Day 1 - Clifton Wharf to Hawkesbury Junction

Time has flown since our last post. Seville and Madrid became a bit of a blur (blog wise) but I have the photos and we'll get back to those stories and experiences shortly.

Similarly, we used every spare minute we had of the short time in Birmingham to discover as much about it's history and the general layout of the inner city. Again, stay tuned for this a little later.

Friesian cows curious at the all the fuss and noise in the canal

Towpath Bridge northern Oxford Canal

Colourfully decorated Narrowboat on Oxford Canal

Northern end of Oxford Canal

There was much barely suppressed excitement the following day as we aught the train from Brum to Rugby to meet our son and first mate Angus then took the short taxi ride to Clifton Wharf. The boat hire company, Clifton Cruisers was very keen to get us underway asap as we were one of nine hirers leaving for short (or long) breaks on the same afternoon.

Helen - Glenn - David

A quick but thorough briefing and a short reverse to the winding hole (pronounced "wind" (as in breeze) "ing") to turn and face west and we were underway.

Just a few miles away we met up with London based cousin Glenn and his partner David then shopping for food and some essentials not supplied with the boat and we were soon heading for Hawkesbury Junction.

Glenn - David - Angus

This part of the canal network is the most northern section of the Oxford Canal ending at the Stop Lock known as Sutton Stop. This stop lock works just like a regular lock ie. swing gates and sluices however this one has only a 150mm difference in water level.

Hawkesbury Junction

Sutton Stop Lock, at Hawkesbury Junction, was built to stop the Oxford Canal losing precious water to the then recently-constructed Coventry Canal. The Stop Lock was the resolution of a dispute that, for a time, saw the two canals running parallel without being linked. Hawkesbury Junction is now a conservation area

When the individual canals were built and operated as commercial concerns stop locks were only constructed to restrict the loss of water into the opposition company's canal). Now that the majority of the network is owned by the Canal and River Trust (on behalf of the British Government) stop locks have generally become redundant and most have been removed or left open.

Sutton Stop Lock - Hawkesbury Junction

The Greyhound Public House - Hawkesbury Junction

Hawkesbury Junction was selected as our first day destination for a couple of reasons

1. there's very few places to purchase a beer and a meal immediately prior to this mooring area and
2. the location is both historic and picturesque as you can see in the pics

Sutton Stop Lock, at Hawkesbury Junction, was built to stop the Oxford Canal losing precious water to the then recently-constructed Coventry Canal. The Stop Lock was the resolution of a dispute that, for a time, saw the two canals running parallel without being linked. Hawkesbury Junction is now a conservation area.

Hawkesbury Junction and Coventry and Oxford canals

The junction was originally to be located at Gosford Green, but Brindley changed his mind while the bill was in Parliament, and tried to get the junction moved to Bedworth. This would have deprived the Coventry Canal of tolls on all coal traffic using the Oxford Canal, and so a compromise was reached. Longford was chosen as the site for the junction, and the compensation clauses were added to ensure that the Coventry Canal received much the same revenue as it would have done, had the junction been at Gosford. It was a complicated solution, and required both canals to run parallel to one another for some distance.

By 1913, the developing shafts of the Coventry Colliery had reached beyond the lift of the existing pump engine. Named Lady Godiva, it was decommissioned in 1913 but left in place, and eventually moved to the Dartmouth Museum in the 1960s (birthplace of Thomas Newcomen), as the Newcomen Memorial Engine. The canal provided an immediate outlet for the colliery's pumped-out water ingress

A disused engine house, built in 1821, stands on the western bank of the Coventry Canal. It originally housed a Newcomen steam engine, which was brought from Griff Colliery, where it had already worked for 100 years, and which was used to pump water from mines in the area to supply the canal.

Engine house - Hawkesbury Junction

As this is the start (or end) of the Oxford Canal, tolls were also collected here from working narrowboats passing from into and from this waterway.

That's it for the moment. Finally we have Wireless Broadband on board Eleanor now so the frequency of blog posts should definitely improve shortly.

Cheers,

The Skipper.