Well, we’ve travelled up the north Stratford Canal towards Birmingham, and are now moored at Gas Street Basin – considered by some to be the ‘centre’ of the canal system. I suppose that being in the middle of Birmingham, and with Birmingham being roughly in the middle of England, that it is in a fairly central position.
Brutus’ mooring in Birmingham
On the way we stopped off at Lyons boat yard (to buy yet another brass door lock that I’d broken going through a bridge hole). I got chatting with the owmer, Gary, who proudly announced he’d featured in the new BBC 4 series ‘Canals – The Making of a Nation’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0689qmh/episodes/player). It turns out that for some shots in one episode he’d been skippering the yard’s small day-boat, hired out to the BBC film crew. He was a friendly bloke nontheless, and said some nice things about our boat !
Canal shop at Lyons Boatyard
As we progressed further North towards Birmingham, the odd bit of graffiti appeared, but very soon nearly every flat surface was covered – it was pretty obvious we were getting near a big connurbation.
Having said that, some of it is quite colourful, and I suppose someone knows what it means !
Near the end (or beginning if you’re going downhill) of the Stratford Canal, the last lock you pass through is a ‘guillotine’ lock rather than one fitted with gates. It is held open all the time now, but used to allow a change of level of just 1″. When the original Act of Parliament was passed for the Stratford Canal in 1793, the proprietors of the canal we were about to join, the earlier Birmingham and Worcester Canal (authorised in 1791), insisted that a ‘stop lock’ be installed to prevent the valuable Birmingham water being lost down the newer Stratford Canal. The latter therefore had to build a reservoir at the highest level of their new canal in order to ensure it had an adequate supply of water. Right at the junction is a sizeable toll house, built in order to extract tolls from passing boats.
The guillotine stop lock has been permanently raised since 1948 when all canals were nationalised
Birmingham and Worcester Canal junction toll house
Brutus Maximus on Tour 
I like the idea of the guillotine lock. I wonder if they are more or less efficient/effective than the gate locks or if there is a particular reason for using one?
LikeLike