A pause and an excursion – Tamworth and Birmingham & Fazeley canal

Hello! I am back. Have you missed me? I have been mostly stationary in Tamworth since August as the water has been very low and for the most part locks around have been closed. The water has now recovered sufficiently to reopen all the locks in the vicinity and boaters are being “encouraged” to get moving again, which means that we get penalised if we don’t move after 14 days in one place.

I’d like to give you an update on what’s been happening since August.

The water drama

Shortly after I arrived in Tamworth toward the end of August, the already low water started falling by an inch per day. It was alarming, as at this rate, all boats would have been on the bottom very soon. I wrote an email to the Canal and River Trust (CRT) and got a reply basically saying that there is no issue and the water is falling just because of evaporation. Yeah right, if evaporation causes water levels to fall by an inch per day in hot weather, most lakes and rivers in England would be dry by now.

The boater rumour mill however came up with various explanations. Farmers were extracting water from the canal to water their fields, water was lost through the locks at the only place that was still connected to the rest of the canal network at Fradley junction and various more. The most credible explanation was that somebody had left paddles open on locks at Fradley that allowed water to escape through the locks there.

After a couple of weeks CRT closed the 15 mile long pound that I am in for navigation completely as boats travelling along were getting stuck in various places. This miraculously stopped the water level falling as well (or was it coincidence?).

Finally it started raining in September and lo and behold, the water levels recovered even faster than they had previously fallen. Again it was a bit unexplained, but whatever made it happen, now in November the levels are back to normal. We are grateful, as this is not the case everywhere. Some places are still closed as CRT is waiting for reservoirs to recover more before reopening the navigation. And we are now into the regular winter maintenance period, where a lot of locks are closed for repairs anyway. My own plans are fortunately unaffected for now (fingers crossed).

Excursion up the Birmingham & Fazeley canal

For a little recce I took my bike on the train to Birmingham and cycled round the more urban sections of the approach of the city centre to get a feeling for the state of the locks and safe places to moor.

I decided against going all the way as it was a lot of work only to do it all again a couple of weeks after. But here are some impressions from that section that I didn’t go to.

So instead I decided to go only a few miles and up 11 locks (Curdworth locks) and turn around before it gets really urban. In fact I had to go up the whole lock flight only to be able to turn around at the top.

So a turn onto the Birmingham & Fazeley canal it was.

My first stop was the very best one of the trip. I had just checked out out a map and saw a number of lakes and paths near the canal. But this area exceeded expectations in every respect, not least because the weather was excellent too.

Some impressions from the nature reserve:

After that it was time to tackle the 11 locks. The forecast was such that I had to do the trip up the locks on a rainy day as the next day was forecast to be sunny, so good to turn around and come back down. After that storm Claudia was expected. The top of the locks is right in the junction of two motorways so I didn’t really fancy staying there for the storm.

The lock pictured here had a very short lock landing too, which meant stopping in the bridge hole.

All in all due to the scrambles and the leaf soup the locks took a lot longer than expected and I arrived at the top lock in almost total darkness. Turning around was fun as I couldn’t properly see the wall on the other side. I may have touched it just a tiny bit.

As promised the next day was sunny and much more suitable to take pictures.

Apart from that it was a beautiful sunny day and at the next lock two CRT volunteers appeared that helped me down a few more locks. They told me that lock no. 2 always causes trouble.

My unlucky streak continued though as at the last lock I managed to lasso my favourite windlass into the canal with a rope and when I went fishing for it with my sea magnet, the magnet fell apart and was lost as well! Oh well, time to moor up and put the kettle on.

So I returned to Fazeley junction in time to catch the fuel boat the next day for top up of coal and wood in advance of the coming cold spell.

From here I will now make my way slowly to the Trent & Mersey canal and ultimately down to the junction with the river Trent for the second half of March as over the winter the risk of floods is too high.