There was a bit of trouble on the moorings in central Birmingham last night. Every boat, including Starcross, tied up on the NIA side of the New Main Line had at least one mooring rope cut (cut; not untied) and some had both. This happened at about 11.45pm and the canal was blocked with a string of boats lying at crazy angles whilst crews busied themselves - in various states of awareness and undress - in tying them up again.
I can't see that anyone got any fun out of it. Things were back to normal within 10 minutes and the perpetrator(s) didn't stay around to watch anyway. My neighbour called the police non-emergency "101" number but gave up after being put on hold so long that her battery was going flat!
I'm sure it's an uncommon event - and the first time in seven years I've had any sort of problem - but I needed to find somewhere I could be happy mooring Starcross for the weekend, so I moved round to the Oozells Street Loop where I'm sure the moorings used to be 24-hour only, although they now have a nice new sign saying "48hrs".
I'm going to be busy this weekend as I've signed up to "Team Yeoford" to take part in the BCN Marathon Challenge - a competition to cover as much of the canal network of Birmingham and the Black Country as possible within 24 hours, with extra points for the "difficult" bits. Yeoford is working boat owned by Birmingham Canal Boat Services fitted out as a "camping boat". It's been many years since I've done any boating on a camper - we used to hire them for winter trips in the '70s - and I'm wondering a bit what I've let myself in for. I'll be in good company though with Ian and Karen from Tacet and James and Amy from Lucky Duck on board too.
1 comment:
Not a nice thing to happen. Expensive, too.
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