Birmingham City Centre

Here I am Rune

Distance 1.6 miles

Total 2403 Locks  108 Tunnels

Running total mileage 3381.7 miles 

So today it was back up the Farmers flight of locks and into Birmingham City Centre. The short trip around Aston now means that we have fully completed the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal and the Grand Union with all of its arms (Slough,Aylesbury,Wendover and Leicester) from Brentford Lock in London to Salford Junction (under Spaghetti Junction) in Birmingham.

The weather today was absolutely ideal for the ascent of the locks, warm and sunny, almost as though Spring has arrived. What this did mean however was that there were quite a lot of Gongoozlers (sightseers) around. You do have to keep an eye on them because they don’t always see a hazard. A family group that were watching me at lock 4 were standing immediately in front of the lock gate balance beam so that as I pulled the boat forward in the, now full, lock it nudged the gate and started to open it. I pointed out to the group that the balance beam would knock into them if they stayed where they were, I’m not sure that their English language was quite up to scratch since they just nodded and smiled. It took a bit of pointing and waving to impress on them that where they were standing wasn’t conducive to their continued good health! Other than that the only other ‘difficulty’ was at lock 9 where the wind funnelling under the building made leaving one lock and getting into the other a bit problematic. In the photo you can see that as you come out of one lock you are heading straight towards a concrete pillar and since the wind was coming from the right there was no real chance of turning. The problem was solved by putting the crew on the helm and ‘bow-hauling’ the front of the boat into the next lock.

Now that we are back in the City Centre I think the plan will be to remain here until either Monday or Tuesday.