Rugeley

As we were moored by Shugborough Hall we went for a walk around the estate on Tuesday morning.  This quaint packhorse bridge took us across the Trent into the grounds.  We spent a long time trying to get Buddy to swim but he would not go out of his depth, bless him.  He is actually walking here - when we threw a stick he was quite clever as he sussed out where the shallow areas were and waited until the stick went that way.

We couldn’t help thinking that it must have been busy with packhorses as there were so many passing places.  We also pretended to be knights in armour with shields as they would also need to use the passing places. 

Disappointingly there are still few butterflies around but we are getting plenty of reports of different species from the South.  There were plenty of dragonflies and demoiselle flies around.  I don’t have my dragonfly book with me so not sure which demoiselle fly this one is.

We had to walk through a herd of cows; Karen is always apprehensive with this but we managed it with only a few of theme coming up to us or Buddy. 

 

This old horse was feeling the heat and had his head pressed against a stable wall.

There had recently been an event at the hall so it was difficult to get a good view of the building.

Karen had ordered a couple of things from Tesco direct so in the afternoon we cruised down to a big Tesco at Rugeley.  Whilst waiting at Colwich lock I got chatting with a guy who was born on a working boat.  His mum and dad ran the boat and had three children on it until the business folded in 1962.  He related some interesting stories including some about when he was a young child their boat was still horse drawn.  In those days he was responsible for walking the horse over the tunnels so he never went through the tunnels we find so fascinating.  He also said he has never been on a boat since 1962 so I wasn’t sure what to think of that.

As we were retracing our steps that we made in January there wasn’t much new to see other than the fact we were in summer rather than winter.  When we went through Armitage we realised that this factory was Armitage Shanks the sanitary ware maker – not sure how we missed it when we came passed before.