Lock-free crusing with some surprises - Lapworth to Birmingham

I had been recommended to go via the Stratford and the Worcester & Birmingham Canal to Birmingham rather than via the GU main line. It is slightly longer, but has narrow locks, so easier to do single-handed. Also after the Lapworth flight, there are no more locks all the way to Central Birmingham, roughly 16 miles. What a relief. I like doing locks as they are always an interesting change, but about five a day is alright, not 20.

Anyway, it turned out that no locks doesn't necessarily mean easy cruising. The first obstacle I encountered was a draw bridge. The bridge was to be opened with the windlass, so far no problem. The issue was that the lock mechanism was on the off-side, i.e. on the other side from the towpath. You'll spot the problem immediately: when mooring up on the towpath you can cross the bridge to wind it up. But once it's open there is no way to get back to the boat. On the off-side there was only undergrowth, nowhere to moor other than a single bollard directly at the bridge (the place to step off the boat is 60ft behind that!). Hm. I had heard about these, and various techniques how to tackle these as a single-hander, none of them sounded very convincing or easy.

My improvised plan was to take my enourmously long centre line (see in the picture), which extends about 5m beyond the boat, with me over the bridge, and pull the boat over to the off-side. Tie up, open the bridge, pull the boat through, tie up again, close the bridge.

Boat, bridge and undergrowth

Well the issue with that plan is that once you have opened the bridge, there is a wall in front of you, so how do you get the centre line from one side of the bridge to the other? The only way I could work out was to crawl (yes literally crawl on some some rickety piling) under the bridge with my line. No photos of that part as I was too focussed on not falling into the canal. Then I pulled the boat through on the line with relatively little collateral damage other than knocking the chimney off, but fortunately not into the canal.

As I emerged from under the bridge, a dog walker had arrived and took pity on me. As he couldn't cross the bridge anyway, he proceeded to help me. He closed the bridge behind me and I climbed back on the boat. He crossed the bridge and handed me back the windlass. I was very very grateful.

Willum being pulled through the bridge

So now I had practiced this once not very successfully, there was another one of these beasts coming up after only about another mile. I had spoken to a guy on a boat in the meantime who when I described my efforts to him said "well, that's one way of doing it". Even I with my German lack of subtlety understood that he did not think that that was a good way. He explained that I should approach the bollard next to the bridge, stop at the right moment precisely at the bollard, but before hitting the bridge, run(!) foward on the gunwhale (the little ledge that lets you walk around the outside of the boat) and tie up with the bow line. Sounds sensible in theory, but difficult in practice.

When I tried this, the wind pushed me away from the bollard. No chance of actually getting to the front of the boat before being blown all over the place. So I tried the centre line approach again. The wind pushed the boat foward under the bridge. The bridge was just at the right height to knock off my headlight (tunnel coming a couple of miles later of course). Bugger!

Bridge and headlight just before the nasty crunch

Once again, two ladies with dogs arrived to save me. Hurray for dog walkers! One of them actually did the whole winding up and down of the bridge for me. When I complained to them afterwards, why they had to put the mechanisms of these bridges on the off-side, one of them said "I'm sure it was some stupid Victorian man. Women didn't have anything to say at that time". I think that's as good an explanation as any.

Next up, another tunnel. OK, it wasn't a very long tunnel, but I had no headlight anymore and it gets very dark very quickly inside. When I realised I couldn't see where the wall was, I had to whip out my iPhone and shine the torch alternatively at the tunnel roof and the wall beside me. Fortunately there was no boat from the other side. They would have thought I was a bit crazy with my light.

Later on, a third drawbridge (long sigh). This time though it was a road bridge with barriers on both sides and electrically operated. And the mechanism was on the towpath side (see, I knew it's possible!). The barriers came down and cars waited on both sides, while I pootled through. Loved it.

Crossing a road

Everybody has to wait while little Willum comes through

Other than these little obstacles, the Stratford was really a lovely canal. A lot of it was fringed by big trees. However, I think due to the recent strong winds, there was lot of tree debris in the water. I heard loud "clunks" on the bottom every few minutes. It always freaks me out a little bit, although I know that it's just some submerged wood usually.

Big trees

Tree in the canal

At the end of the lovely Stratford Canal I joined the Worcester & Birmingham Canal for the final stretch to Birmingham at Kings Norton Junction. Before the junction is a so called guillotine lock and it's not called that for nothing.

 

Guillotine at Kings Norton Junction

This lock is now fixed permanently open. It stems from the days when the two canals were run by two separate companies and each one wanted to protect their own water supply. Water is a precious commodity on the canals as it needs to be refilled constantly at the top as boats go through locks.

The junction itself was challenging as it is a turn of more than 90 degrees and under a bridge. There were two boats ahead of me both struggling to get round the corner and going back and forth multiple times. I thought I'd be cleverer after watching them, but ended up in exactly the same situation. There was just too much wind blowing down that bridge. Long narrowboats are really not good with wind.

Once on the Worcester & Birmingham canal the first signs of the outskirts of Birmingham started to appear. I felt quite at home when I saw the first graffiti.

En route into Birmingham I visited Bournville, a village built by George Cadbury for his factory workers around 1900. Bournville was the inspiration for the later garden city concept. Here is a little gallery of Bournville.

I also visited the Birmingham University campus in Edgbaston. A spectacular architecture and campus inspired by Italian architecture.

I then arrived in the centre of Birmingham, the heart of the canal system, which I will cover in the next post.