Cheshire, eventually: Day 10

I was awake early for some reason this morning, and eventually I got up and walked up to seemingly the only shop in Tipton which has a full range of newspapers (we’d done a recce yesterday).  I bought the only copy of The Guardian they had, because I’d been told The Water Road would be featured in the best podcasts of the week section.  It’s a very nice review, but you can always rely on The Grauniad to mix-spell something, and in this case it was the title.

Hopefully they’ll get it right when it goes online on Monday.  We ended up setting off at about ten to eight; I pushed the boat as far out into the channel to try to avoid all the weeds, but still managed to get some round the prop.  A quick blast of reverse got most of it off though.  We made our way back to Factory Junction, where the old buildings are some sort of community centre.  The locks we came up yesterday are beyond the bridge on the right, we were going round to the left.

It’s funny how you don’t seem to see coots in the countryside  but urban areas are full of them.  They build their nests so they’re floating free, so they must occasionally wake up and find they’ve drifted overnight.  One just through the junction had built on a floating piece of wood.

Coseley Tunnel was the first major feature of the day.  The portal this end not only has very dangly brambles, but also some impressive steps up to the road above.

After the tunnel the weed was much less.  Even around Deepfields Junction, where we’ve got stuck in the past, was pretty clear.  And for lots of the stretch the water is clear enough to see hundreds of fish, as well as the weeds and the plastic bags.  As we approached Wolverhampton, the was an odd obstruction, but there was nothing to say what the problem was.

We got to the top of the locks in a much better time than I’d feared, thanks to the weed being much less bad than it could have been.  Since leaving Stourport on Tuesday, we’ve climbed just over 425 feet; now we were about to start going back down again.  We went into the top lock at a minute to 10.

The first couple of locks just needed a top up, the third was empty, but after that they were all pretty much full.  And in the main part of the flight they’re close enough together that I could go ahead and get the gate open.  We met two boats coming up, which also helped.

Our luck ran out at lock 15, because after that they all needed filling — and it was becoming increasingly hot too.

The lower part of the flight passes close to Wolverhampton Race Course, and there was a Motorfest event on, from which we could hear the rather excitable PA person describing all sorts of jumps and tricks.  We were quite relieved to get to the bottom few locks, which are more shady (and Motorfest was on a lunch break).

We completed the 21 locks in exactly three hours, which we thought was pretty good going.  Having to turn the final third of the locks really slowed us down.

We carried on to Autherley Junction and moored up, it was 1.15pm.  Fortunately there’s a bit of shade here, and there’s also a nice breeze.  It’s always good being near a junction for entertainment value.  So far we’ve had someone being very confused by a hire boat coming out of the junction backwards.  We’ve also walked round to the hire base for an ice cream.

8 miles, 21 locks.  (73 miles, 106 locks)