Small Bears on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal

I'm going to continue the story of our journey around the West Midlands with what happened when we were on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.

The morning after we had seen our friend Tour Guide Ted again, we cruised down to the junction at King's Norton, where you can join the Stratford Canal and go to Stratford-on-Avon, or take another junction before you get there, and join the Grand Union Canal towards Warwick and London.

 

We stayed on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and, soon after the junction, we reached the Wast's Hill Tunnel, which is almost as long as Harecastle, but wide enough for two boats to pass.  Polar did the steering, as the tunnel was also high enough for her not to bump her head!

We did have to pass another boat but, as we both slowed right down and were very careful, there were no bumps or scrapes, and we were through in about forty minutes and out into a lovely wooded cutting.

This section of the canal was very pretty with lovely views across the countryside.  We were thinking of going up to sit on the roof after the tunnel, but we didn't have far to go until we moored.

Polar and Grizzly had booked Uppie into a marina at Alvechurch, as they had to go home for a little while, and we were being allowed to stay on the boat.

"Be good bears," said Polar.  "And be careful if you open the side hatch to give seeds to the ducks, as there is a big swan living here too."

We had lunch with Polar and Grizzly before they set off for the station.  That afternoon we fed the ducks and Hanley made friends with the big swan, then we played Whizzo again.  We had apple, nuts and raisins for tea and, before bedtime, Hanley gave us a lesson about British human history, as he had been reading Polar's old Ladybird history books.

 

He told us Britain was invade by the "Roamings", who got their name because they roamed from Italy to lots of other countries, then the "Sacksons", who wore sacks, and then the Normans, who were all called Norman, but that's not quite what it says in Polar's books. 

We read some more of our books and played games the following day, until teatime, when Polar and Grizzly came back to the boat, bringing oatcakes for supper!  Huddlesford hadn't tried them before and thought they were very tasty.

We had a short cruise first, along another pretty section of canal and through a short tunnel, to take us to the top of the Tardebigge flight of locks.  It rained very heavily at one point and Polar and Grizzly pulled up on some mooring rings, but a lady came out of a house and told them they had to move, as the rings belonged to a boatyard, even though there was plenty of room and they only wanted to stop overnight.  We gave her hard stares.

The next morning started rather damp, so we settled into the cratch while Polar and Grizzly got ready to work through more than thirty locks!  Polar pointed out a Transport Trust plaque at the top lock to Hanley, who could tick another one off of his list, as he wants to visit every one.

 

Polar had worked us down through the first five locks when she spotted two Canal and River Trust volunteers walking towards us.  They were checking to see if there were any disabled or solo boaters coming down but, when they had checked that there were not, they started helping us.  This was brilliant, as it meant the lock ahead of us could be prepared and opened ready for us, and we could make much faster progress.

As we went down the flight, there seemed to be more and more water about.  The volunteers found out that engineers had requested extra water further down the canal, but rather more than was needed had been released.  Grizzly, then Polar, had to be very careful steering Uppie across the pounds between the locks, as there were strong currents from the by-washes.

With Frank and Brian's help, we were down the flight surprisingly quickly, taking only three and a half hours to reach the pound above the Stoke locks (not our Stoke, but Stoke Prior).

 

Here we stopped for a lovely pizza lunch, and Hanley Bear had a little sip of Grizzly's beer.  Then we had six more locks to work through - or rather our humans did - to get to the small town of Stoke Prior.

Stoke Prior is the nearest place on the canal to the town of Bromsgrove, and Uppie was built by a firm called "Bromsgrove Boats".  Grizzly and Polar hoped that they might find out more about them along this stretch of the canal.

We stopped for the night at Stoke Prior and, in the morning, Polar and Grizzly walked over to the boat yard to see what they could find out.  One of the engineers there told Grizzly that Bromsgrove Boatbuilders were based in a nearby industrial estate, but only built four boats there before moving to a different base and changing their name.

"I wonder what happened to the other three boats, and if they are still on the canals around here?" I said to the other bears.  We decided to look out for other boats shaped just like Uppie, although Polar said they might not all have been the same, if the people who commissioned them wanted them to be bigger or smaller, or laid out differently inside.

That afternoon, we stopped for nap time with a very good view of the main line from Bristol to Birmingham, hoping to see a big freight train or even a steam special, but we were out of luck.

Polar and Grizzly had another flight of locks to work us through, including one with a cottage beside it and the most beautiful rose garden, as we were heading for the junction with the Droitwich Canals at Hanbury.

Once we were through the locks, we bears wondered if we could go up on the roof again, although we only had three life jackets and five bears!

"If we take turns to sit on the roof, we could share the life-jackets," I suggested.  "I think mine would fit you, Huddlesford."

Although Huddlesford is taller than me, he is not too much bigger around the chest and tummy, and my life-jacket fitted him perfectly well.

 

So Huddlesford and Hanley ran through the boat to the stern, and Polar lifted them up onto the roof.  Endon decided that, although there was a jacket for him, he would stay with Waverley and me.

Hanley and Huddlesford enjoyed their time up on the roof, but came back to check on the rest of us after an hour or so, when we were almost at our mooring for the night.

