Category: Travel

Blog posts covering our trips in Floydtilla

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Summer 2024 Cruise Part 4 – Escaping the Windy City

Wednesday 21st Aug 2024 –We have been moored very close to The Roundhouse, and had saved it to the last day for a quick visit. It is an interesting shaped building, you may have got that from the name, restored as a joint venture between the National Trust and the Canal and River Trust. It was originally called “Sheepcote Street Corporation Depot”

This is a view of the inside of the horse shoe , the tunnel underneath leads to the canal, it is now a hub for local exploration including canoeing on the canal and lots of guided and unguided walks.

After that we needed to fill up with water at Holliday Wharf, this is just after a 90 degree turn on to the start of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, and today the wind was howling down the canal. We started the turn, but as soon as the bow was exposed to the wind we were pushed right, we managed to reverse to a point where Sonia could jump off with the centre rope and with the help of a passerby we eventually rounded the corner, by this time I had switched with Sonia and after a near miss with a moored boat we made it to the water point.

As we were leaving the water point, Obi, the dog, made a jump for the tow path, hoping to make some new friends, with whom he wandered off , luckily they retained our errant dog and we collected him just after the bridge.

Good bye to the Windy City – Birmingham

Our next target was the Sainburys at Selly Oak Shopping Park, mooring here looked excellent, but is harder than necessary, they could have laid this out better, but we managed and after having to carry three loaded bags back to the boat we set off again heading to Kings Norton Junction and the North Stratford Canal.

I made a bit of a pigs ear of turning at the junction, a little over hesitance, turned in to a more than 3 point turn. Quickly after that we passed through the Brandwood tunnel, a short one at just 352 yards long.

The North Stratford canal is a little over grown, not much easy mooring along here, but finally we moored up just before Lyons Boat Yard, which offers all sorts of boater services for the night

Lyons Boat Yard
Lyons Boat Yard

Thursday 22st Aug 2024 – Bit of a late start for us and we have a way to go today, we are hoping to moor near Hatton Station on the Grand Union so we can meet Mary, our last remaining resident daughter and Antony and his girl friend Ellie, who are coming to stay for a couple of nights.

We have quite a long chug to the Lapton locks today, unfortunate for us we had a very slow Day Hire Boat in front of us which wandered along the canal at probably less that one mile an hour, it was their first time on a canal boat. I had seen them leave Lyons Boat Yard well before we left.

Being kind as we would hope others would be to us, we tried to hang back, control was not their strong point and I am not sure they knew we where behind them, at 1 mph and in what was best described as a strong wind, our boat acted more like a sail and a couple of times we found ourselves pushed to the side aground, the canal was also a little low of water.

Lady Lane Wharf
Lady Lane Wharf – Services and Moorings

Eventually they turned around at Lady Lane Wharf , this looked a well sorted setup for boater services.

Released from our slow crawl, we sped up to our normal 3 MPH cruising speed, passing Warings Green Wharf, also setup for boater services.

Warings Green Wharf - Services and Mooring
Warings Green Wharf – Services and Mooring

We also passed bridge 20, with it a sign for Wedges Bakery Shop which we will try to visit on our return. Then we pass Swallow Cruisers at Swallow Wharf, who are also well setup for boater services

Swallow Cruisers / Swallow Wharf
Swallow Cruisers / Swallow Wharf

Next is the Lapworth flight to complete but only as far as lock 19 when we take the lefthand fork at Kingswood Junction heading to the Grand Union Canal (Left would be on to Stratford-On-Avon) and then one more lock, Kingswood Lock 20, then we are out onto the Grand Union Canal.

Kingswood Junction North - Lock 19
Kingswood Junction North – Lock 19

Now we have decided that after that many locks we will not make it to Hatton until the next day, so we moor up at Turner Green Mooring about 1km before the Tom O’ The Wood pub for a very restful night.

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Summer 2024 Cruise Part 3 – Birmingham by the Canal

Monday 19th Aug 2024 – We are moored up opposite The Distillery on the CRT 14 day moorings, it is Monday morning and all is quite, so we take Obi our Sprollie (Springer/Collie Cross) to Snell Park to throw a ball about, he loves chasing a ball. Unfortunately, as we are leaving we can see he has cut his front paws, we did not see anything sharp, and it seems nor did he, so it is a slow walk back to the boat to clean his paws and spray on some disinfectant.

Obi is then left to catch up on his sleep, we have active monitoring on the boat, so we can see him and monitor the inboard temperatures.

