Let’s get that tunnel out of the way!

Sunday April 19^th; Crown Meadow Arm to King’s Norton

Wow it was cold this morning when we got up, less than 10 degrees in the galley.  But it soon warmed up once we got moving and the kettle was on.  Straight after breakfast I walked Jess down to the village centre for the paper.  Outside the Co-op are three stout Incredible Edible raised beds growing flowers, herbs and veg for locals to pick.  There were the remains of a couple of purple sprouting broccoli plants which looked as though they had been successful, chard, herbs and rhubarb.

Community raised beds outside the Co-op

We had another cup of tea when I got back but the sun moved round behind some trees and we started to feel cold.  So instead of a relaxing morning with the paper over coffee we put the kettle on again, got the insulated mugs out, wrapped up warmly and set off.

Cherry blossom near the M42

Just past the motorway is a house with a beautiful garden and a mooring for a narrowboat.  We have often thought what a super place to live that would be – just for one small detail, the motorway at the bottom of the garden.

You can’t see much of the house, which is quite nice looking too

We were soon at Upper Bittell reservoir, which is a source of water for the canal as well as a fishing spot.  Two chaps were fly fishing from a rowing boat, but of more interest to me was my first house martins of the year, hunting insects over the reservoir close to the canal.

The fishing lakes on the towpath side were very busy

We stopped at Hopwood to top up the water tank then pulled in on the visitor moorings for lunch.  The pub was doing Sunday lunches but we felt we wouldn’t have done a full lunch justice, so ate on board.  Although it was lovely sitting in the dinette with the sun streaming in we decided to move on and get Wast Hill tunnel out of the way.  I'm not a fan of long tunnels.

Wast Hill tunnel south portal

The tunnel is 2,726 yards long but straight, and with no boats to pass we were through in 30 minutes, and with no accidental touching of the sides either.  There was a group of boats moored at our usual spot several hundred yards before the junction with the North Stratford, so we went closer to the junction and stopped for the night about 100 yards before the old toll house.  Jess, knowing exactly where we were, bounced around until she got taken to play in the rec behind the trees.

A small furry visitor, luckily Jess was inside and didn’t spot it

When we were mooring a chap was throwing bits of white sliced into the belt of trees between the towpath and the playing fields.  He said he’d seen a rat (well of course, if he was in the habit of chucking bread about!).  I said, in a conversational way, and I hope non-judgmentally, we can’t feed bread to the birds where we live as it attracts rats (true) and he wandered off.  But clearly that squirrel is a fan.

5 miles, Wast Hill tunnel