Hockley Heath

Here I am Rune

Distance 8.9 miles

Total 887 Locks 53 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1312.1miles

The trip we had to the Cadbury World attraction was certainly enlightening, whilst most of it was pretty much designed for the kids the part that I found truly fascinating was the story of the Cadbury family and their whole ethos. As a group of Quakers they had the rather radical view of their workforce as something to be valued rather than today when a workforce seems to be viewed on par with something nasty that has stuck to your shoe whilst out walking. Looking at the history of the Bournville factory you tend to wish that one day all employers would be like this, but then realise that the story is from Victorian times and it hasn’t really happened. When you look at what Cadbury supplied for his workers, employment, housing, recreation, it all looks rather radical now, imagine if McDonalds supplied cheap accommodation for their workforce, not really going to happen is it? It would appear that the ethos began to decline with the advent of mechanisation since they would no longer need to employ so many staff (the packaging area we passed through seemed to be staffed by just 2 people rather than the large number that would have been employed pre-automation). Looking at the record of the site in the 1920’s – 1930’s it did seem to be  all rather utopian.

Back to our travels however, we have moved on from Bournville down to Hockley Heath and I must say that I shall be glad when things warm up a bit, the wind today was as bitter as any during the winter. The trip was pretty much without incident passing through a ‘proper’ tunnel (unlike the Broad Street Tunnel in Birmingham!).  The only slight hold up we had was at Shirley Lift bridge when the crew of another boat approached and asked if we could help them get back through the bridge as their BW key wouldn’t work the bridge. We had to wait for about ½ hour for them to go up the canal to turn around to come back but we were generally glad to help, particularly since we then found that our spare BW key doesn’t fit the lift bridge either.

Tomorrow heading on down towards Kingswood junction, we’ll see how far we get.