On to the Stratford Canal and the Lapworth Flight

Wednesday 19th June, 2013 at Hockley Heath.
A beautiful morning! What a joy to have such a lovely summer day! After 18 months of cruising, finally we have a day when we can wear short sleeves and only one layer! Whoopee!
We set off after breakfast, knowing that there was another flight of 19 locks ahead of us, but had we known the nature of the locks, we might have added Shredded Wheat and Weetabix to the porridge that we had for breakfast!
At Kingswood Junction, we turned off the Grand Union on to the Stratford Canal. Junctions are always exciting - one never quite knows what's around the corner - and junction bridges are always delightful!

 Initially, the locks looked innocent enough with their charming and unusual bridges that have a one inch gap running down the middle so the horse's rope could be pulled through without having to unhitch it.

In fact, they looked beautifully remote and timeless, dreamily recalling the days of working boats pulled by horses in a gentler age.

But we found that this idyll existed only at the bottom and the top of the flight. The middle was HARD!
The paddles were really tough and often beyond M's strength, so R was obliged to jump off MM and take over on most of the locks. The locks are narrow and as we again had a boat going up in front of us, most of the locks were against us. R ended up opening the paddles on the current lock, then walking ahead to the next lock and opening the paddles on that before walking back to drive MM from one lock to the next. M had to content herself with opening and closing the gates!
We eventually got to the top after nearly four hours of graft, only to be told by a local volunteer that there were two very tough lift bridges just ahead.  He was right!
Poor M had strained a muscle in her arm trying to do the paddles earlier, but when we got to the first lift bridge we saw that the mechanism was on the opposite side of the bridge from the towpath, so if R wound the bridge up, he couldn't then get back to MM to drive her through. M heroically did her best, and very slowly managed to lift the bridge with great difficulty. It was an exhausting process!
Finally we got through both lift bridges and headed for Hockley Heath, where we planned to spend the night.
The guide books said that the village has a little canal arm that was used for coal deliveries in the past, so when we arrived, M walked ahead to see if it was usable for moorings. Definitely not! So we moored up just outside.

 

We had expected Hockley to be a small and pretty village like all the others we had passed through  but it was clear that it was on the outskirts of the suburban sprawl of Birmingham. The first shock was the busy commuter road running right through it, the second was new-built houses as far as the eye could see (the house numbers ran to four figures along the road!) and the third (very nice!) was a large upmarket car showroom full of Mclaren's latest cars right next to the canal. Certainly not a village!  However, R admired the cars at great length, then immediately bought a Euro Lottery ticket at the local shop!

Despite that, our mooring was very quiet and pretty. Amazing how the canal is a secluded world all on its own that tends to bypass completely the brash environment around it, however close it may be.

Today: 5 miles, 19 locks and 8.0 hours
Trip: 130 miles, 125 locks and 110.1 hours (602.4 hours since MM was launched).