Birmingham City Centre (8)

Here I am Rune

Distance 1.3 miles

Total 887 Locks 50 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1298.9miles

Some days really don’t go according to script, and today was certainly one of those! The initial decision to make was whether to move on today or leave it until tomorrow. Since the weather forecast for tomorrow isn’t good we decided to try to move on today. Since we are only intending to move about an hour and a half down the canal to be able to visit Cadbury World at Bourneville it didn’t seem to be a particularly big decision. On the way out we would need to fill with water and empty the Elsan cassettes but that was about it. We set off at about 2 pm heading to the waterpoint/elsan near to The Mailbox (shopping mall). As we approached two things were noticeable, the wind had picked up quite a lot and there was a CRT workboat faffing around in the middle of the canal. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on with the workboat (transpired it had a bedspread around it’s propeller!) but where it was lurking was exactly where I needed to moor to get to the waterpoint. After some difficulty with mooring against the wind we succeeded only to be told that the workmen were fitting a water heater and the water supply to both the Elsan and the water point had been switched off. This meant that we would have to turn around and go back to the Sanitary station at the top of Farmers locks. Of course the wind was a terrific help in this exercise but eventually we succeeded having by now wasted about an hour. The water from the water point at Farmers only trickles out so filling the tank took quite a while, whilst doing this I went to empty the Elsan Cassettes. I’m not a massive fan of the Elsan at Farmers since, unlike most of them, it is just an ordinary toilet seat (most are specifically designed). My sense of humour rather failed however when the discharge pipe of the cassette slipped off the edge of the pan and deposited some of the contents on the floor, on my boots and on my trousers! Suitably hosed down I completed the process only to then spill a quantity of the Elsan Blue treatment liquid down the outside of the cassette, another clean up job required. By the time all of this was done another hour had passed so it was decided to return to our previous mooring and set out tomorrow, Friday the 13^th, what can possibly go wrong??