We walk over to the The Bull Ring, it is tradition when we visit with our daughter, she is not with us this time, but it is a tradition. I have been watching a YouTube channel called “Floating Our Boat” and they mentioned a Indian restaurant called Tamatanga and we happened to pass it on our way back to the boat.

What a lovely lunch, we both went for the before 4pm special of a curry with either rice or nan bread and a soft drink. We did add some tama chips, we did not need them, but I wanted to try them, they were delicious.

The food was excellent, the meat was very tender and the sauces full of flavour. I had the Keralan Lamb curry and Sonia the Chicken Khurana, Sonia is milk intolerant, and they even had vegan nan bread. We will definatly be back.

After our late lunch it is back to the boat, via a small Tesco Express at the mailbox, to see how our dog Obi is doing, from what we can see he has been curled up asleep the whole time.

Tuesday 20th Aug 2024 – Today we are planning a walk along the start of the Birmingham Canal Navigations – Newhall Branch till we reach Lock No4. There we go up the steps to Saturday bridge, cross the main road and walk down Fleet Street to Newhall Lane. Our target is to find ‘The Holdout Building’ from our book ‘111 Places in Birmingham that you shouldn’t miss’ – we are working our way through this book, ticking off each place we visit.

On the way we pass The Coffin Works, which is currently open Wednesday to Sunday, so will be a subject of another blog post on a future visit to Birmingham. At the end of Fleet Street, we turn right onto Newhall Street and then cross Lionel Street and we are opposite our target, 83 Newhall Street. If you have seen the Disney Film ‘UP’ then this is kind of what we are looking at, each side of the building is a large far more modern 11 & 7 story building.

Holdout House
Holdout House

From here we wandered along Newhall Street to the end and turn left onto Colmore Row to visit what was in 1715 the Parish Church of St Philip’s , which then in 1905 became St Philip’s Cathedral Birmingham, the third smallest in the UK.

Birmingham Cathedral

Outside the Cathedral you find the statue of Bishop Gore (1853-1932) the first Bishop of Birmingham.

Inside the Cathedral are four spectacular stain glass windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. The Nativity (1887), The Ascension (1884), The Crucifixion (1887) with the final Window The Last Judgement being added in the west wing thirteen years later.

After this we headed to down Temple Street towards New Street Station, where we found the new home of the Birmingham Bull, which we had last seen outside the Birmingham Library after the Commonwealth Games in 2022. What a great place to display it!

Leaving the station we then walked along New Street towards the Town Hall and then towards the Birmingham Library, which we visited a few years ago, there are some spectacular views from the viewing gallery.

Then back to the boat via Costa for a coffee, Obi is recovering well, paws still a little tender, so light duties for him for a few more days.

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Summer 2024 Cruise Part 2 – Cruise to Birmingham

A simple day for us today, we are going to cruise from our mooring on the Dudley Canal No1 Canal a few hundred yards, then onto the Birmingham Canal Navigations (Old Main Line) for about 8 miles.

Under the motorway
Under the motorway
Birmingham Hidden Valley
Birmingham Hidden Valley

After a while and after passing by some housing and a few industrial areas, you enter a more unusual Birmingham feature and start traveling under the M5 motorway, which is surprisingly where we came across another ex-Black Prince hire boat heading in the other direction. This canal is empty, till we reached central Birmingham, we only saw two canal boats moving and very few moored up.

After the under M5 section you enter the even more surprising area we have called the “Birmingham Hidden Valley”, Birminghams warehouses can occasionally be seen above the tree line, else you could be in a complete wilderness.

Finally we come up to our only locks for the day the three Smethwick Locks, for which you need to have your CRT Anti-vandal key to open the Top and Bottom locks.

Not much longer and we are moored up outside The Distillery in the 14 day CRT moorings and it is time for a walk to Nero for coffee and cake.

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Summer 2024 Cruise Part 1 – Starting at the Black Country Museum and Dudley Canal and Caves.

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.

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Canal/River Ring Maps

I like the idea of a Canal/River ring, it means I don’t have to come back the same way, everything is new (ish) but like most trips on a new canals I like to do my research before hand so I know some of what I am going to see and do along the way. I do like a suprise and we normally find one or two.

That is where the mapping projects came in I started this so I would know what is ahead, not everything, but essentials like Cafes, Food, Diesel and Pump outs, this has grown to over 3,000 locations and is still growing.

Well over the past couple of months I have added Canal/River Rings to our mapping project, these maps list everything I have found for my other maps, but dedicated to just that ring.

Canal Ring Maps

We have also the original maps we started with.

General UK Maps

All these maps are sharing a database of locations that is be added to daily, so if you find something new I should have included please let me know you can use our Facebook group to keep in touch.

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