Kixley Lane Bridge 72 to Damson Parkway Bridge 78A

Any route into Birmingham involves lots of locks to get you up onto the plateau and on most of these routes there are few places you would choose to moor up for a night let alone a full 14 days. Today we would be heading to our base camp, ready for the final ascent on Monday morning.

Tilly was allowed an hour or so of shore leave whilst we enjoyed a cooked breakfast and a slow morning, we only had a little over an hours cruise to do today. A boat which had pulled up in front of us yesterday pushed off and two came past us heading for Knowle locks, infact we’d only see one other moving boat today.

Once Tilly was back on board we pushed off. A couple of fishermen tended to their lines and grumbled as we passed. Plants which must be a variety of lily bobbed down into the water then resurfaced once we’d passed them.

Budgies fluttered in their cage, someone looked out of their arched window and I wondered which had been sign written first, the boat or the shed on their mooring.

In a C&RT maintenance yard a huge pile of dredging’s showed tree boughs and motorbikes that have been hauled out from the murky depths. Further along there was a real assortment of different bricks and coping stones along with stop planks.

Round the 90 degree bend we were then treated to an escort in towards Catherine De Barnes.

The flash of blue from a Kingfisher repeated itself along the cut, dashing from branch to branch as we got closer. It stopped to do a touch of fishing, then swallowed it’s catch and burped (sadly a touch too far away for a good photo) then flew off out of view this time.

Catherine De Barnes had space for us, but we hoped that the final M on our Waterway Routes map would be available, just that bit further in towards Birmingham and away from roads for Tilly to enjoy the afternoon.

New piling stretches along the off side, back filled with dredgings, still very dark and wet. With a full tree canopy we’d be needing to run the engine later to finish topping up the batteries, although a small gap showed itself so we pulled in to give the solar panels a little more sunlight.

Five hours shore leave were given, all Tilly had to do was avoid cyclists and the occasional dog walker. It being Sunday we decided to go to the movies and finally watch All The Presidents Men which we’d recorded back in January. I worked my way through half a shade of green leaves which did mean I didn’t quite fully follow the scandal. For what seems to be a slow moving film the information comes at you thick and fast with so many words.

0 locks, 3.56 miles, 4 moving boats, 1 Kingfisher fishing, 1 Heron watching, 2 outsides, 1 cat with too much time on her paws, 1 film, 500ish leaves, 1 dark mooring.