Next Stop Cadbury World.

10.96 miles, 0 Locks, 1 Tunnel, 1 Lift bridge. Now moored at Bournville

With the doom and gloom of the weather forecast we were pleasantly surprised with a beautiful sunny day. This stayed with us for most of the day only clouding over by the time we reached King’s Norton Junction. The canal was quite busy with a convoy of 4 boats, us included, heading North and a couple of South bound boats.

The white steps in the centre are actually a waterfall in this development at Dickens Heath.

At the Shirley Lift bridge I pulled in to drop Dot off to operate the bridge when I picked up a hunk of synthetic sacking material. I struggled through the bridge to the mooring point and then had to venture down the weed hatch. Luckily the material came away fairly easily so I wasn’t submerged in freezing cold water for too long. Later at bridge 5 we pulled in to top up the water tanks as this is the last water point until we reach Birmingham. Luckily there are 4 taps here as there were 5 boats wanting to fill up, so there wasn’t too much of a delay.

Bridge 8, Shirley Draw Bridge on the North Stratford Canal. Pilings restrict passage to single boats.

The turn onto the Worcester and Birmingham Canal at Kings Norton Junction was a bit of a tight turn but we negotiated it without hitting anything but looking at the condition of bridge 72 there are plenty of boats that don’t succeed without removing a bit of paintwork. Dare I say hire boats? A short run through some of Birmingham’s industrial history and we arrived at Bournville where due to shortage of moorings we are now breasted up against Uccello.

No signs of mooring ropes anywhere and just enough room to pass.

As it’s half term break for the schools the Cadbury’s World Tour is fully booked out for day’s, even weeks. Carrie has managed to obtain the last tickets for tomorrow’s 9am tour for herself and Grandson. Dot searched the website of Cadbury’s and found that despite being told that they don’t have Concession tickets for OAP’s they in fact do. So we decided to see if we could fluke some tickets and came up with 2 on the Tuesday 9am tour so we will be staying here until then.

Guillotine Stop Lock.  There is one of these on the other side of the bridge too and it’s a tight fit.

2102 locks, 4097.30 miles, 78 tunnels, 130 swing bridges and 57 lift bridges since Nov 2006