Some hard travelling

31st April & 1st May

We made a prompt start on Thursday, after a secure night on the service block moorings, which means that you are behind a locked gate. The other moorings at Brownhills are said to be OK, but are very close to the road past the 24 hr Tesco.

At Aldridge Marina, we pulled in onto the pump out wharf, and rang the number given on the sign for pump out queries. A helpful woman answered, and explained that I had to walk up the road to her office to pay for a pump out. This proved to be a small trek: you go out of the marina car park to the main road, turn right and walk for around five minutes, right up to a T-junction. There you can see the estate office for K R Hardy, Builders. In there, and Michele will sell you a pump out card for £12.

Back at the marina, Sheila had discovered how to work the machine, with the aid of some advice from a local moorer. She'd also discovered that to get the deck fitting within reach of the hose, we had to crosswind Sanity through the bridge hole at the end of the wharf.

We'd just got all set up when a BW workboat appeared coming in the opposite direction, and so had to undo it all whilst they went past. They were reassuring about the risk of any further boats turning up though: "Maybe next month!"

Having got it all set up again, we then had an extremely good DIY pump out. It was powerful, there was a lot of time, and the machine showed what percentage of time you had left. It's the best rinse we've given the tank for several months.

After that, it was a question of plodding on to Longwood in deteriorating weather, getting there at half eleven, to find no one else on the visitor mooring. As we'd gone along, I'd checked the water gauge to see if we needed to top up at Longwood. To my surprise, a gauge which had been showing under 90% last time I looked at it, now read almost full.

Thinking "What now?", I anxiously checked under the well deck (twice), to make sure that we hadn't got some other problem with the water system, but all seemed fine. I decided that the gauge must just have dropped out of calibration for some reason. It's been being a bit optimistic ever since the hassles with the pump, and I've been meaning to recalibrate it for a while.

Not wanting to worry Sheila, I said casually at Longwood "Shall we top up the water tank, then I can recalibrate the gauge."

"Well, we can if you like," said she, "but we won't get much in. I refilled it at Brownhills while you were in Tesco getting a paper this morning."

Collapse of stout party, as they say.

The weather having turned very wet, and with the prospect of a heavy day the next day, we had a lazy afternoon and evening, catching up with emails and the like.

Yesterday, the alarm went off at 5.45, and by five past six we were working down the first lock. There are two together at the top of the Rushall flight, then a long pound, so we were able to breakfast on the move below them. All went swimmingly until I came to set Lock 6. The bottom gate was a tad open, but not enough to worry about, so I drew a top paddle and waited for it to swing shut. It didn't. I nipped down there to push it closed, and it wouldn't go. A quick jog up to the top to drop the paddle, and then some tugging and heaving demonstrated that there was something solid on the cill, stopping the gate from closing up.

We pulled Sanity out of the lock above and tied her, and had a go at moving the blockage, first with the long shaft (not long enough to reach) then with the magnet (obviously not a ferrous obstruction).

I was just making up my mind to call BW, when one of their men showed up. It was now 7.30. I explained the problem, but he was unable to help, he said, as he hadn't any kit for the purpose with him, as he was there to carry on laying the fancy block work on the towpath.

So after some hassle looking it up, I rang the BW emergency number, 0800 4799947. I had the usual efficient response from the operator, who said she'd page the engineer.

When I wandered back to the lock to wait, the BW guy came up, talking on his mobile, and said he'd also got hold of the relevant team for me, and they were on their way. They turned up in around 10 minutes, and with a truly enormous rake (around 30 foot long), dragged something off the cill. It was too heavy to lift out of the lock, so they had to leave it on the bottom somewhere.

Now I could fill the lock. There were shortly frantic shouts and signals of an unprintable nature from Sheila; I'd run sufficient water out of the pound earlier that there was no longer enough to both fill the lock and keep Sanity afloat, so she was now leaning at an interesting angle. I dropped all paddles, went back up to lock 5 and opened both a top and bottom paddle to run some water down. After around a half lock full, Sanity agreed to float again, and I was able to close up 5 and go back to filling 6.

Down 6 we went, and then found that the block must have washed down behind the gate, because now it wouldn't open. At least this time Sheila was able to lean out from the bow and work away with the long shaft to clear things until the gate could be persuaded to open enough to let Sanity out.

It had taken about 90 minutes to do this one lock.

After that, things were reasonable straightforward, down the rest of the flight, turn left at Rushall Junction and so to the top of Perry Barr flight. Going down this one, we had a little trouble at 11, when a combination of a large tree bough and a dead hedgehog behind the bottom gates meant that Sheila had to do her shaft off the bow bit again, and then at 12 a dead dog was behind one of the gates and stinking the place out.

We stopped briefly on the lock landing below the bottom lock to make sandwiches, it being 12.30, then boated on, eating as we went. A half right turn at Salford Junction, under Spaghetti Junction, took us onto new waters again, the Birmingham and Warwick Junction Canal. This features the Garrison Lock flight, where just below the top lock Sanity stopped dead in the water. I backed her off and took another run at it. The trick is to keep the power on, so that the bow lifts, until you reckon the obstruction is about two thirds of the way back, then go into neutral, so that the bow comes down and the stern lifts.

This nearly worked, but Sanity stopped with most of her in the lock. I threw the centre line to Sheila, and as she pulled, went forward myself onto the very bow, where I did a little dance. The combination of my 15 stone bouncing the bow down and Sheila's pulling got us in the lock and off we went again.

At Bordesley Junction we turned left into the Camp Hill flight, except we had to wait whilst the first boat we'd met all day, a Shakespeare Classic Line hire boat, came out.

After that we chugged up these final six locks of the 33 of the day, and set off for Catherine de Barnes. There is a secure mooring behind the service block at the top of Camp Hill, behind a BW fence, but it's pretty utilitarian – basically like mooring in a factory.

Another two hours boating in intermittent rain brought us to the very pleasant and peaceful setting of Catherine de B, where two other boats were tied on the visitor mooring. It was now a quarter to six in the evening, and we'd been boating for just under 12 hours, during which the boat had been moving for about eight and a half.

I'll do a regular post tomorrow, describing today's trip to the top of Hatton, and our run down the Stairway to Heaven.