Bears go to Birmingham - Part 3

During our journey around the West Midlands, Polar and Grizzly sometimes went home, because Polar had to work or they needed to check the garden.  This happened for the first time when we reached the Black Country Living Museum in Tipton, but we bears stayed on Uppie.

 

When Polar and Grizzly got back to our boat, they found everything clean and tidy, because we had swept up all our biscuit crumbs and smoothed out the bedclothes where we had been bouncing. 

We had to move on from the Black Country Museum moorings, as we had already stayed there almost 48 hours, so Polar and Grizzly started Uppie and cruised down to Tividale Quays, an area of moorings built around a modern housing development.  

It is a very nice place to moor but we were the only boat there, and we had to pull up on the canal mainline, as we couldn't get Uppie into the basin due to all the weed! 

Once Uppie was moored, we all scrambled out onto the roof because we were expecting visitors - bear visitors!  Our Twitter pal Tour Guide Ted, who organises "Tweet-ups" at interesting places for bears and their human friends, and runs the Stuffie Stuff clothing and accessory store for small bears, was coming to see us, then we were all going out for dinner - together with our humans.

Ted's human assistants were delayed by losing their car keys but then Assistant D and Assistant P, along with Mrs Noreen, brought Ted himself, big Frank and little Theo to see us on the boat.  We had our photos taken, along with pictures of all the Twitter bears (known as "the Flatties") and then with our Teddy Olympics medal and badges, which we won for a picture for this year's Stuffie Calendar of us building a sandcastle! 

And Ted had brought some T-shirts for Huddlesford to try on.  He decided the green one was his favourite, so he put it on ready for our night out.  We were going to a famous Black Country pub called Mad O'Rourke's Pie Factory, where Ted, Frank and Theo said we could get delicious food and good beer bubbles.

Theo and Hanley chose a nice frothy bitter and a Guinness, so there were plenty of bubbles for everyone!

Then our humans ordered dinner.  Two of them shared a big mixed grill which was served on a shovel!  We thought this was very strange, but Polar explained that steam engine crews and other industrial workers sometimes used to grill food on the shovels they used to put coal in their engines.

None of the humans were hungry enough to try and eat a "Desperate Dan Pie" but Frank and Hanley had a laugh posing in the Desperate Dan standee.  We really enjoyed our time with TGT and his friends and thought Mad O'Rourke's was a great place for a small bear tweet-up.

Then it was time to go back to the boat.  All of us bears hugged, but the humans didn't because of the nasty virus.  Then we had another look at the wonderful things Tour Guide Ted had brought us.

In the morning, it was time to set off for Birmingham.  We settled into the cratch because Polar said we would be travelling most of the day and there would be lots of interesting things to see.

Soon after we left Tividale Quays, our canal - the New Main Line - went over another one, close to the very long Netherton Tunnel, which leads to the Stourbridge Canal.  Grizzly explained that we could go home that way, but we had a much longer journey planned.

 

Then we were cruising along under the motorways again.  It was surprisingly quiet right underneath them, which was very strange.  Then our canal went over the top of the Old Main Line, which has some of the supports for the motorway right in the middle of it.

The Old and New Main Lines run parallel to each other after that, with the Old Main Line three locks below the New.  At Smethick, there is a Victorian pumping station which is sometimes open as a canal museum, but was closed when we were there.  We stopped nearby for our lunch and so Polar could take some photos.

To reach the canal into the heart of Birmingham, we had to go down three locks near the Engine House Branch, which were hard work for poor Grizzly, although another boater helped him with them and, at the last one, a human cub was allowed to help too.

Soon after that, we reached the junction with the Old Main Line and started along a long straight section heading for the city centre.  We liked the iron bridges over this part of the canal, which are very elegant and usually nicely painted in black and white, although some have got nasty scrawly grafitti on them.

 

Not all of the grafitti is nasty, however.  There is some bright and clever street art, which really cheers up the boring brick or concrete walls in some spots.  We would like to see something like this on the section below lock 36 in Stoke, which always looks very dull.

It seemed to take a long time to complete this last stage of the journey, but finally we were cruising past apartment buildings and looking for a mooring.  Polar said we needed to stop before we reached the place where they do 'pump-outs' for boat toilets, and luckily there was a mooring just opposite.

Hanley Bear couldn't believe his luck - we had stopped right opposite a pub garden with a huge television screen in the back garden, where they were showing the European Cup football games.

"I think we'll stay here for a couple of days," Grizzly said, and Hanley cheered and cheered!