Friday 27 Aug 10 Alvechurch

Last night moorings were very good. The whole area is behind closed gates with on site security, lights and cameras. We know they work as Diana alerted him walking Magic round the car park in the dark.  You can easily leave the site if you want to as the security office is by the main gate. The only visitor mooring is now at the very end of the moorings, in front of the offices and is only available if BW are not using it. It would apart that apart from the water point every where else is residential mooring.

This morning we woke to blue sky and sunshine, at 9 am. we moved back about 50 yards to the service point to fill with water and dispose of the rubbish, it was then off up the Aston flight of 11 locks. Things went surprisingly well with good water levels all the way up, the only point that needs immediate attention is the growth of Buddleia on the offside of lock 10, you have to push your way through it as you cross the lock to get to the offside paddle. Email to BW on its way. We completed the flight in just over 2 hours which was not bad with all the locks against us.
We set off up the Farmers Bridge flight at ten to twelve, at the first lock there is a building that is completely covered in a mural. Here we saw a workman in hard hat and reflective jacket sweeping up, it seems the building is being revamped into student accommodation, at the moment all the windows have been removed and we were told that it will be painted with a new mural when the work is complete.  Just as we entered the second lock we spotted the first boat we had seen on the move today, following us up the flight, we met the second boat of the day coming down, we passed in one of the underground pounds which was handy as there is a good straight offside edge to pull over against to let the other boat through. This flight took us just over one hour thirty minutes and is 13 locks long.

We turned hard left at Old Turn junction into Gas Street. There is now a services boat called Away2service that offers pump outs and sells diesel and gas at competitive rates.

It wasn't until we had gone through Worcester Barr that we saw another boat on the move,after this  as we passed the new Cube building they came thick and fast, I think they must have been held up by the single file diversion where they are building a new aqueduct and have big bundles of tyres to make gabions. I had heard reports of some boats having problems getting buy them but we had no problem so I can only assume they have modified things.

We carried on to Kings Norton Junction where we went straight ahead onto the Birmingham and Worcester canal and into the 2726 yard Wast Hills tunnel, once back out into the sunshine we started to look for somewhere to moor which was easier said than done, much of this canal is very rural with soft banks which makes mooring with an old dog quite difficult. The first spot was by the Hopwood House pub but it was quite busy so we thought we would push on a little bit, the little bit turned out to be past Alvechurch marina where we found a short length of piling with just one boat moored,so we pulled in here for the night at about 5 30 pm.