Wolesley Bridge and Ingestre

Yesterday we left Tixall Wide in the morning and reversed onto the water point at Great Haywood Junction. Sounds simple, of course, but it was "fun". It was even more "fun" when the hotel boat pair, Duke & Duchess, negotiated the turn into the Staffs & Worcester as another boat exited the junction to turn south. Lots of opportunities for gongoozling entertainment.

After watering, we moored up and visited the Shugborough Hall again, this time to see the Patrick Litchfield Nudes exhibition. It isn't a large exhibition but it was well worth the visit if only to see the iconic portrait of Marsha Hunt. There are some startling and wonderfully composed images from the sixties and the complete 1993 Unipart Calender.

Waiting at Colwich Lock

We moved off south after lunch and joined a queue of boats that had formed at Great Haywood Lock. There were around five, most of them from the Lymm Cruising Club on the Bridgewater Canal. At the Colwich, the next lock south, the queue was only three boats. Eventually we moored up for the night at Wolseley Bridge and had dinner in the Wolseley Arms.

This morning saw us travelling south towards Rugeley to turn in the winding hole near Bridge 68, shades of last year. The weather was better than yesterday with no rain.There was only a short queue for Colwich Lock and no queues at the other locks going north. We stopped for a late lunch, and the day, near Shirleywich where there is a 48 h mooring complete with interpretation board and bench.

Albert and T&M Interpretation Board

Late in the afternoon we took a stroll up the lane to Ingestre. Well worth the visit, this little village, the former seat of the Earls of Shrewsbury, boasts an amazing stables complex, a large hall which is now a residential arts centre and the only Christopher Wren Church outside London.

Ingestre Stables

Ingerstre Hall

St Mary the Virgin, Ingestre

The church is quite amazing having been restored in 2004. It has Burne-Jones stain glass made in the William Morris factory and is full of monuments to the Chetwynd-Talbot family who owned the estate until 1960.

Magnificent Burne-Jones stain glass

Interior of Ingestre Parish Church

The wood interior is in Flanders Oak and the restored plaster work is very intricate.

Dead tree near Ingestre

The valley of the Trent is wide and flat along here and the river meanders. Just south of us is a stretch called the swans neck - very picturesque. Tomorrow we head for Aston and then home.