Winter Cruise - Day Two

The fire stayed in all night, so the boat was nice and warm in this morning.  It was a promising looking day, although it was still cold.  We left our moorings at 8am, and an hour later reached the stop lock at Autherley Junction.  We turned right onto the Staffs and Worcs, and then left to go up the Wolverhampton flight of 21 locks. 

 We last did these locks on a hire boat in 2006.  The bottom lock was against us, indicating a boat going up ahead.  At about the third lock up, a passer by with a windlass in a bag helped set the lock, and told us there was a problem ahead, with the pound between locks 4 and 5 about 2 feet down.  He said he'd knocked on the lock keeper's front door, but he was still in bed.

There's plenty of interest up the Wolverhampton flight, including the racecourse at the bottom, lugubrious blue brick railway viaducts, and various factories.  By one lock (16 I think), there's a cage on the offside containing a family of marmosets.

We reached the top lock at 1pm -- not bad going seeing as we'd had to turn every lock.  We pulled into the Broad Street Basin to fill up with water and have lunch.

Afterwards we set off again heading for Dudley.  Both the previous times we've tried to moor at the Black Country Museum, there's been no room and we've had to moor outside; this time there were plenty of spaces, so we turned and moored at abour 3.45pm.  A few minutes later, it started to rain.

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11 miles, 22 locks (23 miles, 23 locks)

September Cruise - Day Five

Tuesday 16 September

After a dash into Birmingham town centre to buy a charger for the camera battery (!), we left our moorings at 9.30, heading along the Main Line towards Wolverhampton. At Smethwick Junction we turned right, and went up the rather attractive locks onto the Wolverhampton Level.

Soon afterwards, the canal goes under the M5, and spends quite a long time underneath the motorway.

At 1pm, we reached Tipton Juntion and made the tight left turn towards the Black Country Living Museum. We winded, but there were no available moorings in the Museum area, so we moored just the other side of the bridge. We spent the afternoon at the Museum, looking round the re-created Black Country town, and going down a coal mine. The afternoon ended with a trip into the Dudley Tunnel, to see the caverns created by mining.

9 miles, 3 locks (Totals: 44, 76)