Hopwood

UPDATE
The winter mooring signs have been removed from the services and will be moved over to Cambrian Wharf.

This was our mooring last night, as you can see there are just the two of us.

It rained lightly during the evening and then more heavily over night. Bizarrely we lost two items off the roof overnight, one was a small circular fender that I found and which I kept on the roof for the exhaust to sit on and the other, one of the two rags that lived in the chimney cap just to wipe grease and mud off my hands.

The mooring lines and boat hook were not touched nor the rope mat that covers the bulls eye. Most strange.
This morning it was not raining but very low cloud with lots of the tops of the flats out of view.

I reversed out onto the main line as we wanted to go on the Worcester and Birmingham canal. Directly opposite the junction is a large carved bee.

There was only one boat moored in Gas Street and we stopped at Holiday Wharf to fill with water, not the fastest tap on the system, but it gave me time to check a couple of things on google earth before setting off again in the gloom.

 

Our first stop was Selly Oak to visit Halfords to get a new Stanley Knife to replace the one that I lost down the weed hatch. Mooring up opposite Sainsbury's there was again more CRT litter and waste, I removed and binned them all before I left.

We started meeting a few boats after this, probably 6 or 7 in all. At Kingswood Junction we carried on straight ahead  passed the refurbished Toll House. I didn’t realise that the house had road access but there was a car in the garden. I knew they laid a temporary track to do the work but I assumed that would have had to be removed.
As we arrived at Wast Hill I could see there was about quite close to the exit so waited for them to clear the tunnel before I entered, only to find a was firmly in the mud.

The visibility with my headlamp in the tunnel for the first half was about 50Mts. and well before the half way mark I had lost all sight of the north portal. We met a boat just past half way and after that things were much clearer until the last 100Mts. when it was thick again. After the tunnel we got a short shower as we looked for somewhere to moor for the night, we finally goy in just before the winding hole.

Todays Journey

9 miles with no locks in 3¾ hours