Progress report from Brewood

January 13, 2010 by Mike · 1 Comment
Filed under: Canals, Cruising Log 

Frozen Wolverhampton locks at Autherley

Frozen Wolverhampton locks at Autherley

Tuesday 12th January 2010

 

No progress.

Today I took a drive up to Brewood just to check that Zulu was OK in the cold.  Inside the cabin it had been minus 4 degrees and the water in the kettle was frozen solid.  What a good job I drained the water system down before leaving last week.

Apart from that, everything was fine, apart from the frozen canal of course.  Thin ice at Brewood, almost clear in places, turned very thick out of town.  For a moment, deceived by the lack of snow on the roads, I though it may even be possible to d a bit of boating this week, and I took the dog for a walk along the old railway towards Autherley Junction.  The Staffs and Worcester was once again ice free but up at the Junction it was even more frozen than last time and absolutely no sign of broken ice whatsoever, so unless someone can tell me otherwise, I don’t believe a single boat has managed to get up the Wolverhampton locks since I tried two weeks ago.

So back to the car, and back home just in time to miss the next wave of snow, which on Wednesday morning is now lying over 6 inches deep in places, with at least 2 inches of new snow falling overnight. 

Zulu will have to stay put for the foreseeable future.

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Waiting for the thaw

January 3, 2010 by Mike · 1 Comment
Filed under: Canals, Cruising Log 

Sunday 3rd January 2010

I left Zulu in Brewood on Friday night, hoping somehow that this cold weather would be over within a couple of days, but it rather looks like it could be well over a week before the trip can be resumed with the weather still getting worse in places.

Sadly this means that I will miss my main deadline of reaching Braunston Tunnel cutting before 11th January, after which the canal is closed there until 5th March, unless BW can be persuaded to allow the occasional convoy of stranded boats to pass through.  I will call them tomorrow to check if they have even managed to get their own boats in position before giving up totally.

Having left Zulu and headed south by road, I can confirm that the Newbury area Kennet and Avon is currently ice free, and whilst thick in places, the ice is certainly breakable all the way up to Crofton, as a couple of boats have made the trip over the weekend.

Such is the power of blogging though, a quick search of other canal blogs shows me that Great Haywood is mostly iced in according to Caxton’s blog, so I am thankful that I didn’t divert all the way up the Staffs and Worcester just to get stuck there, and Norbury Junction, which I passed through a couple of days earlier, has frozen again yesterday according to Debdale.  Worse still, Epiphany tells us (and confimed today by email) that Birmingham centre is more or less impassable with 5 inch thick ice at Rotten Park.  So even if I had forced my way to Wolverhampton it now seems likely I would now be stuck somewhere  in no mans land instead of relatively cosy at Brewood.  There are also a couple of threads running on Canalword.net forums where people are posting ice reports, and then of course there is twitter where Granny Buttons was encouraging the use of a #canalice tag to enable searching of relevant topics.  This could form an  invaluable facility if more people start using it – particularly useful as it can be checked and updated using mobile phones in real time.  It is just as useful if people would also post “no ice” posts as well as reporting thick ice.

But right now on this lovely sunny afternoon down south, I have no way of knowing if conditions on the Birmingham Canal Main Line are changing or even if Brewood is deep in snow. 

So if anyone can keep me updated on this I would really appreciate it and if anyone wants an update on the eastern Kennet and Avon then I will be only too happy to report back what I can.

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