The Captain has complained that your scribe rather glossed over the last few days on the Montgomery Canal, so here are a few more pics…

Here’s a rather nice spot just up from Queen’s Head. A fine old warehouse building lurks behind the crossover bridge, but it’s followed by a tight bend, and your trusty photographer was too busy steering to snap anything else. If you click on the photo and look carefully, the blemish over the bridge is actually a buzzard.

The middle pound at Frankton Locks was indeed very low: at least a foot down, and when the available draught is only about two and half feet that kind of matters. The chap behind was a bit keen, and trying to pass the opposition traffic managed to put both of them firmly aground.

The chief cook wanted everyone to know that she really did know how to work a staircase lock, and Cracker just wanted to say hello again. He was on loan to take a historic boat down to the Canal Centre for their forthcoming canal festival weekend.

Right. Can I go back to sleep now, Sir?

Leaving Wales on the Sunday morning via Chirk Aqueduct, we had a pleasant meander back over familiar territory.

No delays at St. Martins, and reasonable weather, and by Monday afternoon we were toddling into Ellesmere Arm for a quick visit to Tesco, before nipping round the corner (boat-wise) to Blackwater Marina, ready for the engineer to do his oil changing thing on Tuesday morning. With Song & Dance tucked up on the service quay, plugged in to the mains, and Sir happy with the nearby holiday flat garden to explore, we took local advice and toddled down to the new Greek Restaurant Meze, which was indeed most excellent.

A warm sunny Tuesday in a marina must mean doing the laundry (oh the glamour). For various reasons our engineer chappy didn’t finish until mid-afternoon, and so having thoroughly fed, waterered, dieseled and emptied Song & Dance, and dried all the washing in their tumble dryer, we set sail for a long haul cruise back around the corner into the Ellesmere Arm, where the Captain was beginning to feel right at home.

We were going to head down the Montgomery canal after all the boat servicing stuff, and you need to book a passage through Frankton Locks, so we decided to stay another day and chill out before heading out into the fray again. And so Wednesday was spent pottering around the town and the mere, shopping for some birthday presents and so on.

There are plenty of nice houses in Ellesmere,

the church overlooks the Mere, and down near the water, something stirred.

One Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the local Indian Restaurant was offering a Starter, Main Course, Rice or Nan or Chips and a fizzy drink for a tenner, so it hardly seemed worth cooking, and for £20 for the two of us the food eminently acceptable. We’ll be returning to Ellesmere again in a week or so: we suspect there’ll be a repeat engagement!

Bleary eyed Friday morning proved to be a washout. It had started raining early in the morning, making a change from the duck serenade noises, and was forecast to be wet and wild all day, with a slight possibility of a clearance late afternoon. A steam train trip further into the mountains didn’t seem like a good idea, and most of the day was written off to chores around the boat. The clearance never really came until much later – a shame, because you can only moor in Llangollen for a maximum of two nights.

Saturday proved a little less wet and wild, and with Liam Heath paddling solo at lunchtime, we returned to Gales Wine Bar for some fortification, and found someone with a shiny iPad and WiFi connection who let us watch Liam going for gold. Another celebratory lunch, a visit to the next door wine shop for some more Lebanese goodies, and it was mid afternoon before we got back to the boat. We needed to get clear of Llangollen for the night, and there’s almost nowhere to moor between Llangollen and Froncysyllte, so it looked we’d be cruising well into the evening, and hoped Sir would forgive us.

And so it proved. A tortuously slow run down to Trevor Basin, with the predicted hordes heading up to Llangollen for the weekend – it would have been quicker to walk. And then a long wait because there was still a never ending stream of boats coming across The Great Unpronounceable: in the end the Head Gardener had to walk across to the other side and say “Whoa!”, so we could get across. Most of the traffic seemed to be intent on getting to Llangollen that evening: we were seriously beginning to wonder where they thought they were going to moor as we’d left an almost full basin there. Still, SEP as Douglas Adams might say.

