Today we came down twenty three locks to reach Leamington Spa. Tomorrow we start going up again. Look, Leamington, this is not good enough. You are too low down. If you can jack up the whole town about fifty feet, fill in with soil and dig a tunnel for the Leam and Avon Rivers we wouldn’t have to do so many locks. We shared the locks with a boat called Abigail. The couple on board decided we were not working…
We sped down the long fight of locks at Lapworth today, aided by those most welcome of canal side visions, volunteer lock keepers. A short link at King’s Norton connects the Stratford Canal with the Grand Union, and we transferred to that canal, which we will be on for the rest of the trip. Those of you who are familiar with Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London stories will know that like the Thames and its tributaries, the Grand Union Canal…
This morning we bid farewell to leafy Edgbaston, and continued through less salubrious suburbs. The graffiti was back to the I’m going to write my name in big pretty letters school… … apart from one nice thumbs up on one of the bridges. A hairpin left turn brought us onto the Stratford Canal, and we are now on a section of waterway that we went through in the same direction earlier in the summer. There are only so may ways…
Most narrowboats that visit Birmingham don’t go through Wolverhampton, so the canal from Wolverhampton to the Netherton Branch is almost deserted. With hardly any boats going through the water is clear. You can see every shopping cart. It’s a long slog though mostly industrial or grungy post industrial areas. No cows. The graffiti was disappointing till we got to Soho (yes, there’s one in Birmingham as well as London and New York) when it improved a lot. A couple of…
Today we slogged up the twenty one lock flight that leads to Wolverhampton. The weather was OK (after yesterday’s downpour) and the locks were single wide and in good condition, but there were no bridges at the lower end of the lock, so it involved a lot of walking around locks. We were both pretty tired by the end of it. We moored by a little park at the top of the locks. There was some street art on the…
If brindling is the word for wandering along a contour line with no concern for how soon you get to a destination, then there should be another word, Telfording, meaning to head straight for your objective regardless of the engineering costs. Thomas Telford designed this stretch of the canal, and it shows. Long dead straight sections, with cuttings or embankments to make the canal level. Sometimes the trees come together over your head in the cuttings, so you are cruising…
A five lock flight this morning brought us to Market Drayton just before lunchtime, which is just as well, as the local heritage museum closed at one. We made it there in time to meet the two charming volunteers who staff it, and learn all about the history of Market Drayton. The settlement was mentioned in the Domesday Book, became a market town in the 13th century, and was the birthplace of Clive of India. For those who aren’t familiar…
First stop today after a brief cruise and two locks was the Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker. You know it’s a secret because it says so on all the signs. Unlike Maggie Thatcher’s secret nuclear bunker in East Anglia that we visited many years ago, this one actually looks like a bunker above ground. Seriously guys, if you want to keep your bunker secret you should make it look like a cow. The bunker was built in 1983, about the…
We continued south to Nantwich today, sharing the locks with another boat so it was not as much work. The weather was colder with occasional brief rain showers and a few minutes of sunshine. I did not take any photos, so today might be a good time to catch up on some of the canal boat art we have seen over the past couple of months. There’s a boat rental company near here that names all their boats after Tolkien…
Dodging rain showers yesterday we returned to the falconry center for a closer look at the birds there. This is Russell, a noisy young Harris Hawk. Harris Hawks (a species from the American deserts) have become the falconer’s favorites, even in Europe, as they are friendly, adaptable, and gregarious. In the wild they hunt in small flocks, with the long legged males walking through the undergrowth to flush out the prey, and the larger females diving down from above to…