflower cordial from her hedgerow garnering and in the evening we drank a few beers with Di & Martin and put the world to rights. We moored directly behind Uisce Beatha adn shared this view of Shugborough Hall from our porthole