Day 3: Birmingham to Phepson Farm, 26.7 miles
Alvechurch
When I finally walked in to the Weighbridge at Alvechurch Marina (home to a boat hire that can be booked through ABC and Canal Boat Holidays ), I was quite hungry, but apparently it had taken me longer to make it from Kings Norton to Alvechurch (pronounced ALV-church) than I’d realized. I was informed they’d just stopped serving food, but I could have a pork pie if I wanted. Inquiring as to the delectability of a pork pie, I was shown a freezer drawer of wrapped pies and told they could microwave one for me in a matter of minutes.
I declined, thinking I deserved a much grander meal, and resolved to eat when I reached the Eagle & Sun pub at Hanbury Wharf near Droitwich. I did ask to use the toilet, even though a sign said it was reserved for paying customers. Again permission was kindly granted. I began to realize this was turning into a good scam, ask for food when it wasn’t being served and then ask to use the toilet.
By the way, the Worcester Birmingham & Droitwich Canal Society meets at the Weighbridge. The Crown Inn is just to the north, also on the canal, and there are several pubs and restaurants in Alvechurch proper.
After leaving the Weighbridge I resolved to ride as quickly as possible, but I still had two big obstacles in my way. The first was Shortwood Tunnel and the second Tardebigge Tunnel. I was pretty sanguine about these, however, because the path around them was so obvious from Google Maps.
And for some reason I was in a really good mood, even though I was tired, sweaty and hungry. I was finally enjoying my trip, not just dealing with the complexities of getting from point A to B. When I crossed Shortwood Tunnel I was positively giddy.
It’s a relatively short (.35 miles/614 yards/561 meters) and very straight tunnel.5 The towpath climbs up the cut away from the tunnel portal and quickly leads to a path crossing open farmland. Satellite views showed trimmed, green fields but when I arrived I saw a sea of yellow flowers, reminding me of the opening for Pushing Daisies or Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as Cloud (thanks moose and squirrel!). It was magical and any worry I had about the trip faded away. I’d been worried about my stamina, my photography skills and the expense of my enterprise, but all that vanished in the pure joy of riding a bike along a canal. I was combining one of my oldest joys with one of my newest. It brought me back to growing up in San Antonio and riding my bike for hours and suddenly realizing I didn’t know where the hell I was. And it reminded me of my best dreams of following a river to who knows where.
I felt so utterly alone in that field and yet connected to everything. It was one of those moments when you feel the universe has arranged for you—and just you—to be there at that exact moment in time to witness how wonderful life is. I hoped an overhead satellite might take a picture of the field just then and forever imbue that image with my joy.
I returned to the towpath but just after the AngloWelsh narrowboat hire I left it again to go around Tardebigge (pronounced TAR-dee-big) Tunnel (.33 miles/580 yards/530 meters). Unfortunately going around this tunnel is complicated by the Bromsgrove Highway/A448. I had to ride south alongside the A448 on B4096/Hewell Lane until coming to the Alcester Road/ B4184, which goes under the A448.
I should have remained on the Alcester (pronounced ULL-ster) Road all the way to the canal, but I stupidly asked another cyclist for directions. He gave me a perfectly valid route, but it deposited me between Lock 58 and 57. This meant I missed a chance to photograph the top lock and more importantly to use the restroom at the CRT facilities there.
St. Bartholomew’s
I was so focused on my route I barely noticed St. Bartholomew’s Parish Church as I rode back to the canal after my detour around Tardebigge Tunnel. There may have been a church on the site since the Norman Conquest, but the present church dates to 1777. The previous church, which collapsed in 1775, had the distinction of the chancel being in Warwickshire while the main part of the church was in Worcestershire. A Victorian restoration repaired an inconvenience that required parishioners to climb over the backs of some pews and an arrangement that had some pews facing away from the pulpit.
Read more …Spurred by hunger and the need to pee, I rode down the canal as fast as practical, aided by the gradient provided by the Tardebigge flight of 30 locks. Canals are generally flat, but the flight drops the waterway 220 feet over two-and-a-quarter miles. It’s not a smooth gradient, of course, dropping about seven feet at every lock and giving a tired cyclist a much-needed boost when traveling south on the canal.
The towpath is just a dirt track along the flight but with relatively little tree cover and no recent rain the surface was dry and packed. Boats shouldn’t moor within a flight unless there’s a queue at a lock and traffic was light. So I didn’t need to slow for moored boats, only when I went under bridges.
