Monday 27 May 2019

Day 11 - Autherley Junction to Stourport - Locking Hell!

I pitched my sandy little tent on the towpath last night. Isn't it surprising how big your tent suddenly gets when you try to squeeze it into a small space?

Trying to stop-over in an urban area can be a little nervous when a tent is your accommodation choice, but last evening was as peaceful as they come, as I laid out on the water's edge.

The first task for today  was to negotiate the Autherley stop lock. It felt like a lot of work for a 6 inch drop. 

I seem to think that when two canal companies joined their constructions one decided to  incorporate the height difference to prevent the other 'stealing' their water. Of course it allowed them to do just that to their opposition in turn! 

Or perhaps it was just an engineering cock-up that has remained an anachronism, for 200 years.

And I think we have to  ponder on that. That the canals on the whole have been around for over 200 years. In that time they have remained unmoved and relatively unchanged. Around them our society has changed. The canals have seen buildings come and go, technologies change, generations pass by and endless footprints have marked their towpaths.

You could even say they have changed the world with their catalytic assistance to the industrial revolution. There's a lot of history there.

Even so, it still seemed like a lot of poncing about for me just because one guy was peevish about his water, 200 years ago.

This morning I enter the Staffs + Worcs canal, 22nm of lock bound entertainment to Stourport.

 There are something like 60 locks in that 22nm or so . Let's ponder that for a minute: say it takes 3 mins to get-out, load onto the trolley, unload and then get back-in - for 60 locks that's 3 hrs of humping and dumping.
  Try it - load your boat on and off your trolley for 3 hrs and then go for a 20 mile paddle. Throw a couple of interlinking-walks in too and you can see a physical day ahead. 

Hey ho.

You soon realise the locks change the dynamic here too, there are fewer water-bound residents. If you had to bodily lift your home by 15ft- half a dozen times, every time you wanted to 'pop to the shops' - you'd probably live somewhere else too.

The canal gently meanders around, along and sometimes through the sandstone bedrock that supports much of the West Midlands. I smile at the 'Tunnels for Dummies' sign on the 25yd long Dunsley Tunnel - less of a tunnel, more of a fat-bridge really. It doesn't even get dark 'in' there.

I meander too. There is the odd electric-blue flash of a Kingfisher, the dark gloom of the miserable danglers and lots of trolleying locks.  

At Kinver I see my first working toilet block since Chester and get a smiley hello from passers-by. Something that Wolves just couldn't manage somehow.

Then another mile, another lock.

The sun beats down and enthusiasm wanes.

I hoped to make Stourport Basin by 16:30 to scrounge a little help from the C+R people with the tricky transfer to the River Severn. But I miss the cut by 15 mins and they've gone home.

I trolley upstream and manhandle the boat via some steps onto the lazy river. It's time to call it a day.

So I paddle upstream a mile, to land at the riverside Lickhill Manor campsite. It's a pleasant place, spotlessly clean, friendly and helpful.

Boil in the bag as I watch the cheeky Blackbird scurry around me. Kit is dry, tent is up.

I fall asleep to the incongruous sounds of an owl and the 2-stroke dirt-bikes across the river.  


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