Kinver to Windmill End

Saturday was another lovely Spring day, James set up his lathe and got on with some turning whilst I did some baking ready for our visitors on Sunday.

Unfortunately Sunday's weather wasn't quite as nice and in went up to the road to meet Mum and Lyn with an umbrella :( We did see a bit of the sun in the afternoon and had a lovely time with them, before they had to leave to head back to Berkshire.

On Monday we headed for the winding hole just past Kinver and began to re-trace our path. We managed to collect some wood on the way and did seven locks before stopping at the bottom of the Stourbridge flight.

Bottom of Stourbridge Flight

Today we were up and off by 7am it was to be a busy day. We were straight into the 16 locks of the Stourbridge flight. 

Cold and frosty when we set off

These are the two locks with only about 10ft between them

At the top I took over steering and James disappeared inside, it wasn't long before the delicious smell of bacon cooking wafted up. We actually met a boat coming the other day unfortunately of was on quite a sharp bend and I misjudged it, luckily a collision was avoided but James had to take over to get us off the side, think more practice is needed. We were soon on our way again and James reappeared with not only bacon but sausage,,mushrooms, egg and beans all served so we could eat on the move.

By the time we had finished we were at Delph Locks where we passed another boat coming down, we continued on past Merry Hill, where we considered shipping but decided to carry on up Blowers Green Lock and onto Windmill End/Bumble Hole.

Looking up Delph flight

At the junction, where we're back on the Dudley Canal

Not content with doing 25 Locks today we thought we'd be organised and get the wood we had collected chopped and stored away.

Our stash, ready to be chopped and stored

We also needed to check the weed hatch, this time it was James' turn and it was not pleasant. Quite a bit of material looked like a pair of pants and loads of black material, the usual plastic bags, one being a JJB Sports one with the pull string and the worse bit was a fishermans lure with two hooks on it, good job he was careful as it would have been a nightmare if it had stabbed him.

13.5 miles and 32 locks

Total 70 miles and 108 locks