Ready for the final push

Thursday 10^th September 2020

Today was all about positioning ourselves for tomorrow’s big push. The objective was to get up the Curdworth flight of eleven locks, and then find a suitable spot to moor. Apart from Curdworth there were no other locks to tackle, and we didn’t feel we needed to make a very early start. We took the dogs for a walk – Loulie wanted to show me the really nice route she had found the previous night, but sadly the woods were closed because there was shooting going on at the firing range. Instead we went along the canal, and back lower down near the River Tame. We met several nice dogs with their owners, and it was a pleasant way to start the day.

We started at around ten, and went through Hopwas, but fairly soon we stopped near the A5 so that I could take the bike and go shopping. We then pressed on, and arrived at Fazeley Junction. At Fazeley the Coventry Canal turns sharp left and briefly trends north east before turning south to its eventual destination (Coventry, by an amazing coincidence). It also links up with the Oxford and so eventually the whole of the south. However on this trip we ignored that option, and instead turned right, moving on to the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal. This would take us the whole of the way to the centre of Birmingham, at Old Turn Junction, where it links with the Birmingham Canal Network.

Although we were on a different canal there was no obvious change – the various canalside items looked the same, and in particular those distinctive doors in the bridges were still there. It turns out that this was because the stretch of the Coventry that we had been on, from Fradley Junction to Fazeley, was not actually built by the Coventry Canal company at all. 250 years ago, when they had got the Act of Parliament authorising the route, the Coventry company were very slow to get organised. This was serious for the Trent and Mersey Canal and the Birmingham and Fazeley, who were going to be connected by the Coventry, and who were losing revenue as long as the link was delayed. So in the end they got together and built that section, effectively as an extension of the B&F up to Fradley. Eventually the Coventry got moving and continued their canal from Fazeley down to the other end.

Fazeley Junction

Not far south of Fazeley we came to a very odd looking bridge, at Drayton. It is known as the Turret Bridge, because it consists of two cylindrical towers with crenelations on the top and a spiral staircase inside, connected by a flat horizontal bridge span – it is very much pedestrian only. It was put in place by Drayton Manor, a local country house which is now a theme park, off to the west of the canal.

Turret Bridge

A couple of miles after that we came to the first of the eleven Curdworth locks. We needed to get to the top of these and find a mooring ready for tomorrow. The locks themselves were OK, but for some reason some of the pounds between them were very low, and Loulie had to navigate carefully up the centre. I stayed on the bank at those pounds, even where they were quite a distance, to avoid having to bring the boat in to the side where she threatened to ground. Locks 6 to 2 were close together, running alongside the M42, and before Lock 1 we stopped at a water point, in the shadow of the M6 Toll Road running on a bridge across the canal. All in all these locks took us longer than we expected, and it was getting fairly late.

After the top lock we soon came to the Curdworth Tunnel. To be honest, for someone used to Preston Brook and Harecastle this is barely worthy of the name tunnel at all, more like a very long bridge, with room for two boats to pass and a towpath running through – it is only about 50 metres overall. Immediately beyond the tunnel there was a mooring which we pulled into – we had been told that the top of the tunnel was the last “safe” mooring before the centre of the city.

However we discovered that there was zero mobile signal – not even enough for a phone call, much less any sort of broadband. So I took the bike and pedalled forward, looking for a spot with reasonable mooring and a worthwhile signal. It turned out that there were plenty of stretches where we could moor, and no sign of dereliction, dodgy surroundings or anything to give us any concern. In the end we stopped just beyond a pub called the Cuttle Bridge, alongside fields and with more opposite, and just short of a business park which meant excellent mobile signal strength. There was Armco to allow us to moor on clips, and the only slight downside was a bit of a shelf. A nice mooring, and much better than we had been led to expect.

TODAY: 8:30 HOURS. 11.2 MILES. 11 LOCKS.

Voyage: 43:55 HOURS. 79.2 MILES. 49 LOCKS.