On the very last day of my project in Birmingham,
my parents agreed to come on a long ride out of the city.
We were to leave Icknield Port Loop,
and see how far we could get in the direction of Wolverhampton.
We left the loop,
and my dad and mom helped paddle.
I was able to sit and just take pictures.
My dad took some pictures too.
I pointed some things out to my parents that I had learned from people in my week out on the canal.
Like the red hatches for fire hoses on every bridge.
We came to parts I had not seen.
And saw things that I hadn’t noticed like this fish. (dead)
I pulled the boat for a while….
A while longer
We stopped for lunch.
By steering at the front and back,
we were able to keep the boat on course while being pulled.
My dad spotted something in the water.
A huge fish swimming just under the surface.
An open door.
My mom waited in the boat,
while I explored.
Nothing for a while.
Then this tunnell.
It was a pretty day.
But pulling the boat started to seem irrelevant.
Why don’t we just walk along,
and see what we can see?
We came up to a series of locks in the canal.
A group of German narrowboaters were working their barge through the locks.
After entering the lock, they cranked open some kind of pipe.
It filled the lock with water.
The boat slowly rose to the level of the next lock. Can you see the sausages that came out on deck?
They opened the lock and moved on.
It only took a few minutes to move the barge up about 8 feet.
The boats weigh 25 tons.
Now the canal is up so high, it can cross over the Old Main Line.
This looks narrow, but one of the narrowboats can still fit through.
We decided to explore the bank.
We were well outside Birmingham now.
And in some ways I felt like we had accomplished our mission.
We headed back.
A painted map of one of the locks.
And then somewhere along the new Main Line,
we saw something in the water.
A small red boat was overtaking us.
I had seen this kid before- back in April when I was making the boat, I saw him paddling along talking to a friend who was walking on the bank.
It stood out in my mind – the only other person I had ever seen in a self-powered boat out on the canal.
His boat is modified from a kayac and he made his oars are from plywood.
His name is Luke Bailey. He lives in a bargeman’s house right on the canal.
He comes out to paddle all the time.
He asked what I planned on doing with my boat when I went back to America. I told him he could have it.
After giving me his address, he took his boat up the hill to the reservoir,
and hopped over the fence.
After dinner we took a walk down the canal in a direction that I hadn’t been before.
There are 16 locks here in just under a mile.
They raise the barges up almost a hundred feet as they enter central Birmingham.
And it was all built 200 years ago.
This is a picture of the lock flight in the early 1800s
And this is how the same area looks now.
Helen lives right over the locks!
We walked home in the dark.
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