Stourton to Merry Hill

It certainly was another day of locks today.

We were off early again leaving our mooring spot at Stourton Top lock in the dark, I'm pleased we got these locks done yesterday as it meant it wasn't straight into locking this morning. It wasn't long before the sun rose and and it started getting chilly. We were soon at Wordsley Junction and the bottom of the Stourbridge locks. We made great time up the 16 locks, only a couple were against us, it did help having no other boats around. I had a bit of help on the last two from a CRT guy who was checking and clearing the locks.

New housing estate, they had just started work on these when we came by earlier in the year

Good to see the old Warehouse being converted

Looking down towards the Redhouse Glass Cone

At Leys Junction we turned right and continued on our twisty turny journey to the bottom of Delph Locks and where the Stourbridge Canal ends and the Dudley No 1 starts. The Delph flight was opened in 1779 and there were originally 9 locks but due to subsidence they had to be re-built, the top and bottom locks are the original ones but the 7 in the middle were re-located slightly and re-built as 6 so now there are 8 locks in the flight, but they are quite deep ones. The flight is now a designated conservation area and has unique high waterfall style overflows.

That's an old sign

Guess this is how stoppages were announced before the internet

It was then another short run and we had arrived at Merry Hill and moored up on the embankment overlooking the shopping centre. Our journey today took just over five hours a lot less than we thought, when we set off this morning we were expecting another full day boating.

5.5 miles and 24 locks

TOTAL 738 miles and 602 locks