We thought
the final leg into Birmingham would take four hours as we only had 13 miles to
travel with no locks. As it was it took 5 ½ hours as we had some unforeseen experiences
on the way. Yet again it was like a
summer’s day as we set off:
After going
through this lift bridge Karen stayed on the towpath to give Buddy a walk and at the next bridge she found an iPhone on the
path.
We moored and charged the phone
up – fortunately it didn’t have a lock on it and we found an entry for someone
called “Wifey”. To cut a long story
short we rang her from one of our phones and as she was able to confirm the
number of her husband’s phone we made arrangements to meet up. He is a care worker and had one of his
charges with him and Karen went to meet him whilst I cruised slowly on. He insisted on giving her some money which we
of course refused – in the end we found a fiver in Buddy’s collar so that will
go to a charity.
Shortly
afterwards we went through Brandwood tunnel which originally had some ornate stonework
(and graffiti) on the portal.
Over morning coffee
we had a little research on whether we could take in a few more of Birmingham’s
canals on our way through but as we are keen on getting to Wales we decided
against it and will take a direct route albeit using a couple of new stretches. This shows the canals of the Birmingham area
and those highlighted in yellow are the only ones we have visited so far.
At King’s
Norton, stomping ground of our friend Alison, we went through a guillotine
lock. This is now left open but was
originally a stop lock to ensure people paid their tolls when going from the Stratford
canal to the Worcester & Birmingham canal or vice versa.
I hadn’t realised
but one of my fenders was down as we went through the lock and we heard a
crunch as it was ripped off. This is not
as dangerous as it looks as I had stopped the boat before retrieving the
fender.
A hundred
yards further on was King’s Norton junction where left goes down to Worcester
but we turned right to continue the last leg into the city.
The bridge at
the junction obviously receives a lot of knocks as it is quite a tight turn but
we managed it without any scrapes.
Soon after
joining the Worcester & Birmingham canal we went past the Cadbury’s
factories – the smell of cocoa wasn’t strong and only I picked it up.
For canal
enthusiasts, and there are hundreds in this area, we saw where the Dudley canal
used to join. Sadly now lost for good
under developments but fortunately many miles of other canals are under
restoration in the Midlands.
We weren’t
expecting to go over this main road as it wasn’t marked in our book – mind you
the book is 12 years old.
At Edgbaston there was a canal tunnel right next to a train tunnel.
Eagle-eyed
Karen spotted these fire hydrant gates that were painted black rather than
the standard red. Those of you who read previous blog
entries from our times in Birmingham may recall that most road bridges have two
red doors either side of the road. These
were put in during World War II so that emergency services would have easy
access to water in times of emergencies following bombing raids.
We eventually
arrived in Birmingham and realised that we had been a bit daft as we thought
there would be plenty of moorings but we had based that on when we were here in
February. We managed to get the last
spot which coincidentally was the spot we chose in February. Two boats followed
us in and we let one moor up alongside us.
They were a nice couple out for the weekend from Bumblehole which is
between the city centre and Dudley. We
love the name Bumblehole as it sounds so quaint – we went through it on our way
to Halesowen earlier in the year.
Going through
the centre we went through the Worcester Bar at Gas Street Basin. This used to be a physical barrier between
the Worcester & Birmingham canal and the main Birmingham Canal Navigations. Freight boats had to tranship their goods
across the bar. An Act of Parliament in
1815 forced the companies to build a stop lock to ease the situation.
Here are some
shots as we went through the centre.
No comments:
Post a Comment