The thaw had well and
truly set in on Sunday morning, so it was off to visit Mike and Lesley in
Cropredy and see the latest progress on their house build and their new boat in
the flesh for the first time.
They are building a house
in the middle of Cropredy with frontage and a mooring onto the Oxford
canal. As they didn’t have a boat when
they started building the house last year they let us use their mooring during
the summer which was also handy for going to the Fairport festival.
We got down to the site
and Mike spotted a fieldfare struggling in the water. It took a while, but we rescued it, but the
poor thing was soaked through. It was so
wet it couldn’t climb out of the water, so I helped it out with a boat hook.
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Fieldfare rescued (I know
it’s not the correct way to hold a bird, but it wasn’t struggling at the time)
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Left to dry, out of reach
of dogs
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Whilst we were there it
started drying out and even had the odd hop so hopefully it will fully recover.
The house is coming on well
and it was good to see it for real rather than on plans. When we were there in the summer it was at
the footings stage. They are currently
waiting for the Welsh slate to arrive for the roof and then things will really
start taking shape. Their blog on the
house and boat build can be seen by clicking here.
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Charlie Mo at the bottom
of their garden
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The driver’s end
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The willow tree in the
picture above had its leaves dangling in the water last summer, making it
extremely difficult for boats to see if anything was coming the other way. We spent an afternoon cutting it all back,
using our boat as a platform.
It reminded us of the day
that Mike was in the water clearing out the stones that had fallen in from an
old wharfing wall.
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Having a laugh when we were moored there in the
summer, before we cut the willow tree
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We had a good lunch and a
few pints in the Brasenose arms and then it was the drive home. Nearly all the snow had melted during the
day, leaving just the deeper drifts which will probably be there for a while
yet.
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Driving back up the M40 to
Warwick
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As I look out this morning
there is very little snow left, but the water is still frozen. The ice is quite mushy but surprisingly is
still about 3” thick.
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Before I sign off, a quick
glimpse back at Wast Hills. Our friend, Alison, knows about our interest in the
Worcester & Birmingham canal tunnel in the southern outskirts of Birmingham;
we spent a lot of November and December in the area last year. She had found an Ordnance Survey map from the
early part of last century and it clearly shows the position of two of the three
remaining air shafts.
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The northern and central
shafts ringed in red
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This was the northern
shaft, in what is now the Hawkesley estate, when I saw it last November…
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| Greatly extended in height to stop things being thrown down the shaft into the canal |
… and this was the central
air shaft on the same day
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| Brick farmer's storage shed built next to the central shaft |
We never managed to find
the southern shaft and, strangely, it doesn’t appear to be marked on the OS map
either.
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