Avoiding trees we cruise to the sticks

Tuesday, 28 February 2012 16:58

After far too long in one place we decided to cruise today, leaving Hopwood on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and going south towards Alvechurch. At the moment there is a stoppage at the Astwood Locks, which means that negotiating the Tardebigge Flight would leave us waiting at Astwood until the 9th March. 

Leaving our Hopwood mooring

The transport links are not so good below the flight as above and we have a few more things to do in and around Birmingham ...... 

But today we are "escaping" for a bit. The trees are being pruned along the canal and large branches are in the canal. We have pushed large branches before - they get caught under the bows - and the same happened today. There is a fair bit of unseasoned wood on the towpath - will that be left for boaters I wonder?

Looking back to Hopwood Bridge, Hopwood House and narrowboat moorings there

Soon we were passing Lower Bittell Reservoir; remember I blogged about the low water level in Upper Bittell Reservoir a while back? There are permanent moorings beside Lower Bittell and the water level looked good. 

Lower Bittell Reservoir

We hailed a BW man on the bank and I asked about the water levels. He was chatting to one of our blog readers, who I presume moors his boat there (Great to say "hi!").

Apparently Lower Bittell is "dead water" and not used for anything now, despite being "full". It was originally built with Upper Bittell to feed the Worcester and Birmingham Canal. We were told that BW are going to back pump water into the upper reservoir "from the canal". The guy from BW said that this work had started. 

Feeder from Upper Bittell Reservoir

We wondered why they were not going back to the original system of back pumping from the lower reservoir (full) into the upper reservoir (about 3 metres down). Of course, they would not be using a Boulton and Watt Steam Engine as in the C19th, but modern equipment!

Overflow sluice from canal into Lower Bittell reservoir

Whilst I am on the subject of water levels and drought control, I see from narrowboatworld that BW are planning to implement restricted lock hours on the Grand Union and that narrowboats will have to wait for another narrowboat to arrive before proceeding. These restrictions are going to be "rigorously enforced" by the lock keepers in at least 10 key areas in the South East region.

We will be seeing grading of the canals to encourage boaters to avoid the waterways where there is a shortage of water: Red no navigation; Amber navigate with caution; Green no restrictions. What fun! 

I have been side tracked on our journey - suffice it to say that we are "in the sticks", rough moored and loving it! We are a little confused by the sign writing on this CRT van, are we in the Welsh region?

CRT van (a bit previous? - the government has still to agree!)

The rest of our journey can wait until tomorrow ......