Thursday 7th March 2019



The forecast today was poor. The wind was up before we got up, it had actually woken us. As the day wore on the rain started and was heavy at times. Just as well we had promised ourselves a quiet day.

We had kippers and poached eggs for breakfast. Lovely. But we then have to have windows open to rid the smell and dispose of the skin and bones.

I took the dog out and took the chance to walk up to the canal junction before the rain came on. We had wanted to walk down the canal arm that presently provides moorings for the Lichfield Cruising Club but there was a locked gate on the footbridge beside the fine looking canal-side house. This was the only access to the arm so, disappointingly, the walk wasn’t possible.

Huddlesford Junction, like most canal junctions, is in the middle of the countryside with little around it. The Lichfield Canal was a part of the Wyrley and Essington Canal, otherwise known as the “Curly Wurly”, that forms the northernmost part of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, the BCN. The Lichfield went from Ogley Junction at Brownhills, skirting around the south and east of Lichfield, to Huddlesford, a distance of 7 miles and 30 locks. It was abandoned in 1955, along with several other branches of the Wyrley and Essington, and much of it was filled in.


   


Huddlesford Junction


                                                The fine lookingcanal-side house and the locked gate

The present day Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust formed in 1989, aims to restore both the Lichfield and the Hatherton Canals. The Hatherton is a derelict branch of the Staffordshire and Worcester Canal that also joins with the Curly Wurly. Both canals allowed for quicker routes out of Birmingham.

We spent the remainder of our day quietly doing our own thing.




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