Changing direction

The news that boaters will now be able to take their own craft through Standedge Tunnel, albeit with a BW man in attendance for when you chicken out at the pinch points, is a great fillip to our Pennine Ring cruise plans. I wouldn't have minded the 3 mile schlep over the top but it seemed such a shame not to be able to enjoy the full tunnel experience - not when you'd made all that effort to get there. Now we can get mucky aong with everyone else. Goody. However, it won't be this spring - it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind, so I've done a Mrs Slocombe and unanimously decided that the Pennine Ring will now feature as our autumn cruise. Which means that, at last, we get to go south!

My grand plan is to go into work/cruise mode during the last week of May (half-term) and so better position ourselves for a jaunt down to Stratford, returning up the cut to then dive down the Worcester & Birmingham. A quick river saunter to Stourport, a let's-get-a-move-on mosey up the Staffs and Worcester and a breakneck dash back up the Shroppie should see us pushing the holiday envelope to the max. But as we don't actually have to be back anywhere by any particular time, we could just flick over into work/cruise mode again and finish off at a more sedate pace - we'll just have to see how the mood takes us.

I have to confess that the Stratford/W&B thing is an itch that I've been needing to scratch for some time. I've never done the southern part of the Stratford canal and it's been well over twenty years since my dad and I did a couple of mega jaunts up and down Tardebigge. And yet it remains one of my favourite canals and repository of many happy memories. It's definitely overdue a revisit and despite previous plans to get down there, something or other has always put the kybosh on it. Fingers crossed that we pull it off this time. So that's June sorted. Now, can I squeeze in another week somewhere, she says, looking at her calendar? Mmm, Bugsworth in December maybe?