Hopwood, South Wast Hills tunnel

Yesterday be moved the boat twice to find shade, first time from Symphony Gardens to Gas Street, then after we had been out for dinner , from Gas Street round to Holiday wharf which was empty. There were three reasons for this, les footfall passed the boat, more breeze (holiday Wharf is like a wind tunnel) and to fill with water.
We finally decided to eat at Bar Estilo with some lovely food but the beer was £6-20 a pint.
This morning  we were off at 8-30 again, I wanted to look at the work that has been carried out opposite Sainsbury's for the Lapel Canal winding hole. Its nice to see they are installing mooring bollards, I hope they make them very short term moorings, like 2 hours and then they will be ideal for shopping, not 2 days or more.

We have seen more boat on the move today than I think we have seen in the rest of the trip, 8  in total. It wasn’t long before we were heading through Edgbaston tunnel, this was originally wide enough for two boats to pass but a few years back it was narrowed to make the towpath wider so the bikes didn’t need to slow down, it’s now classed as being 7 foot wide, as you can see it runs parallel to the railway tunnel.

Just along a bit from the tunnel by the winding hole there were 15 boats moored in the shade of the trees, I have never seen more than a couple here before.

Then it was passed Sainsbury's and the work ongoing there, it looks as id the dam is now fully submerged, I don’t know when they plan to pull the steel out.

  There doesn’t looked to be much progress at the toll house at Kings Norton Junction, its still completely clad in scaffolding and film.

We decided to carry on down the Worcester and Birmingham canal for a bit. I must say it was very pleasant in Wast Hill Tunnel with the occasional lightcool shower even is we did meat two boat, the first with a LED headlight. It would seem that not only do CRT ‘s sign department not have a spell checker they also don’t have a calculator looking at the length, speed and time.

Once clear of the tunnel we carried on for 20 minutes to the winding hole to turn, and then retraced our route almost the the south portal of the tunnel where there was a bit of shade.

Our route to date on Google maps, please click the map to open it. We should close the ring in a couple of days.

Today’s Journey

 

8¾ miles, no locks in 3½ hours.