Flowers and other bits of nature

Waking to a sunny field scattered with poppies was good. Since everyone could now drive the boat we took turns till breakfast. Then John taught the students about canals and I drove alone, chugging past banks of cow parsley, yellow loosestrife, great willowherb, valerian, marguerites and one timid rabbit which bounded off as we got close. A family of late ducklings in the canal wailed at astonishing volume as the boat separated them temporarily from their mother.

At Polesworth we tied up, wandered round the abbey graveyard learning social history and new words and talking about different cultural attitudes to death. After a swim in the River Anker it was back to the boat and onwards.

I taught. It was fine and I even managed to hold up the small whiteboard and write on it at the same time. I found out what the students want to learn and prepared a couple of lessons ahead, hauling papers out of my folders and checking the TEFL books on board.

At Rugely we stopped for food shopping, for me to find a photocopier and for those who’d come unprepared for wind and rain to raid the charity shops for warmer clothes. Soon after, we crossed the River Trent on the Brindley Bank aqueduct and I excitedly dragged the students out to look. John was much more blase about water crossing water and told me there'd be many more aqueducts but I can't imagine ever not being in awe at the confidence of Victorian engineering.

John’s friend, Jürgen, who has been on the boat many times before, arrived to improve the ratio of competent drivers to novices and joined us for the evening’s lesson, a practical: finding out what an English pub is and how to work it. We managed.

(somewhere along Coventry canal to Fazely junction in Tamworth. Right onto Birmingham and Fazely/Coventry canals to Fradley. Left onto Trent and Mersey canal to somewhere before Great Haywood junction. Map position approximate.)