All ready for Tardebigge tomorrow

Friday 7^th October; Hopwood to Tardebigge long pound

We slept in this morning so didn’t get away till after 10.  In the woods between bridges 67 and 66 is a line of builders’ bags filled with ballast – we saw these being unloaded from a work boat many years ago, and thought they would be used on the towpath, which can be muddy in wet weather, but no – they were placed in the water along the armco and left there.

It has always been too shallow to moor along here, no chance now!  We thought perhaps the towpath may have been prone to leaning towards the water.  I don’t think this was the best idea CRT have ever had, as the dumpy bags will eventually disintegrate into hundreds of shreds of plastic – we know what a mess this will make as we had one do this in the garden last year.  The cottage at Bittell reservoir has been spruced up since we were last this way.

It was cloudy with a cold wind as we pottered along towards Alvechurch, intensifying the mournful moment as we passed the spot near the Crown Meadow arm where we spent our last night on Chuffed before she went on brokerage.  The clouds were getting lower as we approached Shortwood tunnel (wet at the western end), and lower still as we passed the congested wharf where most of the Anglo-Welsh hire boats were in and approached Tardebigge tunnel (dry).

The forecast rain held off as we descended the deep top lock of the Tardebigge flight and moored between the bridges on the long pound.  It started as we had lunch and was quite heavy for a while.  It didn’t stop the boat moored ahead of us from setting off to do the rest of the flight.

It seemed to be easing off a bit after a while so I put my wet-weather gear on and took the rubbish back over the road bridge to the services area.  We hadn't done it earlier because a rather slow hire-boat had been ahead of us through the tunnels and was there taking on water.  The heavens suddenly opened as I arrived, but by the time I got back to the boat the rain had nearly stopped, so Dave came out too and we took Meg for a walk down the first few locks to the reservoir.

The reservoir is extremely low at the moment, and the fishing platform where we went down was way higher than my head when I stood near the water.

It warmed up a bit as we walked back to the boat, and we had a good view of a kingfisher zooming by.  Dave’s a much better kingfisher-spotter than I am so I was delighted to see this one first!  When we got back he set to work on the damage caused by the hire-boat in Birmingham.

I got on with making tea and downloading my photos before lighting the fire as it had got very cold.

Bryony berries garlanding the hedgerow

6 miles, 1 lock, Shortwood and Tardebigge tunnels