Onwards without our secret weapon.

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Alan)

Typical toll island on the New Main Line.

Our Easter trip has not been without its problems.  Other than getting fairly over-tired, (possibly almost burnt out?), things were relatively normal whilst we were still on the wide-locked Grand Union.

Magnificent bridge carrying the "Engine Arm" over New Main Line.

However once we turned off the GU at Kingswood Junction, we then had two very difficult days, battling with very low water throughout the Lapworth lock flight, followed by grinding the bottom much of the way into Birmingham on the Stratford canal, followed by the Worcester and Birmingham canal.  The level is down in the long pound that carries on through massive amounts of Birmingham, but even had it not been, both these canals are full of rubbish and clearly not dredged in very many years.

Galton Bridge is even grander, but 1970's tunnel rules out a better picture.

As a result our son David who is far stronger and more agile than either of us was an almost essential asset, regularly tugging with ropes or pushing on long shafts to get us moving or back on track.  However it was planned for David to get on a train back home this morning.  Cath became so concerned about our ability to operate without him, that he was nearly asked to stay on for a couple more days.  However in the end he was sent for home, and we started off again with some uncertainty about how we might fare.

I'm carrying the "keb".

With David dispatched, we set about the easy part of the day, namely thrashing along the wide New Main line of the BCN.  Here Flamingo could show its legs, and we got along very briskly.  Even so, every so often when right in the middle of the cut the boat would ride over something, often heeling to one side or the other.  Goodness knows what's down there, but som of it is big and solid.

Ryder's Green locks - all pounds well full, fortunately.

Things changed as soon as we turned off at Pudding Green  junction and headed on to the Wednesbury Old Canal,  From the outset it was shallow and sludgy, and the first mile up to Ryder's Green locks was very very slow.  The boat would simply not turn when I wanted it to, and we took some excursions off course.  Near the known high contaminated Ridgeacre branch just above Ryder's Green locks we stirred a thick oily black mass, and I would certainly have hated to go in there.

"Trolley Fest" at Ryder's Green - we managed to avoid the many still in the cut.

Once we started our descent of the 8 locks, we hit trouble almost immediately,  Something solid was behind the recess for the bottom gate to swing into, and the gate would not go far enough back to let Flamingo out.  Another boat was waiting at the top lock mouth, and w were going nowhere.  However by an enormous stroke of good fortune Nick and Liz Grundy turned up on historic boat Beatty.  I knew he had posted the day before that he carried a "keb",  a rake head fitted at 90 degrees to a long pole - exactly what is needed in these situations, but rarely available.  By patient fishing Nick removed various objects, including a brick, but it took quite a long while before the gate would push back enough to let us out.

Helpful girls, but I doubt their fancy long nails were improved.

Thereafter the remaining locks were dealt with without too much delay, but we were treated to some friendly but virtually unintelligible drunk persons near one lock at the bottom, and one lock further on some helpful young girls pulled a railway sleeper from the lock mouth, despite their very long manicured nails.

Often slow, but generally we kept moving.

It has continued to be heavy going most, but not all, of the way to Walsall.  At one point we were at a complete standstill, but not apparently aground, and we sincerely hoped it was one of the worst bits - fortunately, (this far at least!) it was.  I was surprised neither following boat caught us up, but e didn't see another bat until arrival here at Walsall Town Wharf.

All W H Yarwood procuts, but none the same.

Here met three of the other historic boats heading to Brownhills, and all 4 boats in the basin are products of W J Yarwood and sons, the line up being Beatty, Flamingo, Swallow and Enceladus.

Left to Right: Beatty, Flamingo, Swallow and Enceladus

Anyway Alan and Cath are pleased to announce that whilst still quite exhausted, they coped well on the first day without "secret weapon" David.


(Post revised as I was so tired when I wrote iut that I severely mixed up my BCN lock flight names!)

Mailbox Birmingham to Walsall Town Basin
Miles: 14.2, Locks: 8
Total Trip Miles: 70.8, Locks: 87

 

Bumpity Bump!

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Alan)

On these bits often not too much rubbing the bottom

Today was a no locks day, other than passing through the disused stop lock on the Stratford Canal at Kings Norton, just before it joins the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.

But far to rregulatly we were bumping and scraping through these

On our old leisure boat "Chalice" this would have been a dead easy low effort trip, but with "Flamingo" it proved to be a very different prospect.  In simple terms we have not at any point in the day got very far beyond the last point where we were dragging over stuff on the bottom and rocking around a lot before we reached the next point here we were dragging over stuff on the bottom and rocking around a lot.  (The only real respite being Brandwood tunnel, where I suppose it is far harder for the locals to throw in large amounts of debris.)

Abject failure for first attempts on passing the Shirley lift bridge.

