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I know you lot have followed my posts last yea. However, I wrote the cruise up for my writing group and read it out. I thought I'd included it here.
We woke nice and early ready for the off. The challenge starts anywhere on the Birmingham Canal Navigations but this year finishes at Hawne Basin. You choose your own route to try and get as many points as possible. As we had a small crew and a big boat we earned one point one points per mile on a reasonable canal like the main line but three-point three points per mile on a tatty one like the Walsall Canal. I wanted to go to Titford Pools and as we were starting in the middle of Brum our route was pretty obvious.
At five to eight the two challengers behind us untied and jostled for position in the middle of the canal. At eight o'clock sharp they were off, racing side by side up the channel. We set off in a more casual style a minute later down the new mainline. There are two main lines in Brum, the first built by Brindley zig zags all over the place, the second built by Telford is dead straight and cuts through the old one creating loops on either side. Real canal enthusiasts love loops, anyway there were photo opportunities giving us an extra ten points in the first two. After a trip around the Icknield Port and Soho loops (pause for photos) we arrived at Smethwick and turned off the new main line onto the old.
We caught up one of the boats we'd seen roar away at the locks. There is a fascinating toll house at the top, burnt out. I see something rather romantic about the dereliction in some areas of Brum. After the locks the canal zigs and zags in true Brindley style right under the M5. You can admire all the steel put in to prop up a forty six year old collapsing motor way from a three hundred year old completely not collapsing canal.
We turned off the main line to go up Oldbury locks on the most disgusting, smelly, black water you can imagine. There was a pair of working boats at the bottom recovering a crew member from the black smelly water. He was sent home for a change of clothes and a large glass of disinfecting scotch. At this point the boat slowed to a crawl as we picked up a washing machine door seal around the prop. Five minutes with a hack saw down the weed hatch sorted it. Then on up the remaining six locks.
At the top is a junction, only intrepid boaters go past it! Ahead lay Titford P-o-o-l-s , you have to say this with a kind of reverent and horrified expression in your voice. The Pools are difficult and only fools go in alone. We headed left at the junction and son pointed out the gap in the bushes and we made a sweeping entrance into the big pool (the one crossed by another collapsing viaduct holding up the M5), turned round easily and ran hard aground on the way out! After a short period, of polling, pulling, shoving and reversing, we were going again and back at the junction headed left, an risked going under the low creaking steelwork supporting the M5 to enter the smaller reed edged pool, we slowly made a ninety six point turn staying in the middle with very little water underneath, stirring the bottom. The pools earned ten points.
Back down Oldbury locks we rejoined the main line but not for long as we went down the Gower Branch with three delightful local kids joining me on board for the locks They had helped another boat going up and were rewarded with a few pounds but we gave them a trip. They were fascinated with the boat and took loads of photos on their mobiles. Imagine their parents surprise in the evening. ‘Look what we did Mum.’ Waving good bye to the kids we were back on to the new main line turning at the delightfully named Pudding Green Junction and heading for Walsall.
A group of ne’er do wells waited at the locks and abused the boat in front of us. Son, dressed like a motor biker with tattoos, chatted to them and we became their best friends and they helped us though the locks. We left them with big smiles, thumbs up and cheerful waves.
The Walsall canal is clear but weedy and rubbish filled, the engine falters, I go down the weed hatch, a video tape, a few hundred yards further and down the weed hatch, a nice pink towel with propeller cuts in it, then a jumper tied in knots, then a baseball glove and plastic galore. Remind me not to do the Walsall again. We went into the basin for a photo shot (five points) by the art gallery, waved at all the bemused dinners in the surrounding restaurants watching our seven point turn then out and up Walsall locks, pausing to look up a clue on a nearby pub (four points). Here we met our only real social problem with a group of lads being (in our view) racially abusive and trying to get on the boat. Son, a martial arts expert, had decided what order to out them on the ground but, fortunately, it all worked out. We did report it to the police later. They said we should have dialled 999 there and then but you don’t want to make a fuss and anyway we would have had to wait and we were on ‘the challenge’. By now it was nine thirty and we were thinking about mooring but the encounter left us a bit nervous so we headed on to what I knew was a safe area on the north of the BCN and moored for the night on a lovely mooring in quiet countryside at Sneyd.
I studied my plan and decided a six am start would do. We cruised down the Wyrely and Essington canal pausing to back noisily about four hundred yards into Holy Bank basin (there is no winding hole at the end to turn) at seven am on Sunday morning. Sister did some wonderful work on the tiller and I polled the front end. The owners of surrounding posh houses built on the old railway exchange sidings looked on with admiration from their bedrooms. Off the Curly Wurly (canal speak for the Wryley and Essington) and onto the main line heading back towards the centre. We were running slightly late but sister was getting competitive so we decided to risk doing the Wednesbury Oak Loop (it isn’t a loop!) this is a triple scoring canal and had a clue at the end so was worth fourteen points.
Now we were late - down Factory Locks, then running fast on the new main line, a fantastic sweeping, full speed, turn into Netherton Tunnel Branch and through the tunnel flat out. At Windmill end we turned onto the Dudley no 2. We were going to make it…..... but noooooo, two working boats slowed us down one with a fouled prop. We followed one of them leaving the other to work on its prop. Gosty Hill tunnel was next, it is single track a few inches wider than the boat. It starts off high but about two hundred yards in you encounter a vertical wall with a tiny hole at the bottom. The boat cleared it by about two inches and my hat brushed the tunnel roof as I knelt on the back deck trying to see were we were going. In the end we were ten minutes late.
The entrance into Hawne basin was fun, a ninety degree turn in the winding hole, under a tiny bridge then a forty five degree reverse turn with boats very near both front and back and onto our mooring. All in view of what looked like one hundred experts who had arrived in time. No problems it was perfect. We spent a pleasant evening drinking very pleasant beer chatting to the other challengers.
We came twenty second out of thirty eight boats, if we had got up fifteen minutes earlier we would have been seventeenth!
The cruise there, the challenge and the cruise back covered one hundred and thirty three miles and one hundred and seventy seven locks over seven days. Can't wait until next year!
Cheers Graham
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