20th – 22nd August To Birmingham
We are a little later getting away on our adventure, but just after noon we set off from the marina and by mid afternoon we are at the bottom of the Tardebigge ready to start the climb up the locks.
At about 7:30am on the 21st August we start at The Tardebigge Botton Lock, it is a nice day for working hard, not as hot has it had been the week before, so by 12 noon we had reached the Tardebigge Top Lock, we are getting experts at these over the last few years we have been up and down them so many times.
There are a couple of tunnels between starting with the Tardebigge Tunnel, 530m long, usefully there is a water point at the Tardebigge CRT yard just before the tunnel. Just a few bends later is the Shortwood Tunnel, 560m long, then back past Alvechurch Marina.
By 4:30pm we where just exiting the much longer Wast Hill Tunnel, 2493m long, it is one of the longest canal tunnels in the UK and it is wide enough for two narrow boats, you can see oncoming boats a long way off in the dark, but is is very hard to estimate how far away they are until the last new minutes.
An hour later we moored up by a park, not sure exactly were, but Obi our dog needs a good run around before it got to dark.
The next morning, 22nd August, we moor up at near Gas Street Basin for a couple of days investigating Birmingham.