Clive & Melanie Morris - Narrowboat Folkies

Well its been a while hasn't it! 

I am going to try something now, which is totally out of character, I am going to try and keep this blog short!!!!

The last blog finished off just as we were about to go on holiday.  Our daughter Vicki, having got a temporary fix for her car in the shape of a courtesy car, came and collected us from Debdale Wharf and took us back to her house and we left from there by taxi the following morning at the ungodly hou...

We woke up bright and early, having set the alarm for 7.45!  Clive made a cuppa then nipped out to have a word with the lock-keeper to see what time we could go down the flight.  It gets so busy at this time of year and as boats cannot pass in the locks it all has to be arranged very carefully.  There are two lots of five locks with a pound in between where boats can cross.  There were two boats coming up the flight already and one on its way down and he told Clive that as...

We left our mooring on Monday morning and headed towards Braunston.  It was a pleasant morning and it didn't take us long to reach the junction where we turned right into Braunston.

One thing I haven't mentioned is that we have had problems with our loo!  Remember a few weeks ago when I bought the Portapotty in the lock at Audlem?  Well it couldn't have come a moment too soon, what a stroke of luck that we had it!  The problem is that our "macerator" loo ...

Unfortuntely it was raining when we woke up on Saturday morning, however we decided to crack on anyway.  So togged up in waterproofs we set off down the two locks and then cruised along to Tesco's.  On the way we had a bit of excitement!  We could see ahead of us some bright, Dayglo cones on the towpath and lots of men in yellow helmets - firemen?  We could also see something in the water - like a firman's hose!!  We slowed right down and pulled over to the bank and I...

The alarm went of at 7.00am - groan!  I really hadn't slept well for some reason, having seen 2.00am, 3.00am and 5.00am then naturally at 7.00am when the alarm went off I was out for the count - typical!  Oh well - time to get up and face the day and the Hatton Flight!

We had a quick breakfast and I went up on deck to brush my hair and spotted activity from Jemima, the boat we were going to share the locks with, one of her crew also spotted me and waved - we were a...

Tuesday morning dawned bright and fair and as soon as we had eaten breakfast we left our moorings at the Camp Hill Services and headed off towards Olton.  Once again the canal was very grubby, full of all sorts of rubbish but also lots of tree branches which did their best to grab hold of the boat or impale themselves on the propellor - it was like running the gauntlet!  We even encountered a submerged motor bike at one point!  However after a couple of hours we arrived at Olto...

Its been an interesting day one way or another!  We set off from Symphony Court this morning at about 10.00am and at Old Turn junction we turned left this time.  Immediately after the turn was the first of thirteen locks in the Farmers Bridge flight.  Adjacent to this lock is a British Waterways office so before we actually set off down the flight we nipped over and pressed the buzzer on the door to enquire about BW cards for use in BW service stations as we knew there were lau...

We stayed another day at our peaceful moorings in Kings Norton.  However on Saturday morning we upped sticks and headed back to the centre of Birmingham. It was a pretty uneventful cruise and a couple of hours later we arrived back at Gas Street Basin.  Before going back to the moorings at Symphony Court, we needed to fill up with water and get a pump-out so we took a detour into Sherbourne Wharf. Once we had made use of their facilities we headed back out onto the main ch...

We left our mooring outside the Black Country Living Museum around 10am on Wednesday morning and headed back to the Tipton Junction, this time we took the right turn to Birmingham!  I have to say the cruise that followed was not the most memorable journeys we've taken!  The canal itself continued to be full of rubbish and passed through some pretty run down areas.  Clive did have a bit of a giggle at one point though.  I was below decks for the first part of the journey an...

Vicki and Ben arrived on Thursday evening but not until 8.50pm (its a long drive from Cambridge!).  We met them as arranged in The Talbot Arms by the canal bridge.  Unfortunately the pub stopped serving food at 8.45pm so we missed dinner by five minutes!  Not to worry, I had prepared a Bolognese sauce in the afternoon as a standby so after a quick drink we walked back down the towpath to the boat and dinner!

Clive had a second birthday celebration with Vicki a...