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.

End of the Line

Monday 7^th September 2020

Our plan for today was to go down to Shardlow and on to the Trent, then go to look at the Shardlow marina where Loulie is thinking of holding her 60^th birthday event. We would then come back up the canal and start our journey back towards Fradley Junction and eventually Birmingham. Before we set off we fed the dogs and then took them for another walk down the cycle track towards the Trent, so that I could see it.

We got under way at about 9:15, and within a mile we reached the first of three locks before we get into Shardlow. As with the ones yesterday these locks are large with sharp undertows, though the final one, just above Shardlow, is relatively shallow. Having passed that one we proceeded slowly through Shardlow itself. This is very much a canal village, and unlike Preston Brook at the other end, the distinctive buildings, especially warehouses, have been retained, in some cases being converted into houses or flats. One house, with a long lawn bordering the canal, had a miniature railway track curving around it – the trains must have been inside their shed as we could not see them.

Final milepost at Shardlow

Flood control gates and warning lights

At the end of the village we passed through a set of flood gates – normally open, as they were today, but there for protection if the river rises. After passing a marina with a lot of moored boats, we went under bridge 1, the end of a sequence which started at bridge 213 up near Dutton. Just beyond that we came to the final lock which would let us down to the Trent. In this lock we were joined by another boat, Daedalus, a nice looking 70-footer with a tug bow, owned by a couple who spend the year aboard, though they have a house down in Essex. Having another boat made the lock more comfortable, though it was still difficult, with one of the paddles not working. We let them go ahead of us out of the lock, then followed them out onto the river.

This is a very different proposition from the narrow water we saw first up at Burston. After following a channel out of the lock for a few hundred yards you come to Derwent Mouth, effectively a crossroads. On your right the Trent itself flows in, and on the left the river Derwent emerges – this is a fair size, though not navigable by canal craft. Straight ahead the combined river flows downstream, and we followed it. It is now a hundred yards or more across, and flowing quite swiftly. We went under a substantial pipe bridge, which supplies water to the city of Leicester, and then under the M1 motorway. Just after that the river swung away to the left over a large weir, and we kept straight ahead into Sawley.

Derwent Mouth - the Trent coming in from the right

Looking up the Trent

Derwent Mouth - the river Derwent on the left

Following Daedalus towards the pipe bridge

Sawley, with a large marina and other moorings, sits on what is effectively a short stretch of canal, with the Trent looping around it to the north. At the top, where we went in, there is a flood lock, which is left open at normal times, so the water is at the same level as the river. At the other end there is a lock, manned by lock keepers and worked by machinery, which lets you down again onto the river (whose level has dropped when it went over the weir).

Sawley

The river seemed even wider as we emerged, though maybe the channel is just more spread out. There was a plastic bottle stationary in the middle – it wasn’t obviously a buoy, but it was either stuck on a very shallow spot or moored to the bottom, and I spent some time deciding which side of it looked more like the main channel. Fortunately, if there was a wrong side I picked the right one. The river curved broadly to the left and then back to the right, and we came to the crossroads which would be the limit of our journey this time. 

The crossroads

Straight ahead the Trent continued downstream, trending north until it becomes tidal, and eventually meets the Ouse to form the Humber Estuary. Up that way you can link up with the Yorkshire canals, and eventually reach Leeds and the Leeds & Liverpool canal.

Mouth of the Erewash

Looking across to the Steamboat Inn on the Erewash

To the left is the mouth of the Erewash Canal, which runs about a dozen miles north, between Derby and Nottingham. There are proposals to open further lengths into the foothills of the Peak District, but this will always be a dead end, unless the Derby Canal which I mentioned in yesterday’s blog is restored.

The Trent continues, with the Grand Union opening to the right

On the right is the beginning of the Leicester Section of the Grand Union Canal. This runs a long way south, through the centre of Leicester, and eventually meets up with the main line of the Grand Union, which comes down from the centre of Birmingham.

All three of these routes offer a lot of interest, and we would hope to travel them some day, but for now this was as far as we were going. We turned in a wide arc, very easy in the open river, and headed back upstream. We passed a large boat on the way, not seagoing I guess but bigger than you would meet on a canal. We went back up the automated lock and out the flood gates to Derwent Mouth. At this point we had planned to turn up the Trent again to visit Shardlow marina, but we reckoned that it would take a couple of hours at least, and time was already getting on. So we headed back up the locks through Shardlow and beyond, and in the end we moored in the exact spot at Weston Cliffs that we had left this morning – though facing the opposite direction, of course.