And we finally made it back to the Biggles Jump Off spot in Froncysyllte, for a light dinner and an early night. This boating is supposed to be relaxing! Still, a worthwhile visit – think we might have to come back by surface transport and stay for a few days in Gales Hotel: a hotel with the reception in an upmarket wine shop has to be good.

Most canals are fairly static when it comes to water. Water is poured into the summit pound (and, sometimes elsewhere) to replace that “lost” when passing through a lock. As water is frequently scarce, this is the reason that emptying a full lock or filling a empty lock unnecessarily (e.g. when you’re above an empty lock, and someone is approaching from below but still a few minutes off) is considered very poor form. If you’re moored up on most canals, there is a modest movement of water in the general direction of “downhill”, but not enough to be of any real concern.

However, the Llangollen canal is used to as a feeder to transport water from the Welsh mountains in the Cerriog Valley above Llangollen at Horseshoe Falls, down to a large reservoir at Hurlestone Junction, from where it goes on to Manchester (or somewhere!).

(This picture of Horseshoe Falls, technically the start of the canal, was taken on an earlier visit in 2007).

This transporting of water means there is a considerable flow down the Llangollen Canal at all times, making it more like a river. There are two significant effects resulting from this. Firstly, each lock has a large by-wash channel which carries water down around the lock when boats are not moving through – a bit a weir on a river. For some reason here, these inevitably enter and exit the main channel just above and below the lock gates (unlike most river locks, which give you much more room), and cause major cross currents just by the lock itself. Just what you need when you’re trying to slot a 58 ft by 6ft 8in boat into a 72 ft by 7 ft brick slot without crashing into anything and destroying all the crockery.

The second effect is that while the canal is relatively wide and deep, the flow is fairly negligible, but when the canal narrows, Bernoulli’s principle means that the flow speeds up considerably. The canal narrows at every bridge hole, sometimes to little more than the width of the boat, and heading up stream you suddenly find yourself going nowhere, halfway under a bridge. And when you finally pop out the other side, the boat suddenly surges forward again.

It’s even worse in long narrow tunnels like that at Chirk, or in long narrow aqueducts. To keep going upstream, you need a significant amount of power to overcome the downhill flow and keep moving forward against the fast flow, but there’s something called prop walk which tries its hardest to screw the boat around, and in a cramped tunnel it can make it nearly impossible to track straight down the middle without scrubbing the front on one wall and the stern on the other. Deep joy. And scraped paintwork. Guaranteed.

It’s a lot easier going downhill! Or if you must go uphill, use a horse.

Without wishing to be indelicate, we were beginning to be in urgent need of a pump-out: the last one had been at Upton Marina, and there are no facilities on the Staffs and Worcester between Stourport and the Wolverhampton. Even the offshoot of Stourport’s chandlery and wharf at Compton was now defunct: 90% of the way to being occupied “luxury flats”. So (having been caught out before) we’d checked with Oxley Marine near Wolverhampton to ensure that they could help us out.

Compton Wharf did however provide a suitable lunch stop: handy shops right on the bridge, pub, cafe and so on (and frequent buses to Wolverhampton, if that’s what floats your narrowboat). And while pipe bridges are common, we can’t ever recall having seen one quite like this peculiar inverted V one at Compton.

Oxley Marine is located between Aldersley Junction (where the “Wolverhampton 21” locks finally drop down to the Staffs & Worcester), and Autherley Junction half a mile further on, where the Shropshire Union Canal heads off for the salt fields of Cheshire, while the Staffs and Worcester keeps on heading for Stafford and Stoke. Approaching Aldersley, it’s hard to believe you’re only a mile or so from the centre of Wolverhampton: those 21 locks are quite a steep flight and end right in the middle of town.

Oxley Marine is an “old fashioned” boat yard with a busy bar cum social club attached; there are about fifteen boats there, and they had kindly made room for us to stay overnight with an electric hook-up so we could catch up on some washing. The boat’s pump-out orifice was on the wrong side for ease of access, so we went past the boatyard, turned at Autherley Junction, came back, did the business, then carried on retracing our steps to Aldersley Junction so we could turn around again and moor up properly. We were beginning to know the stretch of canal between the two junctions quite well…

… even if the “his and her” boats opposite seemed a bit bemused at our comings and goings.

