Kingsbury

Last night dinner was purchased from Peninsular Cantonese, the beef is wonderful, the rest was very good.

This morning the workmen were quiet quiet until about 8am. maybe they have an agreement with the local residents or maybe they just get fired up slowly.
I was preparing to make a 10am start when two boats came by, first thought was, well that’s all the 11 locks against us today,so we set off behind them, the first turned into Fazeley Mill Marina and the second moored outside, so no one ahead again. We made our way along the B&F canal to the Curdworth flight, not only were the locks with up, the bottom one had the gate wide open, so straight in, the next three were just the same. The BCN lock cottage by the bottom lock has a date in Roman numerals high on the wall. Correct me if I am wrong but I think its 1820, I have seen the date in Roman Numerals on BCN bridges but I think it a lot less common on lock cottages. On the offside just below lock 10 there is this small memorial, no name, just Dad and the dates.
After lock 8 all the locks were still with us but the gates all closed up so we made reasonable time going up the flight.
The work on HS2 is moving on near lock 5 with a couple of solid fences up and a crushed concrete base down.   The chaps in the High vis jackets were manhandling a rather large wacker plate machine back to the site after using it on the towpath. There is a pond opposite where they are working with a rather large dead tree beside it, I think it may be on the path of HS2 but today the Cormorants were taking the opportunity to sit out on it

Lock number 2 caught us out as both the bottom paddles were up by about 3 inches, the racks are hidden behind the walkway as you approach the gate, its not until you look back on them you see the rod is above the guide. 
Confession time, I didn’t bother fitting the headlight to come through Curdworth tunnel.  We carried on past the Cuttle Bridge Inn at Kingsbury to moor a short way past bridge Wiggins Hill Bridge. There have been plans to build an industrial estate opposite where we are moored on what was open farm land, work has now started preparing the ground.

Please click the map to open a Google Map showing the trip so far

Todays Journey 7 miles, 11 locks in 4 hours