Merry Hill shopping centre

Now moored just above the Merryhill Shopping centre. 30 locks today, mostly in the rain! Part way up the Stourbridge 16 a guy turns up on a bike and starts to help us. He came with his own windlass and anti-vandal key. It seems that he just likes helping out boaters. He worked ahead for

Above Hyde Lock

Another really lovely sunny day. We moved just a few hundred yards to along by the water point where we washed the port side. Over the winter the whole boat had taken on a dirty, dull appearance so we thought it was time for a spring clean. A slow chug on to near Bells Mill

The Bonded Warehouse

We have cruised the Stourbridge canal several times, but not the Town Arm. So we decided to make the short journey up there for one night. The weather was good and we set off from our mooring at about 11:00. The weather clear and sunny and after a pleasant two horus or so we arrived

Merryhill

We are now moored just outside Merryhill shopping centre on the Dudley canal, but at one point today I didn’t think we’d make it! We set off from home at around 7:30 but, as we left the M5 at junction 6 it was obvious that something was wrong with the car. I had great difficulty

On our Bikes

We arrived yesterday afternoon and just did a few jobs and chilled out. Heddi saw a poster advertising the Black Country Boat Festival which is on this weekend. We checked in Nicholsons and found that it was about 10 miles along the towpath to the festival site at Netherton, so decided that we would cycle

Delph top

The plan for the week was to do the ‘Stourport ring’. Daughter Nikki & son in law Paul were due to come with us this week on Symphony and had booked their holidays accordingly. Now that we no longer had to be back by Friday morning we could go more leisurely over eight days instead