Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Undeferred Gratification (or deferred penalty)

It’s a good idea on a cruise to get all the hard work out of the way near the beginning. Not this time!  We’ve ignored all the rule again and put together a cruise which is a doddle at the beginning and tough going towards the end.  We never learn do we?

Our Autumn cruise starts next Monday and if we don’t chicken out or miss any turns it should take us to the middle of Birmingham and back.  We’ve never got lost on a canal yet, but maps of canals in Brum make me think it’s possible!

Here’s our route, starting and ending at Crick.

AUTUMN 2011 ROUTE

As I mentioned the other day, we will detour to Napton and Coventry on the way out. We’ll be going along the blue lines, not the grey ones.  Thin lines are canals with narrow locks and vice versa.

We should be able to do the whole thing inside 3 weeks without killing ourselves so long as we don’t get held up by restrictions or the Great British Weather.

Up as far as Tamworth (Fazeley junction), it’s a doddle.  A leisurely wander through the countryside mostly. About 30 locks I think.  Then it starts to get tougher. 38 locks in 2 days to the National Indoor Arena in the centre of the great metrollops.  Then the route back home is 79 locks, including the Hatton 21 as we descend towards Warwick.

As far as Tamworth, we know the route because we did it as part of the Leicester ring this summer.  Brum and the homeward route is unknown to us though.  As you can see we had a choice of routes south.  I had no idea which to choose, so I posted a question on Canal World Forums and within an hour I got lost of helpful replies. Well, helpful except for the fact that as usual no one can agree. It seems it’s horses for courses.  Anyway, as we like doing narrow locks, we chose the Stratford canal route.

2 comments:

Adam said...

Given that you haven't done either route before and that you'll already have gone up Farmers Bridge, I'd agree that Lapworth is the way to go. They're very pretty for a start. There's a good mooring in the long pound a couple of locks down, otherwise you have to do the lot.

Once you've done the locks, there are decent moorings in the link towards the GU and just around the corner on the GU, but we prefer going a bit further to the Rowington Embankment, where there are great views. The moorings at the top of the Hatton flight always seem a bit gloomy to me.

I hope you'll be blogging your way round.

Neil Corbett said...

Thanks Adam. useful info.
We'll certainly try to blog our way round - dongle permitting!