We’d been told by the boatyard chappie that the local take-away Chinese and Indian restaurants were both worth a punt, so perusing the proffered menus, we rang the Indian and ordered a Chicken Tikka & Mushroom Biryani with Veggie Curry, a Chicken Peshwar with Pulao Rice and a Peshwari Nan. The bill came to just under £16 including delivery. The food arrived when they said it would despite the Friday night rush, had complimentary poppadums and other bits included, was extremely tasty, and the portions so large that we could only eat half – we kept the rest for a complete second meal! This sure ain’t Berkshire, Toto.

We knew the boatyard had two resident black and white sister cats and seen them wandering around – there had been an awkward moment when Biggles introduced himself. While waiting for our food, sitting in the rare warm evening sunshine with a beer, we were chatting to a couple who said they had seen our cat go aboard at the back, and jump out the front sometime later; they asked how we managed with a walkabout cat. While saying it wasn’t really a problem these days, it became clear that the cat they thought was ours was black and white. The interloper had clearly explored Song & Dance while Sir had remained fast asleep somewhere inside. Words will be had in due course.

Meanwhile, across the canal and down a bit was a canoe/kayak club. During the afternoon a number of floral tributes had been pinned to their railings, and later a gathering of smartly dressed people stood around for a while with drinks in hand: some kind of memorial gathering it seemed. As we were leaving Stourport a few days ago, we’d noticed the Union Flag flying at half-mast next to the Clock Tower for no immediately obvious reason. Let’s hope we’re not indirectly responsible for a sudden increase in the death rate as we head North…

Extricating ourselves from Falling Sands Lock without any mischief this time around, we were soon pootling into Kidderminster; a short stop to let the Captain hide under the cars in the 24 hour Tesco Superstore car park , and we were soon climbing up through Kidderminster Lock, with the impressive church looming into view.

Going down Kidderminster Lock used to be a surreal experience. The bottom gate is very (very) close to a main traffic light interchange on the Kidderminster Ring Road. The ring road crosses the canal on the concrete bridge in the photo below, which is a lot closer that the wide-angle picture suggests. Before you empty the lock, if you stand at the front of the boat  you can almost reach out and touch the traffic rushing past: it really is bedlam there with loads of pedestrians too.

Years ago, when the FO first came this way, as you sunk down you waved bye bye to the chaos, and when you emerged from the other end of the tunnel under the ring road, you found yourself in a different world. Right up close on both sides, tall carpet warehouses – largely out of use – loomed over you, and cut out all the noise. It was like emerging into a silent brick Grand Canyon, and an astonishing contrast to what was going on just behind you.

These days, most of the warehouses are gone. As you emerge from the tunnel the first thing you come across is a drive-thru MacDonalds. Followed by a large car park for the no-longer-in-the-high-street emporiums like Marks & Spencer, Next, Boots, Debenhams etc. etc.  Deep joy.

Falling Sands Lock is a pleasant enough spot if the wind’s in the right direction… it’s just next to the sewage works.  Setting off on the Saturday morning, we remembered the lock well, as we’d come to blows the last time we were here, a few years ago.

If you’re coming down from Kidderminster you approach the lock entrance/top gate on a bend. Concentrating on trying to get the boat approximately lined up with the lock, we failed to notice that the gate hadn’t opened quite all the way, and with a modest burst of power to straighten things up, firmly wedged the boat in the lock entrance.

The geometry was such that the front rubbing strake had climbed up on top of the top gate walkway, and despite much creative use of engine revs, barge poles, paddle manipulation and multi-lingual swear words, we were well stuck.

Can’t remember how we managed it in the end, but it took well over half-an-hour to extract the boat, and about the same to dig out whatever was stopping the gate fully opening in the first place. What jolly japes.

Coming up, we couldn’t help noticing that there were now three ways to cross the canal at the bottom of the lock.

