We were so exhausted after our ditch crawl the day before, we weren’t sure we would be cruising today, but the sun was shining, the prop was clear and there was enough bacon left for more butties, so we gingerly inched forward out of our safe haven.
Leaving Bentley Park
Theres an interesting sculpture over the canal but I couldnt find any information about it. It’s a polished stainless steel triangular tube that arches over the canal and if you catch it at the right angle and sunlight, it reflects an image of whatever is underneath it. We couldnt see any functional use for it other than it being an interesting art instalation. Sadly the rest of the artwork nearby was more destructive and unappealing.
On our outward journey we had stopped to clear the prop 2 or 3 times, but today we reached the top of the Wolverhampton flight unhindered. Eric moored up to give the prop a final check before we set off down the 21.
Lock landing Wolverhampton top lock
The day was looking increasingly promising.
1 down 20 to go
Eric and I work well as a team, I set the lock and open the gates, then go immediately go and set the next lock. Eric cruises in and empties it, opens the gates and hauls the boat out and cruises straight into the next awaiting lock, whilst i go back and close the gates on the previous lock. It’s efficient and quick, i might do twice as much walking but we share the physically tiring workload.
Half way down
And with the warmth of the autumnal sunshine there were lot of people out walking.
A good way to spend a sunday afternoon
Some offered to lend a hand and every now and then someone shows a real interest. They might think we are brightening their day, but it gives us such a boost to be able to share a bit of privilage. Occasionally we like to say thankyou with an invitation to step onto the back deck.
Two happy blokes
We almost flew down the flight, in just over 3 ½hours. The Wolverhampton flight is a pretty and very pleasant flight. We would happily do it again, and our love of cruising has been restored.
Almost there
When we got to the bottom we turned right and moored on the Staffs and Worcester, at Autherley junction. Where we were joined by fellow bloggers Mick and Pip on NB Oleana.
I’d rather not be writing this post, we’re still feeling traumatised, but here goes….. On our way up the flight, we crossed a boat coming down. I asked if they knew the Wyrley and Essington canal, “we’ve just come off there, there’s a great mooring at Bently Park about half an hour from the junction.” We could have stopped at the mooring right at the top of the flight, but it’s accompained by the dulcet tones of canada geese and the emergency services sounding their sirens through a major city centre road junction. It was only 3pm so we decided to keep going. It didn’t take long for the doubts to arise.
Leaving the Main Line, joining the Wyrley and Essington Canal
Graffiti is always a dubious sign. And sure enough, a few hundred yards onto the W&E we ground to a halt and Eric had to decend down the weed hatch
Not a pretty sight
It took us 90 minutes to reach Bentley Park, which turns out to be retail/entertainment hub, with a short arm and mooring rings. We were right next to a GreenKing carvery, so we could have eaten out, but I’d had the foresight to prep a casserole in the Mr D thermal cooker and neither of us had the wherewithall to walk another few steps off the boat. Needless to say we slept well and decided to enjoy the location, taking advantage of our senior years for a cheap daytime game of 10 pin bowling, I let Eric win.
Cineworld was only showing films we hadn’t heard of, and I dont qualify for silver surfer rates yet, so we gave that a miss. We stocked up the fridge at Sainsburys and Aldi, before finally treating ourselves to dinner at Wagamama. Considering we were moored next to a pub, multiple drive thrus and a huge car park, we wondered if it would be noisy overnight but apart from someone burning rubber doing donuts at 6am it was quite peaceful and our info about it being a good mooring was spot on.
Bentley Park
Up early and refreshed after some R&R, we debated our route. Google images suggested a fair amount of greenery and suburbia between here and us rejoining the Birmingham and Fazeley canal in 27 miles. But if it were really bad we could turn off onto the Walsall canal in 7 miles and come through the centre of Birmingham instead, and besides it was only 3 miles to the next winding hole…..such a good plan….
I wonder if the name of this bridge is significant
After 3/4 mile in 2 hours, we decided enough was enough, it was only 2 more miles to the winding hole.
How many photos would you like to see of Eric descending into hell? I have run out of storage space for them all. It took us another 3 hours to reach the winding hole, and all the time we were fearful it would be too shallow for us to actually use.
Well it looks wide enough, but we could see it wasn’t really deep enough
Thankfully it only took us half an hour and a lot of polling to make it round the 180°, and we limped slowly back to Bentley Park. We had taken 7 hours to do 6 miles. Ironically it is actually quite a pretty canal.
but it is shallow, and as we could see from the rust markings on the armco, the water level is still about 6 inches low.
This is compounded by the amount of vegetation, silt and debris along both the towpath and offside, that make it impossible to moor. Despite it being quite a wide canal, the cruising channel down the middle was only wide enough for a single boat, so we are incredibly glad we didn’t meet anyone travelling towards us. Being an electric boat means we naturally have a very slow turning prop and we can go months without picking up any debris, just today
And unusually the water is crystal clear, meaning that not only could we see all the weed, shopping trollys, urban jellyfish etc, we could also see the fish. And the fish were huge. We saw several 2 foot long pike, huge carp, rudd and perch. Which admittedly was a bit of a treat, no wonder we also saw lots of kingfishers.
Whether or not we chickened out too soon, or was our research inadequate, the combination of the mat weed, shallowness, low water levels, detritius, general lack of maintenance overgrown vegetation and infrequent use of the canal, our adventure onto pastures new was to be a very short lived adventure.
