Camp Hill

Here I am Rune

Distance 9.9 miles

Total 1001 Locks 57 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1385.6 miles

Having now done the bit between the village of Catherine de Barnes and Camp Hill top lock, I can see why the guy selling coal at Gas Street hates it. We had no problems at all with the local ‘yoof’ as he had warned of, but considerable problems with the canal itself. Everything was going fine as we approached Catherine de Barnes, speed had been good, we were ahead of schedule (and the weather was fine!). At C de B it all rather began to go wrong at about the moment we got somebody’s bomber jacket wrapped around the propeller bringing us to a halt. Having cleared that, about 150 yards further along we then got a load of branches wrapped around the prop and came to a halt again, another trip down the weed hatch required. It became apparent that the canal is in dire need of some serious dredging since for the next 5 miles we were travelling at a snail’s pace and constantly either picking up crap from the bottom (mostly removed by a burst of reverse thrust) or else dragging the bottom in the shallows. Now that we have completed this section of canal we don’t need to do it again (unless it gets dredged) and in future will go through central Birmingham and down the Worcester and Birmingham canal, as we did when we last left Birmingham. It still meets up with this canal at Kingswood Junction and misses this rather shallow section.

Plan for tomorrow will be to go down through both Camp Hill Flight and Garrison flight and then across to Tame Valley canal and up the Perry Barr locks (one area we missed when touring the BCN during the winter because they were closed). Hope we don’t spend quite as much time down the weedhatch!