Tag: M5 Motorway

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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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A week on Chloe 2020

As part of our purchase of Chloe, we were offered a weekend on her to make sure she was what we wanted. As there was a week available in the August we decided to pay to extend the offered weekend for the whole week.

We feel very lucky, as when we booked, we didn’t expect the Covid-19 to be such a big thing but by the time our week came around we where still able to go.

We picked Chloe up at Stoke Prior and headed toward Droitwich as we had not been that way before, we had also planned to drop into Droitwich Spa Marina to start our look for a mooring.

Left to Droitwich Spa
Left to Droitwich Spa or straight on to Worcester

Our plan was to turn onto the Droitwich Barge Canal to the river Seven, and then down the Seven to Worcester and back on to the Worcester & Birmingham Canal returning to Stoke Prior.

I knew that the Droitwich Canal passed under the M5 Motorway and that it would be a tight fit, but it still came as a bit of a surprise.

Oddly we did not take many scenic pictures on this trip, but we mostly seemed to be taking pictures of other boats with interesting colour schemes. Many of the normal shops and restaurants where shut or had seriously limited spaces.

However, we again really enjoyed our time on Chloe, a few highlights were looking around Worcester, there is a lot there to explore in the future, and Droitwich where we stayed at the Vines Park Moorings for a couple of days as our Daughter needed a visit to the Doctors.

Droitwich while smaller than Worcester had all we needed including an excellent Coffee and muffin shop, and a fantastic pet shop where Obi our Sprollie (Spaniel Collie Cross) helped himself to a chew (We did pay for it and a few others, I am sure we will be back there again).

 

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