6th September 2016
What we need to confess to is our overindulgence last night. The one saving grace is that we all shared it. Quite the catastrophe for the lining of our arteries.
So cruisy start to the day as needed to let Peter and Nadine catch up on some lost zzz’s. Fed them breakfast and then went off down to The Cube for a pedigree coffee – might be the last one they get as we are now heading back out to the country.
Up ahead on the Birmingham to Worcester canal we have a flight of 36 locks so we want to be able to tackle them all in one day as there is no mooring available between any of the locks. Our cruising time to the top of the locks of 6 hours which is a little too much for one day so we have opted to split the travel over two days with 1.5 hours for the first day and the remainder for day two. You would think it smarter to split it 50/50 but at the end of the 1.5 hours is the Cadbury Factory at Bournville. Something Di has been salivating over for quite some time.
So after giving the guys a quick introduction to the way the boat navigates it way around we pulled up just outside the Cadbury factory. Fras went off and did a recky as we were not too sure of the lay of the land. He returned after 25 minutes with a brochure in hand and some piquant information about the place. Firstly he returned holding a brochure which looked like something out of Disneyland and told us that there was no actual tour around the factory to show you how the caramel is put inside the chocolate. You see, Di was really hoping that the tour would gross her out so much she would never eat chocolate again which she shouldn’t anyway because she is lactose intolerant. But like all people she does push the envelope by indulging her addictions. Secondly, the admission was £16 per person. Now you multiply that by 4 people and you can buy one hell of shit load of chocolate for £64!!!!!! Di pulled the plug and the other followed suit so we chugged off to find a suitable mooring for the night.
We pulled up at a little village which is reality is probably and outer suburb of Birmingham, called Kings Norton. We had a wander around the village playing fields, green and high street. There was the lovely old church with the graveyard with the oldest headstone of 1775 which Peter and Nadine found.
We couldn’t find anywhere to actually date the church. As per the usual now all churches are locked up at night time so praying is now officially a 9-5 activity.
Beside the church was the town community center which was an old tudor building that was being actively used. It even had a shoe shop in it that sold hand made comfy shoes. Couldn’t find any dates on this building either.
We went looking for a place called Molly’s which according to our guide is highly recommended for breakfast. So we were just going to check out it’s location and suitability for tomorrow morning. On our wanderings we walked past the old Grammar School which looked extremely empty.
After locating Molly’s we headed back to nb Lucy but not before letting the pooches have a good run around the playing fields to tire them out. Once back on board it was a quiet night with a quick meal and some lessons on the significance of the canals and a video on canal building. Pete is an engineer so has this strange bent that engineers all have and Nadine is like Di, just has the passion for water and the easy life.
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