Living The Dream: Stourbridge

Showing posts with label Stourbridge. Show all posts

Friday, 4 December 2015

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

Thursday, 13 March 2014

Stourbridge to Prestwood

We had a very pleasant couple of days at the end of the Stourbridge Town Arm, it's a nice peaceful location and very handy for the town centre, which is just a short walk away and has all the usual high street shops as well as a Tesco Extra.

Yesterday we set sail and headed off down the four Stourton Locks, all against us again with the bottom gates open, would have been great if we were going the other way. Never mind I needed the exercise, I had a cake baking as we went.

Stourton Bottom Lock

Left to Stourport and right to Stafford

At the junction we turned right onto the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal heading north and stopped a short way up at Prestwood.

Moored up at Prestwood

Nice and rural, the only sound is the birds

Today 4 miles and 4 locks

Total 30.4 miles and 29 locks

Sunday, 9 March 2014

Merryhill to Stourbridge

We arrived at Merryhill and went off to look around the massive shopping centre.

Yesterday was battery maintenance day, not pleasant as I think our batteries have got to be the most inaccessible ever! Anyway with two looking pretty dead James did a bit of rewiring and we have gone down to having three, we'll see how that goes.

This morning we set off nice and early we had two lock flights to do, 24 locks in total and had to be moored up for the rugby at 2:30pm. Our first flight was the 8 of the Delph locks with all of the them against us and a few bottom gates open. Once through these we are now on the Stourbridge canal and I got a break of a mile or so before starting on the Stourbridge flight of 16, which were also against us and again some gates opened, at lock 5 a guy walking along the towpath said there was a boat a couple of locks down heading our way, that's always good new the locks should be in our favour after we pass but no they were all emptying through leakages. We passed the boat at lock 9 and it was Peter and Heather's friends (our winter mooring neighbours) John and Jude on Serena. Straight after the lock we did a left turn down the Stourbridge Town Arm, winded at the end and moored up just in time for the rugby. Think I'm going to be a bit achy in the morning.