Wet feet and bunny poo

 Tuesday 18^th August; Hockley Heath to King’s Norton

After all the downpours over the last few days we could at least start to get the wet things properly dry.  I went up to the butchers before we left and bought some nice sausages, but was annoyed to be told the apples I bought were English when I later discovered a New Zealand sticker on one of them!  So much for buying local.  Well, the sausages came from Lowsonford so that’s not too far away.

It wasn’t long before walkers started to warn us about cows in the canal.  There was no sign of them as we passed Wedges, but as we neared the Bluebell pub a yellow-clad figure detached itself from a group on the bridge and a delightful firefighter came to ask us to pull in.

 

They even taped off the towpath, though periodically walkers came through from the other direction.  Perhaps they wanted to avoid spooking the cattle.

All the action was a long way round the bend past the long stretch of moored boats, so we got the kettle on.  It sounded as though the culprits were young stock having an adventure – 3 in the canal and 3 on the towpath.  The farmer was on his way with a trailer but couldn’t get there for a while…..  We were soon joined by NB Baraka, which had a roof full of veg and sunflowers in the well deck.

We chatted of course, and I inquired how they kept their veg so productive.  Out came Cleopatra, a beautiful silky boat rabbit.  No picture of her, but I do have a free sample of her ‘product’!

Eventually a couple of hire boats came creeping through the bridge and the cattle went trotting over it and away back to their field.  On the move again, we thought we’d get a mile or two under our belt before stopping for lunch.  Last year Lady Lane wharf was having a huge hole excavated in front of the building – now it all looks very smart with a much improved wharf for the fuel.

We stopped at Zombie-town for lunch.  This is the area of new housing based around Dickens’ Heath; it’s got a new ‘village’ name but I can’t remember what that is.  It is the place with the strange water-feature, which was operating today.

When we walked up a few years ago we discovered a useful convenience store, Tesco I think, along with a city-style coffee shop and various office-type businesses all looking brand new and super-clean, along with people who didn’t make eye contact with the riff-raff from the canal.  We called it Stepford for a while (after the film The Stepford Wives) but Zombie-town rolls off the tongue rather better.  Any vegetation was tightly controlled amid acres of block paving and it felt bleak and soulless in spite of the warm sunshine.   Heavy rain has no ground to sink into – this must be the reason the ground floor flats all have flood protection!

However, the residents who made it as far as the canal all seemed perfectly normal!  Baraka passed while we were stopped.

The afternoon was still a bit showery as we trundled along to Shirley drawbridge, where a lovely hire boat let us through on their key.

We picked up a moustache of weed on the bow, which drifted off while we waited for the bridge to rise, but later we picked some up on the prop which had to stay there till we stopped for water at bridge 5.  This is a good fast tap – so fast that it blew our hose out of the connector and I got another pair of sodden trainers trying to turn it off.  I had to turn the pressure right down to stop it happening again, which it did twice more before I got it right.  We cruised on past this smiley boat

 

through the guillotine lock which is in need of some TLC

and moored a couple of hundred yards round King’s Norton junction.  In the early evening an attractive grey boat cruised by … then reversed back again – they must have been looking at the old toll house at the junction as the came down from Birmingham and failed to notice the start of the Stratford Canal!

9 ½ miles, 1 stop lock (open), Brandwood tunnel, Shirley drawbridge.