A Tree or not a Tree

Well we’ve managed to get a reliable 3G signal, so can keep our readers up to date with where we are – although the map above doesn’t actually seem to tell you accurately, we’re moored tonight in a village called Penkridge.  We left Stourbridge behind around three days ago, without much regret it has to be said – although the mooring provided by the  Stourbridge Navigation Trust (a a friendly charity looking after the town canal ‘arm’), was fully secure, Stourbridge itself still has that ‘deep in the black country’ feel about it.   Having said that, virtually all of the black county industry has gone – maybe in reality it feels like some thing is lacking. Anyway it didn’t really inspre us, but there was a large Tesco so we could stock up a bit on essentials (wine etc). Deb has devised an easier way of getting heavy shopping home – we use a bungee cord to tie the big 65 litre rucksack to a suitcase trolley (normally reserved for transporting the ‘poo’ cassette to the empty-out facility). Still, it meant less back strain ! Having mentioned the Trust that look after the arm, it would be remiss not to include a photo of their head-quaters building converted from a bonded warehouse built a couple of hundred years ago.

Stourbridge Navigation Trust HQ

We cruised approximately West, and joined the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal at Stourton. In a sense it was reassuring to be on a canal where mooring overnight didn’t involve worries of having the boat jumped on in the middle of the night (well 4 am to be precise), as had been the case on Friday and Saturday nights in the middle of Birmingham !

The Staffs and Worcs Canal has been around since 1771, and because the canals were once so busy with water-borne commerce, I always wonder about all the many, many footsteps that have passed over even the simplest structures on the canal over the previous 250 years,  like these steps by ‘Rocky Lock’, just one of several on the canal.

We continued onto the set of three locks ‘telescoped’ together and referred to as ‘The Bratch’. See previous post THE BRATCH about the locks when we came downhill this way a few weeks ago.

Friends Simon and Rachel (with Daisy and Chip) came over to spend the day with us, and it was during a walk over a local hill that we came across something that neither Deb or I had seen before – a tall conifer tree in a deciduous wood :

A striking tree, taller than all round it

Now you might think that we’ve been at too much of the red wine, or that life has slowed down so much for us that we’ve lost our sense of proportion, however on closer examination the tree was not all it seemed ….!

Look carefully -they’re not coconuts or even pine-cones in the tree. In fact it wasn’t a tree at all !

Later in the day, Simon helped me get the boat up the three locks – initiation by fire you could say as they do take a bit of thinking about.

Simon working out whether he should tackle the blue paddle or red paddle first, or was it the red paddle then the blue gate, or …..?

 

How Cute !

We were sat on the boat yesterday afternoon with the front door open to let the sun in.  Someone stepped onto the foredeck, and a Japanese face peered in. “Is this your house ?” he enquired, to which we could only reply “Yes”.  ” How cute !” was his parting comment, as the dogs half heartedly suggested he’d better move on !

He was obviously a tourist, and you might wonder why anyone would want to come on holiday to Birmingham. However being visitors ourselves has given us an opportunity to see just how much the city has geared itself up to look after both temporary and permanent residents. Yesterday we spent a couple of hours in the new library. The Library? you ask.  At a cost of £189 million, it is a sensational building – reputedly the largest library in Europe. Very modern, and accessible to all.  Nine floors in total with garden terraces on the 4th and 7th floors, and ‘skyline’ viewing area on the top floor complete with comfy arm chairs, and far reaching views.

Birmingham Library from Centenary Square

Centenary Square from Birmingham Library

View of our boat from the library (roughly in the middle of the picture)

There are a variety of new buildings around the city centre, one of which is ‘The Cube’ – apartments and restaurants etc.

The Cube

Having said that, not more than a stone’s throw away is the remnants of former canal side industry – strangely haunting in a way as it was in Birmingham, the ‘city of a thousand trades’ that much of the UKs wealth was originally generated.

The photos below are from the Farmers Bridge flight of 13 locks leaving the city centre in a North Easterly direction. Some of the flight is underground in dark tunnels, and passing up this way a few years ago we came across a number of ‘goths’ (dressed in black, with black hair, black makeup etc) all huddled together in a corner. I felt they ought to be hanging from the roof really ! The setting for the locks varies from old and derelict buildings, to modern apartments. The covered lock in the photo below is under the BT Tower in the city.

