The 50th Anniversary Trip - Day 5: Gas Street to the Dog & Doublet

 Tuesday, 5th October 2021

The road ahead from Gas Street and a threatening sky.

Spike was up and about early this morning, managing to catch the cleaners at work in the Tap & Spile and retrieving his waterproof left there last night.  As Hugh had also managed to find his missing wallet we were good to go shortly before 09.00. Mark was on the tiller at Old Turn for the slightly awkward turn towards Farmer's Bridge locks, again managing not to actually hit but needing a bit of shunting, so he got A for technical ability but only a B for style.

We were met at the top lock by a volunteer lockie, who asked us to tie up as we would be waiting a while for the flight to be re-filled after having been drained by persons unknown overnight. The delay turned out to be shorter than promised and we were away after about thirty minutes.  Despite us being mob-handed as far as crew was concerned the lockie attached himself to us for the journey down, when I thought he would have been better employed helping the couple ahead of us, who had just bought their boat and were still getting used to it.

At one of the more awkward lock entries in the middle of the flight, where the lock chambers are close together but slightly offset,I saw him using a foot to push our bow away from the lock wall. When I jokingly asked him whether he had done a risk assessment on that manoeuvre I was told in no uncertain terms that he was a "retired health and safety professional" and knew what he was doing, thank you very much.

Graffiti everywhere in Brum

 The canals in Birmingham, as with most urban areas, have always been plagued with graffiti, but the situation seems to have got much worse since I was last there, with almost a continuous tide stretching from Farmers Bridge to the edge of the urban area. Some see it as "street art", but to me it's just boring scribbling.

The locky's beat only extended to the Farmer's Bridge locks and no assistance was on offer for the following Aston flight. I went on ahead to set the locks for the couple in the boat in front and met this ex-working boat coming up, amidst yet more scribbles.

Put that light out!

I took over the steering as we approached Salford Junction and quickly noticed that the ignition light was glowing bright red, something that previous steerers had either not noticed or chosen not to comment on! The previous trick of revving the engine failed to extinguish it and a glance at the gauges showed that the domestic batteries were not being charged.

A phone call to Willow Wren quickly followed (one of the advantages of being a hirer is that things like this are someone else's problem) and after dutifully trying revving the engine again they agreed to send an engineer out. The person concerned had just left for another call out, so we agreed that he would meet us at the Dog & Doublet, which was where we intended to stop for the night.

Locky with a grudge?

We had a problem at the second of the Curdworth locks when having emptied the chamber we couldn't fully open the gate to get Grebe out. When raking and poking about with the shaft failed to find any obvious obstruction we re-filled the chamber and emptied it again, although we had to do it twice before the gate would open all the way.  This meant that the boat we had been following down Farmer's Bridge, but which having stopped for lunch was now following us, caught us up.  They said they were surprised to see us as the locky at Farmer's Bridge had told them we would be stopping at Minworth and had suggested that they did too.  That locky had asked us where we intended to stop and having been told the Dog & Doublet, had advised us very strongly against it, saying that after a change of landlord it had gone downhill fast and was now a "very rough" place and to be avoided! He had indeed "advised" us that the pub at Minworth has a much better bet.

I'm always wary of the advice of strangers when it comes to pubs and we had decided to ignore it in this case. In the event those who went to the Dog & Doublet pronounced it excellent, having received a warm welcome from the landlady and enjoyed excellent beer and food, after which they felt compelled to tell her of the warning we had received and where it came from.

I say, "those who went to the pub" because when the engineer arrived he diagnosed a failed alternator and consequently fitted a new one. By the time he'd finished it was after seven o' clock and he advised us to run the engine for at least a couple of hours given that it had not been charging the batteries all day.  As I was still in recovery mode from the "cold from hell" I offered to stay with the boat when the rest went to the pub and as they apparently enjoyed some tasty Thai cuisine I also enjoyed one of the emergency tins of Irish Stew accompanied by some instant mash which was on board for emergency use and was just the sort of comfort food my condition required!

The other item of interest at Curdworth was crossing the line of the HS2 railway, on which construction has started. The following image of HS2 is widely used by the media when reporting on the project

I'd always suspected this was meant to be at Curdworth locks and I think the following image, albeit taken from a different angle and with evidence of the work site on the right, confirms it.