The furthest downstream was accessed by the old and well worn stone steps; from the brickwork, the parapet had clearly been added later. There was also a rope slot down the middle. Then there was the metal walkway, clearly added later, that may have had a rope slot, now blocked up. And then there was the usual walkway across the bottom gates.

With some locks one struggles to find a single way across the bottom, so I wonder why they felt three were needed.

The rain cleared up, and the sun came out, so even though we knew the place well, an evening stroll seemed mandatory. It’s an interesting place to wander around: once upon a time a serious inland port with several large basins set above the Severn, it transmogrified into a tourist destination that fell on hard times. The Severn riverside is quite an attraction, and there’s a large public park and so on, immediately next to a sizeable funfair. And even though all the pretty lights were on, and it appeared to be open, we never saw a single person on any of the rides. The place was clearly aimed at day-trippers from the Midlands once upon a time, as most of the eating establishments are tea/ice cream related and shut at 16:30 – proper restaurants are few and far between. Early evening and the place was as quiet as a mouse. Mind you, it wasn’t much different at lunchtime in the rain, come to think of it.

The basins are full of narrowboats and river cruisers; the upper one with the CaRT facilities on the wharf is always busy with boats moving around.

Just across from there are some new-ish flats built around a previously abandoned basin. They’ve been there for quite a few years now, but not one of the private moorings was occupied. Mind you, a tiny stub pontoon and an anchored buoy at the other end to tie up to isn’t exactly our favourite kind of mooring, particularly when there seem to be a few unoccupied berths in the main basins.

Down on the river, The Tontine – now “luxury” flats – has long been a landmark when heading up river, announcing one’s arrival at Stourport. And our old friend from Gloucester Lock and Tewkesbury Edward Elgar was moored up where we’d been the night before. Good job we moved, then – he’s a bit bigger than us.

Coming up off the river,you have a choice: a large wide-beam lock up to the lower basins, then another up to the upper basins. Or a narrow 2-stage staircase lock to the lower basins, and another up to the upper. The broad locks use way more water, and a rumoured to be seriously hard work, so there’s quite an incentive to use the narrow option if you can. It just looks awful tiny when you try and squeeze a boat in!

And we couldn’t go without a picture of the old BWB HQ at The Wharf, and the famous Clocktower (still telling the correct time).

Friday morning, and we wandered down to see Nic and check it was all OK to head on up to Worcester, usually a two day exercise… she asked where we were planning on mooring en-route, and we said “Upton on Severn”.

“Ah…” she said, “I spoke to Upper Lode earlier, and they say the level is coming up and they might need to close later today; Diglis at Worcester are also taking a hard look, and reckon they might need to close tonight”. So we’d get to Upton OK, but maybe no further onSaturday. Calling the Diglis lockkeeper for an update at about 11:00, he said “The river’s coming up faster than we expected: Upper Lode have just closed, and we’ll close just as soon as two narrowboats heading this way get here. We don’t expect to reopen until Monday at the earliest.”

Time for Plan B.

We really didn’t want to go all the way back up the Avon to Stratford (and couldn’t manage it before Essex girl needed to depart), so thought we’d see if we could get a mooring at Pershore or Evesham marinas on the Avon. Both were a day or so upstream, and both had railway stations. We could then come back when herself returned and the Severn had settled down to resume our journey to Stourport,

On returning to Nic with the new plan, she said “Ah… Evesham have just gone on Red Boards, and Pershore will very shortly – there been lots of rain in Rugby and it’s working it’s way down to here…”

Time for Plan C.

After consultation with the Captain, and Nic, it was decided to leave Song & Dance on flood safe moorings near the lock under Nic’s watchful eye, while we all went home for a week. This meant the cook could go to Essex and back from winter quarters, and easier exercise. And so the transport manager was despatched by taxi to Pershore to get a train home – don’t let anyone kid you there’s a useable train service at “Ashchurch For Tewkesbury”. Returning with suitable ground transport, the skipper, the contents of the fridge and freezer, and mounds of dirty washing were stuffed in the car, and on Saturday morning we all headed darn sarf for a week or so. We’ll be back!