Birmingham & Fazeley Canal

A young duck visited us

On the Birmingham and Fazeley

One of the Curdworth Locks

On the main Curdworth flight

 Another warm and sunny day.  We left our Ventura Park mooring at 9:50 and about a mile later turned right at Fazeley Junction onto the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal.  This is a useful canal to pass through rather than a scenic one on which to linger but the section we did today was very pleasant.  Leaving Fazeley there is open countryside with large lakes appearing on the left hand side.  These were formerly gravel workings but are now nature reserves owned by the RSPB.  Shortly afterwards we reached the start of the attractive Curdworth locks where the canal begins its climb into Birmingham.

I guess that it is not widely realised that central Birmingham is high up in the hills with the canals reaching over 500 feet above sea level.  Generally all other major English cities are on rivers but in Birmingham the canal system formed the major link for industry to the outside world.

Back to the Curdworth flight, there are 5 isolated locks followed by a flight of 5 and then another isolated lock.  We moored for lunch just before the main flight and an hour later restarted our journey.  At the second lock we had a problem, we couldnt fully open the top gate.  Fortunately there were a couple of CRT volunteers managing the flight who let some more water down which floated the gate over the obstruction. They assisted us through the remaining locks and we moored near the village of Curdworth in a shaded cutting at 15:25.  Overall a total of 7 miles and 11 locks in 4.5 hours cruising.