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.
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.