Narrowboat Serafina: Tardebigge - Locks! Locks! and More Locks!

Another nice cruising day as we set off from Worcester to continue the steady climb up to Birmingham. Today we were heading for the moorings at Tibberton, a small village along the way. The locks seem to come in pairs and by the time we had moored we had done 14 locks, not a bad days work. When we arrived on the moorings we were the only boat there, other boats passed but that's the way it stayed for the night. We had a walk around Tibberton which didn't take us too long and finished up back at the Bridge Inn, right next to our mooring.

Just the overnight stop at Tibberton, we set off on another fine day heading for the moorings next to the Queen's Head Pub. We caught up with the boat ahead of us, the pic below shows the canal a little overgrown with reeds in places, as we push on.

Some pretty old hump bridges along the way that look like the brick has been rendered with a concrete mix that must be feeling its age. The whole bridge was covered in a plastic netting, I'm guessing more for safety reasons than anything else. Unfortunately, you can also see the graffiti on the bridge: what sort of person says to themselves 'today I'm going go and graffiti a 200 year old (approx) bridge'.

Netting close up

We lost the leading boat at Hanbury Wharf as they pulled over for fuel, cruising past the junction with the Droitwich Canal we moored up around 11:00am just before Lock 17 so we could make our way across to Hanbury Hall (National Trust) for a look see. I couldn't see the house from the canal, only a stile and a public footpath heading across the paddocks. So, after checking for bulls, off we went crossing about three paddocks and five stiles; Rachael wasn't impressed!

The walk wasn't too long, only 10 minutes or so and this was in the garden of one of the outer houses.

The beautiful gardens of the main house.

The front gates leading to the house. The house was of course beautiful inside, the feature were the murals in the main entrance over the staircase and the ceilings throughout. It was well worth a visit!

Back to the boat and we continued our journey to the Queen's Head Moorings. A stop over for water at Stoke Works, the tap was nice and fast, another half a dozen locks and we arrived with one other boat around 4pm. There were a few boats moored just below the last lock and once we moored I could understand why, it was a little rowdy at the Queen's head with a 21st party, fortunately it was Sunday so it closed down reasonably quickly.

No matter which way you take your boat to Birmingham there are plenty of locks and in the case of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal you get them in the form of the Tardebigge Flight, the longest flight on the system with 30 locks. We were up early for breakfast and ready for a busy day's work, we were also hoping to catch as many locks set our way as we could get. We had to start somewhere so 200 metres from our overnight mooring at the Queen's Head Moorings was the Tardebigge Bottom Lock.

Plenty of locks ahead!

And more locks ahead.

All the locks were close so I could get the lock Serafina was in going and head up to the next lock to get the gates open.

The lock gear was in reasonably good condition, some were a bit tough to get going but you get that. I liked the gear locking mechanism which was balanced to fall back out of the way once you started winding.

A stop along the flight to check out the books and we were flush with eggs so it was only a short stop.

Nearing the top of the thirty lock flight now and the reservoir supplying the flight appeared. This was at Lock 50, apparently the water is pumped up to the pound above the top lock (Lock 58). It was at this point we met our first boat going down the flight, it was a single hander, he only had 24 locks to go! At least they were all set for him!