This summer our boat had been borrowed by my brother and his family. They went from Droitwich Spa Marina, up the Tardebigge, and into Birmingham, mooring outside the Lego centre for a few days before moving on to the Black Country Living Museum and The Dudley Canal and Caverns. I believe they also enjoyed a trip to Dudley Zoo, but it was moored up near the Black Country Living Museum that we found them and swapped over.
Sonia and I had already been, a few years ago, to the Black Country Living Museum, so we stayed moored near by and the next day walked down to the Dudley Canal centre and enjoyed breakfast in the Gongoozler cafe overlooking the entrance to the tunnels. Not a bad breakfast, I added some black pudding to mine :-).
After breakfast we purchased a couple of tickets to the Black Country Living Museum and went to see what was new. We started at the canal side when a bright young man rushed over to let us look inside one of the old canal boats, we then went and looked at, I think it was the first purpose built diesel engined boat. All explained by the gentleman below, this was a 6 litre single cylinder Bolinder diesel engine, he carefully explained the starting procedure, not a short process that involved a kick start using a peg sticking out of the flywheel.
Quite a lot had changed at the Black Country Living Museum since our last visit when we could see new (Old) building being built, but had yet to be completed. We enjoyed seeing one of the new streets that included shops that we would have seen in our youth (they would be old then, but still going).
After about 5 hours of wandering about and enjoying ourselves, we decided we need to do the Tunnel and Cavern boat ride at the Dudley Canal & Tunnel Trust centre. These boats leave every 30 minutes during peak times and take about 45 minutes.
The trip takes place in an open top electric canal boat, expertly driven by our guide, who also narrated our trip. The tunnels and caves have been formed by lime stone mining, which is used in the production of iron and steel as part of the purification process.
You can see we all had our white hard hats on as we travelled deeper into the tunnels, in our tunnel we emerged into a cave with a large screen that displayed a video about the history of the tunnels, we then went into Singing Cavern, where we learned more of the history while listening to music with a light show.
On the way out our guide narrated how the tunnels had been created with Gunpowder and the use of small children (How the times have changed).
Back into the light we returned our hard hats and headed back to the boat for more tea and cakes.
We would recommend both the Black Country Living Museum and the Dudley Canal and Caverns, they make a great day out for both us olds and younger ones.