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.

First day boating again

29th April

There's post by Sheila just below this one, giving an account of our break in the Lakes, which was indeed extremely enjoyable. I can heartily recommend the Burn How Hotel in Bowness on Windermere.

Nonetheless, as Simon and Garfunkel said in 1970, "Gee but it's great to be back home" (I'll come back to the question of keeping your customers satisfied later).

After a good night's kip last night on our lovely, memory foam toppered bed, we made an early start to day. With her bottom free of weed, Sanity fairly zoomed along even in tick over, getting up to 2.5 mph at 850 rpm on the long straight stretch of the Cannock Extension.

I managed the turn onto the Wyrley and Essington without too much hassle. Apparently BW have spent £500,000 dredging the Curly Wyrley in the last couple of years, and it certainly shows. It used to be notorious for shallows and problems with strange objects underwater. Now it's nothing like as bad, though there are still the odd heart stopping rending noises from underneath in some of the bridge holes.

By just after nine we'd arrived at the service block and moorings at Brownhills. There were a couple of Anglo Welsh boats in possession of the services, so we tied a bit further on. We walked back to have a natter with a woman living on a boat in the arm alongside the services, and she confirmed that these are reasonably safe moorings, especially if you pull back onto the services (which are behind a BW locked gate) for the night.

We did a mega shop at Tesco, restocking the fridge and the veg drawer. Must say, after we washed the fridge yesterday before restarting it, it made me think that these self defrosting fridges are all very well, but they don't encourage you to keep them clean. With the old ones, you had to switch them off and clean them from time to time, or else you just couldn't get anything else in past the inches thick layer of frost.

It's a 24 hour Tesco here, but not very big. We got all the needful stuff, but I'm glad that we'll be passing the canal side one at Leamington Spa within the week, to pick up some of the more exotic stuff. We also made a couple of trips to the Wilko's that's here – this demonstrated that it's worth walking past the Tesco onto the main street, which has a range of other shops like a butchers and a bakers.

Finally, some thoughts about Canal Transport Services and Matt Cooper. Let me say straight away that he's a nice guy, aiming to be helpful, and seems to have done a good job of the grit blast and two pack blacking. He's used some stuff called Manor Coatings Promastic 600 CT, which from the descriptions on the website sounds like just the job. It can even be over coated with undercoat and gloss, for example around the tunnel bands.

The problem we had with him was the classic one about timing. I mean I know that Arthur Ransome said that the only boat builder ever to finish the job on time was Noah, who had a special incentive, but in fact some builders (Braidbar, especially now, and Stone Canal Cruising) do manage to keep to schedule.

With Matt, we'd said that we needed the job done in a window between mid April and mid May, because of our other commitments, and he'd made a provisional date for the week beginning 14 April. He then phoned at the start of April to confirm that, and we started looking at hotels for that week. The very afternoon when we'd decided on the Burn How, and were about to book and pay, he rang again to say his work had slipped back because of problems with the one he had on the dock at the time, and could he put us back by a week.

That was fine, in fact, as it got us out of the expensive and busy Easter week, so we booked for the week after. We actually arrived at CTS on the Friday before, after deciding not to do two nights at Anglesey Basin, and Matt then told us that Sanity would now be going on the dock on the Wednesday, but that that would still mean that she'd be all done by the beginning of the next week.

Off we went on holiday, and as I said, had a great time. The only thing was, it was a bit like having your car in for its MoT. You know how you spend the day anxiously eyeing the phone, waiting for the call from the garage with those dread words "I'm afraid we've had a bit of a problem, squire"?

Well this was like that, only it went on all week. In the event, we had a call on Thursday evening: could we put off coming back until Wednesday? Well, no. All right then, how about Tuesday, which I said we could probably cope with. Because things were reasonably quiet in the Burn How during the week, they were able to let us stay on another night, at the price we had paid via Lastminute.com (£114 per night).

When we got back, Sanity was indeed ready. Matt didn't seem to sense that he'd risked seriously inconveniencing us, and that it could have been a real problem. We won't be going back there, partly because of that, and partly because, compared to a lot of other yards around the system, it's just too much hassle getting up here.

If you are a leisure boater, and can give him a four week window during which you leave the boat there to be worked on as and when, I'm sure he's fine, but if you are a liveaboard, and have to make arrangements for somewhere to live whilst the work is done, you need to use a more reliable yard, I reckon.

