Dreamers and Drifters
Sunday 20th February 2022
Today’s Journey:- Miles =3.73 Locks = 3 Traveling Time = 3hours
Woke up this morning to the very welcome message that Chantelle has arrived safely in Sri Lanka 😊💛 and it looked amazing!
The difference between dreamers and doers, I think both start with a dream of a vision and for some that’s where it ends, with maybe disappointment later on in life. To become a doer often takes courage and perseverance but the rewards can be astonishing. I remember over two years ago walking down the towpath with our daughter who at the time had a dream. Despite setbacks, yesterday she set off to explore Sri Lanka (by herself) to realise that dream. There are not enough words to say just how proud we are, and hoping the experience even surpasses her expectation.
On a more humble note,
We bought a narrowboat to cruise the waterways, our dream. Sometimes however it’s easy to get comfortable in one place, especially when the UK is hit by three successive storms. Yes we should be sensible and cruise safely but is the bad weather an excuse and have we become lazy. Although the plan wasn’t to move today, someone (Paul) had other ideas!! Steph was happily drinking her morning coffee in bed - as per usual - and in came Paul!
He was pondering over something!
It turned out that he was thinking it might be good to move today - the weather isn’t getting much better over the next week and we need to get diesel as we only have a quarter of a tank left!! And apart from that, we are actually ready to move on.
We have been here at The Black Country Museum for almost 2 weeks now and although it’s a great and secure mooring, we are ready for a change. We have really enjoyed Tipton - loved The Fountain pub and met some lovely people there and had some lovely walks. The one thing we didn’t do was go in the museum but it did look amazing - next time!!!
We stayed here longer as Steph needed to get the train back to Derby to go see family and pick Winston up as Chan was going away. Had a lovely time in Derby but the train journey back was a right palaver because of Storm Eunice!
The train from Derby was cancelled,
The next train was expected and supposedly on time 5 minutes before it was due but then was mysteriously cancelled - not sure what happened there!! After standing around on the very windy platform we finally got ushered onto a train that would take us to Birmingham - Winnie was straight up on my knee - curled up to get warm! Good job he had his coat on so at least he had some protection! Made it to Birmingham and to cut a long story short we finally got a train back to Tipton. It was packed and we had to stand but Winnie was getting plenty of fuss from the other passengers! Very glad to finally arrive home (3 hours later!!).
So today we started up Hang Loose
The gentle purring of her engine was like music to our ears so we headed off to explore more new canals, yes we need fuel but as soon as we heard the engine start up and we loosened the ropes after filling up with water we knew we were doing the right thing.
We have walked most of today’s journey over the past two weeks with the dogs but that’s not the same as cruising. A left turn once out of the basin and a steady cruise before turning right just before the three Factory locks.
The weather was set to turn bad again but not till around 2:30pm, apart from the first lock the others were set in our favour. Paul jumped off and pulled the boat in while Steph (windless in hand and a spring in her step) set off to fill the lock. It wasn’t long before rusty signs revealed themselves as we had forgotten the antivandal key ☹. No worries, key now in hand, the three locks were soon behind us and we were heading toward Netherton Tunnel.
As mentioned earlier the weather was about to take a turn for the worst at around 2:30 pm so we took advantage of the slightly dry and good towpaths to walk the dogs.
We turned left onto the Netherton Tunnel canal and exchanged pleasantries to a number of fishermen (think there must have been a match on), who were happy we had gone by as the fish needed waking up 😊.
The dogs and Steph jumped back on the boat just before the tunnel, then we proceeded to enter the menacing dark, unlit, black mouth of the tunnel which is over 9,000 feet long. Apart from getting wetter than we had been all day, it was cold, don’t know why but we got colder and colder (feeling a bit like Captain Robert Falcon Scott as he explored the Antarctic but hopefully not meeting the same end).
History Lesson:-
Netherton Tunnel Branch Canal, in the West Midlands county, England, is part of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, (BCN). It was constructed at a 453–foot elevation, the Wednesbury or Birmingham level; it has no locks. The total length of the branch canal is 2.4 miles (3.9 km) and the canal tunnel is 9,081 feet (2,768 m) long.
Once the other side of the tunnel, we moored up at Bumble Hole Nature Reserve and tied up on the waiting shiny bollards where the lovely family on Bluebell bybikeandboat are moored and very kindly made room for us 😀.
The sleeping geese were soon abruptly awoken by Tilly and Winston (who evidently still had loads of energy) and we battened down the hatches just as the weather broke… Storm Franklin was about to test our mooring skills but we are now snug and warm inside watching Chantelle’s Instagram reel of day one in Sri Lanka. Happy days… living the dream😊 and still the nature reserve to explore tomorrow before heading off for fuel…..
Good news 😊 😊 😊 whilst tidying up the boat yesterday we found TWO not ONE wine kits we had forgotten about. So we need to find a little time to start them off as we are very very very poor alcoholic pensioners.