It has been a major work out, and despite lots of people claiming the whole very long pound at this level is anything between five and inches down, practical observation at the many weirs demonstrates it is actually only two or three inches off level.  Quite simply putting in an extra two or three inches of water would not have turned today from a struggle into a delight - both the Northern Stratford, and this leg of the Worcester and Birmingham are simply either not deep enough or too rubbish filled to be used pleasurably with a boat like "Flamingo".

Approaching Brandwood Tunnel - one place the locals can't easily throw junk.

Some, I admit may be my own lack of experience with a deep draughted boat on a very "bendy" section, but when  you are going up the dead straight bits, positioned exactly where the channel should be, and are scraping over what feels like very solid objects, then it is hard to see how more experience would make things much better.







Specifically today.....

£200,000 face-lift, and still a nightmare to get am ex working  boat through.

1) At the lift bridge at Shirley, you have no choice of route through it, because there is a "chicane" you pass through both on approach and exit, that is little wider than the boat, so you can go on almost nothing but a fixed path.  Having got the bridge open as we advanced, Flamingo stuck solid entering that "chicane".  It mattered not whether we used lots of power, little power, or no power, and pulled only on ropes, we were clearly going nowhere, so we shut the bridge and let a queue of unhappy motorists carry on there way.  No amount of feeling with poles found anything solid, but there did seem to be a bank of silt entering the "chicane".  We used the pole to try and disturb this, and were surprised we could pull it through by hand, (opening the bridge only at the very last minute).

I should have done better, but the entire area is far too shallow.

2) A staggering £200,000 was spent about 4 years ago to cosmetically restore the historic stop lock with guillotine gates at King's Norton.  Thee structure is clearly of great historic interest but has served no purpose for a very long while.  Unfortunately it now looks little better than it did before the cosmetic restoration, as the local vandals and graffiti sprayers have given it their full attention.  I had hoped, having been brought to a halt in it by silt in "Sickle" prior to the restoration, that money had been spent to clear the channel and it might now be more easily navigated by a deep draughted boat.  Well unless it has re-silted itself since, it seems things are no better at all.  "Flamingo" was also brought to a halt, and had to be rocked and otherwise coaxed to get it through.

Parallel canal and railway tunnels

3) There are two long narrow skew bridges on the Worcester and Birmingham where we had also struggled with "Sickle", but today the first encountered seemed much better,  It seems that the channel had been spot dredged, as there was huge heaps of detritus left through it on the edge on the non towpath side.  Better of course, but why leave all that unsightly stuff there, ready for someone  to throw back in - surely it could have been removed?  However the second one showed no evidence of any attempt to clear it, and once again "Flamingo" was virtually halted, and much coaxing was required to get through.

Finally on a good mooring, but exhausted after this day's boating

4) This stretch of the W&B is largely straight, so there should be little ambiguity where the deepest water should be.  However positioning either in the centre, or maybe slightly more towards the towpath still meant we were grinding over something sold much of the time.  We were lucky to get half a mile before the boat started either rocking sideways, or riding over something.

"Enceladus" heading where we are, and also blogging about it.

The whole are a is littered with CRT signage that attempts to be humorous, or with large and inappropriate CRT "publicity" banners on inappropriate structures, but actual evidence of maintaining the channel for navigation is largely lacking.   All rather disappointing, really.

On a brighter note, despite the delays, we were lucky to arrive in Birmingham and find a near perfect mooring for a 72 foot boat, exactly where we preferred to be.

Gas Street Basin manages to still look somewhat like it did some 40 years ago.

Cath and I went into town, but I was whacked after what felt like a major work out at the tiller.  This evening we all went for an excellent meal in Zizzi at the Mailbox.  However tomorrow David is leaving us to go home.  He has been our saviour time and time again, often heaving successfully on things we are no longer strong enough for.  It is not without some trepidation that we will be venturing on to some of the less used bits of the Birmingham Canal Navigations without having him as our secret weapon.

This our canal heritage, CRT - Do you really need to turn it into Disneyland?

Dicken's Heath to Mailbox, Birmingham
Miles: 11.7, Locks: 1 (left open)
Total Trip Miles: 56.7, Locks: 79

Low water, a messy oil change, then more low water.

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Alan)

Closer to the railway than is ideal.

We always try not to moor overnight right next to the railway bridge on the entrance to the Stratford Canal at Kingswood Junction, but sometimes we have to, and this was such an occasion.  I always think I can remember how frequent and noisy the trains are, but I'm always surprised that it is more invasive than I remember from last time.  It's also a mistake to say "at least the trains are short", (although most are), because the next thing along will be a thundering 40 wagon Freightliner. Fortunately we had just come up Hatton, so were tired enough to sleep through much of it.

