Monday 21st / Saturday 26th November Shugborough to Gailey 11 miles

Monday 21st / Saturday 26th November Shugborough to Gailey 11 miles

Our next outing was due to take place on Monday 21st, but waking to a filthy day with the forecast saying that it was set for the day, we decided to postpone. What an excellent decision! It remained foul for the entire day.

Still we made the most of our time, meeting to plan further stages. If you can't walk, talk about walking. I love a good plan!

Anyway, we finally returned to Shugborough on Saturday 26th and the up-shot of all our planning was an extension of this leg to Gailey Tower rather than Penkridge. Having walked further out of Shugborough to find parking, previously, we could walk further today to shorten the next stage. Every little helps!

After all of Monday's rain, the going was better than expected as we climbed up onto Cannock Chase to start our walk.

After climbing up through trees, the landscape opened out into heath land as we reached the wide open spaces of Cannock Chase, with the route swapping from The Staffordshire Way to The Heart of England Way. All these long distance trails to explore - we won't be lacking for future challenges!

The route returns to The Staffordshire Way to take you past the Glacial Boulder, a boulder of Scottish granite brought to Cannock Chase by glacial action in the last ice age.

We then headed down through woodland and a farm track that had the feel of an ancient cart way with hedges to both sides, before reaching civilisation and lanes to take us into the village of Bednall. From Bednall, we once again followed The Staffordshire Way down lanes, then fields and woodland to emerge into the more open farm land of Teddesley Park. Here we soon found ourselves in the middle of a shoot, with local guns out with  their dogs, after pheasant!

Whilst waiting for the guns to clear, we had a great chat with one of the guns, who told us that the large brick buildings visible were the servants quarters of the original estate house. "The Big House " had been blown up by its last owner when he was made bankrupt, rather than see it in the hands of other people. This sounds like a story worth further investigation!

From here, we dropped down across fields to join The Staffordshire and Worcester Canal, where we stopped by the lock for lunch. This is a busy, well used and well maintained canal, that runs through Penkridge.

The remainder of the days walking was along the tow path, under bridges, past locks, all the way to Gailey Lock.

Gailey Lock is readily identifiable by the red brick tower, complete with battlements, which was built as the lock keeper's cottage. Obviously, lock-keeping was a more dangerous career than one would have imagined!

Rather handily, this is right on the old Roman Road, the old A5, so no extra miles were needed to find the car and complete our "hop" home.