June 15th – I really have got the taste for Birmingham and the Black Country’s canals. Another trip into the city after work on a grey, occasionally drizzly afternoon rewarded me with flowers, great bridges and interesting views.
You just know that if life were a video game, there would be a secret something behind that brickwork.
Really enjoyed the Tame Valley Canal today.
April 15th I cut over Clayhanger Common to the takeaway, and noted that the waters here had almost totally receded now. The lower meadow here is designed to flood, defending the village, and works well. The problem is the path has sunk over the years and is now submerged in times of the meadow doing it’s job.
Thing is now, you’d not really know what had happened.
This really is a curious, well engineered landscape.
November 10th – Passing the narrows on the canal between the M6 flyover and the Bentley Mill Way aqueduct on the Walsall-Darlaston border, I note someone is preparing to drain a stretch of canal – presumably for the works near the aforementioned aqueduct.
Theses just-delivered, fresh cut planks – stout, and carefully profiled – will be dropped into the slots in the narrows, sealed with plastic sheeting and a similar dam built on the other side of the worksite. The dammed section is then drained.
It’ll be interesting to see what work is done.
November 23rd – It seems Staffordshire County Council – who’ve not been running Chasewater for long since taking it over from Lichfield District Council – are getting themselves into a bit of a pickle with the boating/duckpond at the country park.
When Lichfield were responsible for the park, the rangers hosed down the surrounding paths, and water changes were common for the pool, so that it didn’t get stagnant and contaminated by too much bird poo. When Staffordshire took over, this regimen seems to have been abandoned; they laid a new hardstanding here in the summer, and within weeks it was encrusted with excrement, as it wasn’t being washed anymore. When it was washed, the water was so polluted in the pond, it was almost luminous green.
The pond was soon drained for ‘a change of water’ – that was weeks ago, and how the pond, it’s new hardstanding and benches are fenced off, still empty.
I’ve asked around; it seems there’s an issue with de-silting a valve and whether pond water can be drained into the main lake now it’s an SSSI; but had the previous maintenance pattern been followed, none of this would have been an issue.
During the summer, there were brave statements about Chasewater being reborn; about it becoming Burntwood by the Sea. Fat chance – Staffs can’t even sort a duckpond.
I’m beginning to think that they couldn’t find their own arses with both hands, a map and a qualified arse-finder for guidance.
September 23rd – The Birchils lock flight in Walsall is currently closed and mostly drained for maintenance. It’s interesting to see the pounds drained, and how much junk accumulates in them. Also the simple technology of damming the water to allow work to take place. Some flow still accrues due to overspill, and I was impressed with how clear and clean that was, and I noted how it had cut down to the clay liner – the ‘puddling’ – that keeps the canal water from soaking into the earth.
I don’t know how long the work will go on for, but it’s nice to see the locks being maintained.
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