First lock of the day

The other thing about today I was not looking forward to was to do an engine oil change - we had been told to do one once the rebuilt Lister had completed 50 hours running, and we were now at that point.  As I wanted the engine to be hot when I pumped the old oil out, we decided to go up 7 locks to a suitable pound, and do it there.  It was at this point we started to realise all was not well at Lapworth.  All the pounds between locks were well down by between about six inches and a foot.  A CRT man arrived and told us that CRT had let the level in the "fifty mile pound" at the top of the locks go some five inches low.  This was bad news, as that pound includes our entire run on into central Birmingham, and then some considerable distance thereafter.  He had been told he can not run down water to top up the low pounds in the Lapworth flight, and right now this was our immediate issue,  We struggled to get over many of the lock cills, but found use of minimum "tick over" power would eventually succeed, whereas using any more power than that generally made things worse.  As a result progress was very slow, but we did eventually pull up for the oil change.

Very little room - a lock rebuilt in the 1980s is much shorter than all the others.

I ended up making a right pigs ear of the oil change, dropping loads of old oil under the engine, then struggling to mop it up again.  By the time I finally had us up and running again we were already well into the afternoon, and well down on any plan we started the day with.

Boats coming down chose to pass in ways where they got into a muddle!

We continued to plod our way up the flight, continuing to find most pounds well down.  Again "less is more" seemed to be the order of the day, and I rarely went at more than tick-over in ahead gear.   Not content with throwing low water levels at us, near the top of the flight we encountered a CRT push tug strapped firmly to a hopper, drifting around mid channel.  Cath and David eventually found enough bits to re-moor it, though it is questionable if we actually put it back where CRT staff last left it!  Eventually we got to the top lock, with no real further issues beyond the time taken.

Most of the flight is very attractive

The level at the top in "the fifty mile" pound did not look to be down by the amount the CRT man had claimed - perhaps more like half his number,  However this canal is pretty silted at the best of times, making getting round some of the sharper bans challenging.  You also do not expect to ground some 8 feet from the bank when lining up for one of the lift bridges, but today we had that pleasure.

Split bridges to allow a tow rope to pass through are a Stratford feature.

We stopped briefly in Hockley Heath in an attempt to find some shopping.  How a town like this boasts not just a high class specialist cleaners, a large specialist store selling spas, and even a dealership for both McClaren and Rolls Royce cars, but offers only the most basic "One Stop", I don't fully understand, but suffice it to say whilst we could buy milk, cheese and a newspaper, that was about it.

David and Cath dealing with break away CRT work boats.

Cath steered for a while, then left me to press on as long as the day would hold out, then find a mooring.  The latter part proved a challenge, and the best David and I could achieve was about a three foot leap to the bank.  We wondered if the dogs could achieve the leap after dark - Odin has impaired vision since his fight for life three years ago.  Fortunately both have just been off for their final pee of the evening, and are back safely on without a splash.

The first two lift bridges encountered are hand cranked with your windlass.

Kingswood Junction to Dickens Heath Northern Stratford Canal
Miles: 6.9, Locks: 19
Total Trip Miles: 45.0, Locks: 78

Quietest ever passage through Hatton

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Alan)

Hatton, before the locks come thick and fast

We were aware that our domestic battery bank was in poor condition, but it hadn't really affected us until now.  Whilst on permanent moorings we can use mains electricity, and because we are working on the boat normally, far more time has been spent "at base" than actually out cruising.  However this trip was starting to prove that still with too much reliance on an old and large inverter our battery bank had lost enough capacity that spending much more than one night before the engine was nexrt run wasn't a great idea.  As we would be tied up at the event we are going to for 2 or 3 days, running the engine was likely to be an unfortunate consequence.  I am not too mean to delay replacing batteries if required, (honestly!), but equally wanted to make sure we had enough charging capacity to not risk damaging new ones once purchased.

Max waits patiently

However as there was a battery supplier within easy walking distance of the Saltisford arm, I decided to go and ask about replacements.  They would do a deal on five, so we went for it.  David and I spent the morning with borrowed wheel barrows, spanners, and heat shrink sleeving and Vaseline, only just managing to complete close to noon, when our free mooring period ended.

The only boat we saw moving in 1 locks

So not until the afternoon did we finally move off, heading for the flight of 21 locks at Hatton

Although we have done Hatton many times over the years, the record shows we have nearly always gone down the flight, not up it, as we were today.  David reckons that we have only ever ascended twice, the last time up being in in 2009.

Odin, Cath and Max

We got off to a not so great start when David got out the lock wheeling bike, only to find a flat tyre - the second time on this trip already.  So whilst David set about a repair Cath and I started off up the flight alone, with all locks being against us.  We had decided not to rush, and set off very sedately.