Heigh ho, enough said. Tomorrow we press on to Longwood, probably stopping at Aldridge Marina for a service, then the day after it will be the long slog from there to Catherine de Barnes and away out of the BCN.

Joys of the Northern BCN

16th & 17th April

Secure at Longwood, we had a good night's kip the night before last. In the morning, Tom on Vivid III (he who had helped us up the locks the day before) gave me some advice on tying in Anglesey Basin. It seems there can be a problem with drunks wandering past the end of the basin during the evening; the trick is to come back along the canal a little way, to where some power lines cross overhead. There's a good hard edge and depth, presumably where there was a loading staithe originally.

We reversed back to the water point and topped up the tank, then set off onto the Daw End Branch of the Wyreley and Essington. We'd been warned that it would be shallow, and indeed it was. At times we were struggling to make better than 2 mph, with mud and muck swirling up beneath us.

Sanity slogged on – the GPS proved remarkably useful, as you could see what effect different engine revs had on the speed, rather than trying to guess by watching the bank crawl by. It didn't help that the weather deteriorated severely, becoming cold, wet and gusty.

I'd had the impression from enthusiastic accounts that the northern BCN was remarkably rural, not to say bucolic, but was sadly disappointed. From time to time there were some fields, but mostly the scenery was of unremitting suburbia, mixed with light industry.

At Daw End itself we had a little light relief to see one of the pubs, The Boathouse, advertising its "Riverside Patio."

This rather miserable state of affairs carried on all the way to Aldridge, where we pulled in to do a quick shopping trip. Trying to come into the side, I found a reef of silt just off the end of the side weir beyond Aldridge Wharf Bridge, and struggled to extricate Sanity by reversing off. I finally got in further along, guided by Sheila who had hopped off as we came through the bridge.

The light industry was particularly prominent here, not least because of the auto paint shop alongside the plastics moulding firm, so that the nose was assailed by a variety of long chain organic molecules. What with one thing and another, I was strongly reminded of Robert Falcon Scott's reaction when he finally made it to the South Pole:

"Great God! This is an awful place."

On walking up into the centre (about 10 minutes) Aldridge in fact seemed to be quite unexceptional, a typical bit of suburbia going about its business. I'm sure that the weather, the awful state of the cut and a last assault by my head cold, leading to a nose bleed earlier in the day, had biased me just a bit against the whole place.

Shopping done, we slogged on to Catshill Junction, where we turned right for Anglesey Basin. It's an interesting place, and we found Tom's mooring without trouble – indeed, you'd have difficulty tying anywhere else. The other serious option would be to drop a mud weight in the middle of the pool.

After lunch we found a quick cache, and set off to explore the Chasewater Country Park. We'd only made it as far as the reservoir dam when it started to teem down again. The reservoir looks seriously low for this time of year – it can't be the lack of rain, that's for sure.

Back at the boat we huddled down inside. There was a good internet connection, at least, so various bits and pieces could be done. As it got dark it got quite creepy, frankly. There wasn't much to be seen, but odd voices could be heard in the murk, and the absence of other boats made it all a bit edgy.

It's one of those areas which would be transformed by more traffic, and the presence of even a couple of other boats would have made all the difference. Perhaps once the Lichfield and Hatherton Trust has reconnected Huddlesford with Ogley Junction, this basin will see more visitors and become a good deal more welcoming.

As it was, we decided not to risk another night there, and came on to Norton Canes today. By way of recompense, as we left the basin, we spotted an unusual bird flitting about. Checking the guide afterwards showed that it was a Common Sandpiper, suggesting that Chasewater would repay some birding activity.

The water was much deeper for this bit of the trip, and better weather certainly helped. Ironically, we made our first trip down the weed hatch on the way, when I removed a collection of plastic bags and weed from the prop.

Brownhills provides some really good moorings and a Tesco right by the canalside. We're told by Matt Cooper here at NC that they are a safe overnight mooring into the bargain, as is Pelsall Common, just by the junction of the Cannock Extension with the W & E.

We got here just on lunchtime and tied to a trot of boats by the yard. Matt came across during the afternoon and discussed what we are having done. It seems Sanity will go on the dock on Wednesday, and should be all done by Friday. We are leaving her on Monday to go to the Lakes, returning the following Monday, so the timing should be just right.

I'll do a quick post on Sunday, but then take a week off. I've scheduled a reminder post to go out every other day whilst I'm away, with links to what we were doing this time last year, just so folk don't forget we're here.