Birmingham

 

Here I am Rune

Distance 10.11 miles

Total 5056 Locks  381 Tunnels

Running total mileage 7,654.50 miles

 

The decision was to stay at Shirley until Saturday (today) and then head straight through into Birmingham. With the problems at Shirley Drawbridge, which people seem aware of now, we didn’t have much problem with boats coming from the opposite direction. A pleasant autumnal cruise, albeit with the inevitable leaves periodically around the prop.

Upon arrival in Birmingham I was initially a bit concerned since the first moorings that you come to, opposite the Mailbox, were rammed including a boat moored on the water point! My concerns were misplaced however since there were plenty of moorings elsewhere, it just meant that I had to go to Cambrian Wharf to fill with water. It’s a while since I winded in Cambrian Wharf and I’m glad that the air was pretty still today since, even with such ideal conditions, I still made a dog’s breakfast of it. The problem is that the indentation into the offside bank into which you put the bow of the boat doesn’t really become fully visible until you are almost alongside it, which means that you are too far forward to make use of it. First effort was a total failure so then reversed back to have another go, sadly didn’t reverse back far enough so ended out having to make a third go at it. We got around eventually and then carried out all of the domesticky stuff (rubbish,water and Elsan) so we should now be clear until we get back to the basin on Wednesday.

Only slight mishap was that I stopped the boat to go below to use the toilet and when I came back up, the bow had skewed across the canal into some bushes, knocking the ‘chinaman’s hat’ off the chimney. It’s no great loss because it was rusting anyway but will need to get another before we leave the boat for the winter.