About to enter the "thick" of Hatton

What we were not expecting at all was to only see one other moving boat in the entire flight.  After a long period of no other boats at all, we passed a solitary boat coming down.  We hoped this might mean an easy passage, but after only two or three locks in our favour, they then started to all be against us again.  As we saw no evidence of another boat ahead of us, we can only assume the boat we passed had been moored up in the flight, before setting off again.  We were very glad we had David on the bike - with just 2 of us, and the dogs - we could not have had someone working ahead.

David on bike, doing a great deal of the work.

I'm not sure what the eventual time was - we were not out to rush, often only drawing a paddle on one side of the lock, but think we came in at about 3 hours, which was fine.

Hatton workshops - only 4 more locks to go.

I had one period of distress thereafter, bring caused by a combination of massively excessive offside vegetation blocking the view round a bend, an oncoming boat not giving me enough water, and admittedly my own lack of experience.  On a right hand bend, if the back end of Flamingo gets into shallow water, it will often not drag off again, resulting in the front end going progressively left towards the opposite bank.  You then have a quick call to make whether to go into reverse and try not to hit the offside, or to lay on more power to try and get back into the turn.  The problem is that if attempting the latter fails, the impact may then be far worse.  This time I tried holding back - I will never know if winding it on would have made things better or worse!

Looking back towards Warwick

We pushed on to Kingswood Junction, where, despite some concerns, we swung onto the Stratford Canal as our chosen route into Birmingham.  However I am reminded that a trip in the other direction with "Sickle" about five years ago was very hard work, with far too many cases of "bottom to close to the top". (Blog post Slow going on the Stratford). The next few days should see if we have gone instead via the Grand Union route.  The recent blog by Sarah for Enceladus, another historic boat headed to the same place is entitled "Should have stuck to the Grand Union", so I am not over optimistic!

Almost there

Shrewley tunnel - wet in parts!

Saltisford Arm to Kingswood Junction
Miles: 7.7, Locks: 21
Total Trip Miles: 38.1, Locks: 59

Very much shorter day than planned.

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Alan)

Well the plan was to go up the Hatton flight today, (21 closely spaced broad locks), but somehow we didn't!

We started out with good intent, ploughing our way through the approaches to and the main body of Leamington Spa - the channel is remarkably shallow, and I frequently found ourselves dragging the bottom in places where it looked like the bottom of the water should be further down from the top of the water than it was in practice.

Moored in the Saltisford Arm, a short stub off the main Grand Union line

One of our Calor gas cylinders had run out yesterday, and we were keen to replace it, but, being a Sunday both the boatyards in Warwick were shut.  However a quick check revealed that the Saltisford Arm Trust was open, so we took the chance to travel a short arm where many never venture.  It transpired that they have overnight moorings, not charged for on the first night, as well as useful services.  We have been finding things physically quite hard, and both Cath and I are somewhat burnt out.  More particularly our idea that we would do some further ad-hoc painting of the boat was simply not working out.  Cath suggested we called it a very short day, and stayed at this welcoming location over night - the 21 locks at Hatton could wait until tomorrow - so that's what we did.

Cath and I walked into the centre of Warwick for a casual look around, then headed back for some work on the boat.  In practice not a huge amount was done, but a few things have managed to acquire a further layer of paint.

Radford Bottom Lock to Saltisford Arm, Warwick
Miles: 6.0, Locks: 3
Total Trip Miles: 30.4, Locks: 38

Longer Day Than Planned

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Alan)

There's not a lot to be said about today, that can't be said by putting up a series of pictures.

Let's just say.....

1) It was a gorgeous day, but family Fincher got caught out ending up somewhat sun burnt.
2) Flamingo is performing well.
3) Its crew is performing generally well but having the occasional less good moment as we continue to learn what the much modified boat is, (and is not!), capable of.  For example, I thought my turn on to the GU Birmingham main line at Napton Junction was going fine - until I discovered it was not(!)
4) We had decided not to have a long day, and to stop early at somewhere like Bascote.  However in practice when we git there nobody fancied actually stopping yet, and we actually carried on several more hours, and quite a few more hours.

Waiting to descend Calcutt locks

Setting off down Stockton locks

Three Willow Wren boats

Very badly leaking gates at Bascote Staircase

In the lower chamber of the Bascote staircase

Cath takes over the steering, whilst I go ahead on the bike.

A near perfect day for boating.

Well beyond or initial plan for stopping.

No longer sharing the locks.

Looking for somewhere deep enough to moor, having failed at first attempts.

An unusual view of Flamingo at our overnight mooring

Braunston Junction to Radford Bottom Lock
Miles: 13.6, Locks: 22
Total Trip Miles: 24.5, Locks: 35