The Pen Makers Boat: #392

Now Sold

Cross cut Elm and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen

EUROPEAN ELM - Ulmus procera

European Elm has a light to medium brown colour, sometimes with a hint of red heartwood with irregular, wavy cross grain which results in attractive figuring. With an oil finish, it can turn a beautiful golden brown colour The grain is quite coarse. Elm can turn brown/light grey.

The journey from Norbury Junction through to the locks above Audlem is a beautiful stretch of the canal system and Autumn is a great time of year to cruise it. Once past the moored boats resident at Norbury the canal passes through Grub Street Cutting with two remarkable tall bridges, one with an arch on top of an arch with an old telegraph pole in the middle and a double decker bridge with a road across the cutting and under the road the bridge carries a stream from one side to the other!

An hour or so further and the engineering feat of the Great Shebdon Embankment takes you over the smoking chimney of the farmhouse below and on towards a large ex-chocolate factory still with it's covered canalside wharf. Sadly now only producing dried milk powder the factory used to chocolate goods to and from Bourneville on the south-eastern side of Birmingham.

The narrow and very steep cutting at Woodseves leads to the picturesque flight of five locks at Tyrley and soon onto the market town of Market Drayton where we stopped for a couple of nights to restock the cupboards and catch up on a few jobs before continuing down through another five locks at Adderley and a slightly more taxing fifteen locks through Audlem village and down to one of our favourite moorings overlooking farmland and a young meandering River Weaver.