Tipton Sunday 9 April 2017

Well as there wasn't room for up on the pontoons last night we moored on the opposite edge of the basin outside Brewers Fare.

The basin was alive with people sitting outside drinking and as you would expect in the evening quite noisy, but later in the night it was dead quiet unlike we had been led to believe.

This morning we were woken by engines starting at 6-30 as a group of hardy soles set off early. We were on our way by 8-15 and there were still about 5 boats behind us. Again it was a beautiful sunny morning. As we made our way along the canal we assed this polly tunnel containing a boat in the bank side, I fell things may soon start getting warm in there.

It wasn’t long before we caught up with Brenda and Brian ahead of us. We passed Moorcroft Junction, where we had all moored yesterday while we walked the old arm and by the time we reached the Ryder Green locks there was quite a queue ahead, as the 4 single handers who set off early had been held up somewhere and were now just starting to ascend the locks.

As we waited in a bridge hole before the locks the BCNS ex working boat Atlas caught us up.

Some of the deeper draughted boats had a bit of a problem getting under Wellington Bridge with all the shopping trollies that have been thrown off it so we all waited until that had gone up the next lock before continuing, I glided under the bridge out of gear and could hear the botto scraping a trolley near the back end but I kept goin, surprisingly Atlas an ex working boat, but running light had no problem at all.

Ryders Green locks are not the most picturesque in the world with a lot of desolation along the route.

Once we cleared the top lock, we had now been going 6 hours I thought we deserved a pint and a hot Sunday lunch, but the pub is now a tanning parlour!

It was a slow chug to Pudding Green Junction as we found one of our party with their boat across the cut, it turned out they had a sack or similar around their prop, so we stopped to lend a hand. Once at the junction we turner right and after about half a mile left at Albion Junction and up the 3 Brades Hall Locks to the Old Main line at Brades Hall Junction, from her it was a run of about 2 miles to Tipton where we moored on Wednesday night.

 

Today’s Journey

11½ Miles, 11Locks loads of junctions and canals in 8 hours.