"We've had a great idea," Hanley explained.  "Because it's quite cramped in the Bear Basket at night, we're going to ask Polar if she can make Sonning's old bed into a bear bed again, then we can take it in turns to have a bed of our own, and everybear else will have more space in the main basket."

And that is what we did, which meant we all had much better sleep and were ready for lots more adventures the following day.
 

Small Bears in Birmingham

We have been busy wecoming new bears to our hug this week - I will tell you all about it in my next post!  However, I really must press on with the story of our West Midlands canal journey.  

You might remember that we had reached Birmingham and moored where Hanley could watch football on a big screen.

Not far away was Gas Street Basin, where people live on their boats, right in the heart of the city.  Polar and Grizzly took us for a walk there the evening we arrived.

Earlier, Polar had made Huddlesford some nice trousers, using some material from an old pair Grizzly had worn out, and we had played Whizzo!  which is a game like 'tag', except you have to shout "Whizzo" when you catch someone before they do, or they are allowed to get away.  Hanley Bear is very good at it, but Waverley is the best because he is small and nimble, and very hard to catch.

In the morning, Polar and Grizzly said we were going to have a day out on the trams.  We jumped into the Bear Bag and Polar carried us into the square near the big, modern library building.  It's one of those with fountains that human cubs like to run about under although you can't see them in these pictures because Polar waited until they had stopped to get the reflections.

Hanley, Endon and I had been on the trams in Manchester, but Huddlesford and Waverley hadn't, and we were excited to see what they were like.  The Wolverhampton and Birmingham trams look very streamlined compared to the Manchester ones, but they are quite similar inside, with lots of room for humans to sit or stand and good access for those who use wheelchairs or walking aids.

The tram we caught wasn't too busy, so our human guardians felt safe, and we decided to go out to the Jewellery Quarter.  There was enough room on board for the Bear Bag to have a seat of its own, but we bears weren't asked to buy tickets.

Because the nasty virus was still about, many of the workshops and the museum in the Jewellery Quarter were closed, but we had expected that - this was just a quick visit so we could see what it was like and maybe visit again on the train.

Polar enjoyed taking pictures of the old buildings, including the Pelican Works, which has a big stone pelican on its roof!  And we had a nice toasted teacake and a pot of tea in a little cafe near the station.

Another tram whisked us back into the city centre, and we got out near New Street Station, so Polar and Grizzly could have a look around.  They hadn't been since it was rebuilt several years ago and they say it is much nicer now.

There were big storm clouds gathering when we got back to Broad Street and Brindley Place, so we decided not to eat outdoors at one of the nice restaurants, which is what we had done on Friday evening, but to go back to Uppie.

Hanley found that he had a good view of the screen for the football match between England and Ukraine from the bedroom on the boat, just in case it started raining and he couldn't sit on the roof.  He and our humans watched the first half from the roof but the rain poured down during the second half and they came back indoors.

None of the humans watching outside seemed to mind, because England won and scored four goals.  In fact, a couple of men celebrated by taking all their clothes off except their pants and jumping into the canal, which was funny but very silly; there are all sorts of hidden hazards under the water and just here, we knew the pump-out man rinsed out the hose from the poo disposal machine!

On Sunday morning, Polar and Grizzly decided to cruise around a couple of loops in the canal, mainly to recharge Uppie's batteries after a whole day without running the engine.  

No sooner had we set off than the rain started!  Along the Soho Loop, we found a fishing competition in progress and we were not very popular with these fishermen!

The Icknield Port Loop led to a Canal and River Trust depot and a big reservoir, but the rain came down so heavily as we cruised along this that we sheltered under a bridge for several minutes.  Polar's main camera got very wet and she thought it was broken, but luckily it dried out over the next couple of days and started working properly again.

When we got back to central Birmingham, we moored near the BBC Mailbox building, very close to Gas Street Basin, and Hanley went looking for the red Transport Trust sign about it.

Dodging the showers and the feet of lots of visitors, he scuttled along the towpath until he found what he was looking for.  Fortunately, Polar came along at just the right time to take his photograph, before carrying him back to Uppie.

We were going to meet our friend Tour Guide Ted again that evening, so we left the city centre in good time and started cruising down the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.  

Near the University, we ran into a problem; the canal was closed, temporarily, while some big concrete sections for a new station were lifted into place.

Luckily for us, there was a pause scheduled about forty minutes later, so boats could pass, and we followed the safety boat through the section where the work was going on, then on towards Bournville.

There were still lots of big showers around and, when we reached the towpath-side moorings at Bournville, we saw a sign warning us not to leave Uppie unattended there at night.  Polar had to reverse the boat onto some moorings in a secure compound on the other side of the canal, where there was just enough space for us, but then she couldn't find how to get back to Grizzly, who had stayed near the station to meet TG Ted!

We wandered around near the railway station looking for him and trying to phone him, but he had forgotten to turn on his phone.  

Fortunately, Tour Guide Ted's human assistants found him, then phoned Polar to tell her where to find them all, and drove us all to a nice big pub, where we had a scrummy Sunday dinner together with our pals Ted, Frank and Theo, at the end of a very eventful day!