Birmingham Canal Navagation System and the Canals

It was up early on Saturday, June 6th to start exploring the Birmingham Canal Navigation or BCN as it is called.

Birmingham is known as the hub of industry in England and the canals were built to assist with transporting supplies around industrial Birmingham and to the rest of England.  Coal, ironsand, lime and clay were all mined around Birmingham from the 1700's and the first canal was completed in 1769 when they used horses to tow the boats and barges up and down the canals.  Canals continued to be built all over Birmingham and England from this time until in 1865 the BCN comprised over 160 miles of canals in and around Birmingham alone.  Today, 100 miles of the canal system is still able to be navigated by a narrow boat and much has been done in recent years to tidy them up.  At the end of the 19th century, 8 and a half million tons of trade was carried on the canals and continued until about 1950 when it was down to just over a million tons when the coal trade ended.

The canals are mainly used for recreation now, rowing, canoeing, fishing and narrow boating.  The water is dirty in places and on the main canal a lot of rubbish, yet we hardly saw any boats on a lot of the canals we went on.  The countryside is a mixture of flash housing, residential, industrial and a lot of derelict sites and land.

Fishermen on the side of the Canal.

On the morning of the 6th June we set out from the Cambrian Wharf in Birmingham and down the BCN Mina line but diverting off it on side canals to do the Icknield and Winston Green loops until the Dudley Port Junction where we turned off into the Netherton Tunnel Branch on our way to the Coombeswood Canal where we were staying the night.  We went through 2 tunnels in the boat, the first was the Netherton Tunnel which was 3017 yards long, two way with ventilation and a towpath.  It took 35 mins and came out at the Windmill End Junction where we had lunch and a walk around the nature reserve. 

The entrance to the Netherton Tunnel.

View of the Windmill End Junction from a bridge.

The second tunnel was the Gosty Tunnel, 557 yards long, very low, had to take the bike off the roof of the boat, no towpath and narrow.  You wouldn't have wanted to breakdown in it.

A boat at the entrance to Gosty Tunnel on the Coombeswood Canal.

It was then on to the Hawne Basin for mooring for the night.  We went to the local Boating Club rooms for a drink that night.  We had travelled a total of 12 and a half miles in the day with no locks !!!

The mooring at Hawne Basin.

Left early next morning going back to the BCN Main Line via the tunnels and Windmill End Junction and then down a small distance to the Dudley Canal, through 3 locks and moored up again on the side of it for the day.