The Black Country Living Museum is a great day out. (Reminded us of Sovereign Hill.) but a different era, actually it spans a number of eras. The only thing they couldn't recreate was the pollution, according to one of the guides during the industrial revolution you would never see the sun due to the smoke from all industry burning coal. Must have stunk and caused alot of health problems.
When leaving Birmingham we travelled through another long tunnel. (The Netherton Tunnel 3Km's long). And passed many more disused canals which have been blocked off and often built over.
This took us onto the Dudley canal and a heap of locks, From Dudley to the Staffordshire & Worcestershire canal we did 31 locks and they were all against us, we were pretty tired when we arrived at Kinver. (Bugger cooking, we had tea at the pub). At the start of the locks we met a family where the young fella was showing some interest in how the system worked. We gave him a windlass and let him help for a couple of locks. He was keen to stick with us but his mum and cousin wanted to see the glass factory which was further on.
Later in the day while we were still doing locks the young fella came belting down the hill "I'm back do you need any more help" he said. He did one more lock then we asked if he wanted a ride on the boat through the lock. His mum was a bit apprehensive but relented. That was the end of the help, all he and his cousin wanted to do was ride on the boat while we did the locks. We parted ways at the turn off to Stourbridge and we continued on to Stourport.
Sunday was a warm day and the canal was pretty, but skinny at times. The locks were busy and we struck up a friendship with a family on a boat in front of us who we ended up locking with. We stopped at Kidderminster for supplies and were looking for somewhere to moor for the night. We saw them sitting in the beer garden at the Bird in Hand pub and decided that looked like a great idea. Why not stop for a pint. It all got pretty messy from there but a great evening was had by all.
Monday was cold, wet, windy and miserable so we said bugger this we're stopping here for the day. We lit the fire and sat around reading. (Something we haven't done since starting out).
Tuesday onto the Severn River we went. Still VERY windy but going with the current we had the old girl hopping. Conditions were quite tricky so we stopped early and moored at Worcester near the racecourse. We went into town for a look around.
Up early the next morning it was still very windy but we decided to head for Tewkesbury, and the Avon River. We couldn't see much on the way as the river banks are quite high, we did come across a couple of working boats carrying aggregate. It feels quite strange on the river to have so much space. You could turn around anywhere.
Tonight we're moored up on the Avon River at Tewkesbury which is a picturesque town with lots of Tudor Buildings and was where the War of the Roses took place in 1471.
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