We have now completed the “End Run” – top to bottom of the Trent and Mersey, and the main objective of this trip. But now we were thinking about the second mission, to visit the centre of Birmingham. I was carefully counting back from the jump-off spot we had been advised to use for the final day into Birmingham, to make sure that we would reach it in time.

TODAY: 8:00 HOURS. 14.2 MILES. 10 LOCKS.

Voyage: 39:10 HOURS. 71.3 MILES. 45 LOCKS.

Boats, Trains and Automobiles

A slightly later start today, we got to sleep in until 7:10 before the dogs woke us. We made a very leisurely breakfast, and it was about half past nine when we got under way. As I mentioned yesterday, our overnight stop was just south of Junction 12 on the M6, and after a full day today we have moored very close to J13. You wouldn’t need to be speeding to cover that ground in ten minutes on the motorway, but the canal is a much more dignified way to travel.

We flirted with the M6 all day, in fact, running alongside it or going underneath, and the West Coast main line railway is also close here. These three modes of transport often find themselves close together – at Preston Brook, where we will base the boat permanently, the three overlap with the railway running under the canal while the motorway goes overhead. This isn’t really surprising as they all are, or were, the most important means of transport of their day, and they all transformed the country. It’s easy to forget as you potter along through open fields that the canals were not built as leisure facilities, they were a key part of the Industrial Revolution.

Brick Kiln Lock

This was more apparent within a mile of our start today, as we sailed through a modern chemical factory, with notices warning against mooring or even stopping. Soon we came to Gailey, with its odd circular canal shop, once a toll office, and our first lock of the day. We had thought that things would be quieter today, it being Monday, but in fact there were quite a lot of boats around, with many hirers starting their week aboard. We had to queue at several of the locks, which were spread out in an irritating fashion. With a solid flight like Audlem you just get on with it and get it done. But the locks today were about 10-20 minutes apart, so no time to do much, like walk the dogs or even brew a cuppa, before the next one comes along. But it was a nice sunny day, and the locks seemed to work easily, in the morning at least. One lock, at Rodbaston, is right next to the motorway, and apparently when the new road was built in the sixties the lockkeeper could not stand the noise and moved out of his cottage, which was subsequently demolished.

Rodbaston Lock with the M6 close by

We moored for lunch in Penkridge, and walked the dogs, then ate our food while still tied up. On previous days we have eaten on the move, but this wouldn’t have worked today, with the incessant locks, though it did mean we lost quite a bit of time.

We had done five locks to that point, and we did five more after lunch, but these seemed to become harder and harder to work, with the paddles very stiff and difficult to crank. Loulie was really struggling until in the end she swallowed her pride and used the ratchet windlass handle which I had bought before we set off. I was mocked mercilessly, but it turned out to be just the thing for really stiff lock machinery.

Slow boat under a fast motorway

We crossed under the M6 and then travelled south parallel to it, past Acton Trussell, which has some lovely houses and gardens running down to the canal. Just afterwards we found a long empty stretch of canal with open fields all around, perfectly safe for the dogs, so we decided to stop, although we are still about five miles short of our notional target for the day. The decision was confirmed when we found the mooring was very good, with deep water right to the edge and metal shuttering (“Armco”) on the vertical bank. We have odd little hooks, like giant paperclips, which slot behind this shuttering and provide a solid anchor for the mooring ropes. This is much simpler than driving mooring pins into the ground, which can be tricky if the earth is too soft or if it is too stony, or has a concrete foundation.

A Mooring Hook

We took the dogs for a walk, and had some shenanigans when we discovered that the boat down the canal from us has two cats. The Labradors were all fascinated, barking madly and wanting to get close, but also (wisely) not wanting to get too close. Oddly Ruby took no interest, watching the goings-on with an air of faint disdain. We dined on bacon and eggs from the Yates Greer stall in Warrington Market, the best I know anywhere. We’ll try to get away a little earlier tomorrow, and see if we can catch up on our schedule – we’d like to be past Stone before Tuesday is out.

Monday Night - Ivy House Farm

Today: 7 hours. 8 miles. 10 locks.

Voyage: 30 hours. 53.0 miles. 39 locks.