The ‘posher’ underground lock

A ‘scruffy’ lock

Stylish new apartments – with a view through to the Newman’s Coffin Works !

A final bit of architecture had us puzzled for a while. In the sides of virtually every bridge over the canals in Birmingham, there are little red doors, some solid, some with grills. Were they to drain floodwater? Were they fishing access points ? The actual reason for them is obvious when you realise – the fire brigade can use them as access for pumping water to put out fires. Makes sense with so much water about – Birmingham has more canals than Venice !

 

 

 

Old and New

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The centre of Birmingham has seen significant investment in recent years, with many older parts updated, or at least given a new lease of life. Not all bad either, although ‘purists’ might otherwise argue. We’re moored in Gas Street Basin, which 20 years ago was a largely secret, and run down area of old wharves and derelict warehouses, where by all accounts few ever ventured. It is now one of the more trendy places in Birmingham to spend an evening. All around are posh apartment blocks, swanky new offices, and by the waterside a plethora of bars and restaurants, together with the International Conference Centre, Symphony Hall, the NIA, and Sea life Centre.

One of the many waterside bars

Floating cafe

On the canal itself are party boats, water-taxis and ‘luxury’ floating restaurants – all very cosmopolitan. There are those that feel it is sacroligious to tamper with our canal heritage like this, however it has put new life into the city centre. Gas Street Basin was built as terminus of the Birmingham and Worcester Canal in 1792.The terminus of the Birmingham Canal was a mere 7 ft away across the other side of a barrier called the Worcester Bar. The reason for not connecting the two was to prevent water from one canal running into the other, and goods had to manhandled from one boat to another across the bar. It proved a considerable hindrance to through trade, and so in 1815 a connection was made between the two canals.

Worcester ‘Bar’

The basin was named after the adjoining street named Gas Street, reputed to be the first in Birmingham with gas lighting.

A street lamp in Gas Street – I think it might be electric now

Gas Street Basin

The basin is now home to a number of boats old and new, which make for a very colourful scene. One of the boats was originally a horse drawn ‘butty’ boat which have a special type of rudder, and even though they’re made of oak, they obviously don’t last forever as we came across a guy making a new one by the side of the canal :

Old rudder

New rudder

Being moored next to Symphony Hall, we couldn’t resist going to a Brass Band gala concert. We saw three of the Uk’s top bands – Fodens, Cory, and Black Dyke bands. Forget any thoughts of local bands at carnivals – these bands are like watching (and listening) to a full orchestra. Try looking them up on YouTube.

 

 

Graffiti

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

Old houses

 

We’ve moved a little bit further up the Stratford Canal, up the Lapworth lock flight above Kingswood (around 15 miles south of Birmingham). The junction here which connects the Stratford and Grand Union canals is rather attractive, but not always easy to capture on camera.

Kingswood Junction

Having recently joined the National Trust as they were doing a bit of a deal, we thought we’d take the opportunity of visiting a couple of places. Both were within walking distance from the canal, and both well worth the effort.

The first was Baddesley Clinton, a mediaeval moated house, lived in by the same family for nearly 500 years. It had been preserved much as it would have been whilst lived in.

Surrounded by a moat

The Drawing Room

It had a very ‘warm’ feel to it, so that you could almost imagine living there, and the gardens had a spectacular display of Dahlias.

Baddesley Clinton walled garden

Today we visited Packwood House, another 15th Century country house, however this time restored in the 1920/30s to how it would have been in Elizabethan times. The man responsible was John Baron Ash, the son of a wealthy Back Country industrialist.

Packwood House

Apparently at that time many old medieval houses around the country were falling into disrepair and were being demolished. He amassed a collection of wall panelling, tapestries, and furniture, and even flooring, and set about removing the ‘unattractive’ Georgian and Victorian modifications, as part of the restoration.

One of the bedrooms

He was apparently very fastidious about how the house appeared, so much so that in 1941, when he gave it to the National Trust, he insisted that it remained exactly as he had laid it out – down to which chair was in which position even !

The gardens were exquisite too, and included a stand of yew trees which had been planted over 200 years previously. They were all pruned to particular shapes, and the Trust have maintained them exactly as they were when they acquired the estate.

Here’s Deb for scale

There was a superbly stocked kitchen garden too, including some giant pumpkins.

Which is which ?