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WALKING CANAL TOWPATHS

  • Thread starter Thread starter DAVE BRICK
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D

DAVE BRICK

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In the late seventys we used to walk canal towpaths. One walk I enjoyed and did several times was Gas Street to Minworth. It was a very interesting pastime and good exercise too.

To see lots of things from a different angle from the roads we usually used. Some of the engineering works fascinated me, from the old brick arch bridges to the tall concrete columns of spaghetti junction, where at this particular spot the river Tame ? runs parallel with the canal.

Further on adjacent to Kingsbury Road the canal passes the imposing Cincinati building and passes at the back of the less imposing Drome Cafe

They can be quite lonely walks, and if anyone tries it they ought to be wary of bumping into an undesirable. One way of pacifying a dodgy person that you encounter is to hand over your cornbeef sandwich, or if that does not work hit him on the head with your umbrella.
 
I was born in a house at the bottom of the banks of the Thame Valley canal. I spent a lot of time with family walking along it and picnicing on the towpaths. The men used to swim on hot summer days.

It is looking pretty good again now, although it is much more difficult to access than it was. The bicycles and prams have been cleared from the water. Many of the old paths to it have been blocked, obviously for safety reasons, but the wild flowers grow in abundance, and the birds sing. Last time we went people were walking their dogs, and we all chatted as we passed. In the true brummie spirit. :D
 
:?
SPIFFING IDEA THE CORN BEEF AND ONION, BRANSTON PICKLE RELISH GRANARY BREAD SANDWICH WITH A SLICE OF HOVO INCLUDED (as bonus): THRUST INTO THE MOUTH OF A MISFIT.
WE USED PACK WINDLASS(-ES) AS USED TO OPEN AND CLOSE LOCKS.
AS THE SOLE FOUNDER OF BIRMINGHAM CANAL NAVIGATIONS SOCIETY AND HAVING TRAVERSED UMPTEEN MILES AROUND THE CLOCK I NEVER HAD AN ENCOUNTER WITH A JUNIOR CRANK AND/OR MANIAC. THE LOCK KEEPER'S IMMENSE ALSATION OUT OF BY GAS STREET WAS A SHEER AND UTTERLY SO WONDER! HE HAD A KNACK OF PINNING SLOB LOUT HOOLIGAN VANDAL THUGS TO THE WALL WITH HIS PAWS AT THEIR SHOULDERS WHILE GLARING AT 'EM WITH HIS BIG HEAD.
HE COULD BOUND FROM THE WEE INTERSECTION THERE TO DIGBETH IN TWO SLOW SHAKES OF A LAMB'S TAIL. A SPLENDID ANIMAL.
WHEN I WALKED MY DOG (x WHIPPET SMOOTH HAIRED FOX TERRIER) HE SNOOZED IN HIS KEEP.

:oops:
YOUR RECOLLECTION OF THE CANAL IS HEARTWARMING.
THERE IS NO SENSIBLE NEED FOR ANY PART OF A TOWPATH TO BE CLOSED.
I'VE BEEN ADVOCATING PLANTING FLOWERS, HERBS ALONG CANALS EVERYWHERE AND ALONG RAILWAYS (WITH SHRUBBERY) FOR DONKEY'S YEARS - BUT NOTHING HAPPENS. INCREDIBLE, NO?
IF EVERYBODY WHO PUTS UP FOR THE RAFFEL TO BUY THAT PUB IN SPRING HILL SO THAT THE OWNER CAN SAIL OFF INTO THE SUNSET INVESTED IN A FEW PACKETS OF SEEDS ONCE A MONTH AND EXERCISED ALONG A TOW PATH THEN WE MIGHT BE GETTING SOMEWHERE. THEY CAN WEILD RAKES AND PITCHFORKS.
IF YOU STAY COOL CALM AND COLLECTED IT IS EASY TO KNOCK POTENTIAL ASSAILANTS INTO THE WATER. THAT USUALLY HAS A MOLLIFICATORY EFFECT.
NICE PITCH ON T/PATHS.
EXEMPLARY EXERCISE AND SUCH A LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR KINDER.
VERY GOOD FOR PEOPLE IN REHAB; INCLUDING PSYCHIATRIC CARE.
:wink:
 
Three nice postings on a wonderful subject from, I imagine, three very different individuals - this is what this forum is all about.
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NICE !

Paul, are you talking about me ! [and the others] Oh you've made me feel all nice now.

I wonder how Di from Cambs, hmld from San Francisco and myself would get on if we were sitting at a table having a drink ?
 
Of course I included you, Dave, and I think you'd get on well with hmld and our Di.
gathering.gif
 
Three people having a drink..

If you try to make it four having a drink just make sure it's not John Young..(you'll be buying all night) 8)

I love the Canals..I used to go up to the Canal that ran alongside Belmont Row behind the old Civil Defence place....
We used to walk miles all along it, picking blackberries or floated sticks out on the murky green surface..and from the towpath we threw stones to 'blow' up the enemy ships..
We hung around in the 'dark half hour' where the Rea meets up with the Tame..our necks pressed tight to our chests because my brother had told me that Rats always went for your throat.
I sailed a tin bath 3 miles until I met the 'Waterfall' at Saltley Viaduct..I did the same sitting on a Paper Bail.
We took Air rifles and shot at the rats...but we never hit one..
We swam in rat urine infested waters yet miraculously never caught anything..We saw the city from an angle that most never knew of..or cared..It was the place of childhood dreams and memories..
It was a place where no parent or Schoolboard man ever looked for us..it was secret hideaway..our high seas, our mighty Amazon....our Cut..
 
Such special magical places aren't they. :D

I'll buy you a drink anytime Dave. Not sure where in Birmingham hmld was born, But we could have a good old chin wag about Witton.
 
PERVERT

My mate and I, both about 14 at the time, went on the 45 bus to the canal at Kings Norton with our fishing rods. A grown man befriended us on the bus and we were scared. He had fishing tackle and he got off the bus with us to go where we told him we were going. Before we got to the canal he was acting dodgy and we whispered a plan to escape from him.

When we got to the canal which was deserted we started to walk really fast so we were leaving him behind. He kept asking us to stop but we would'nt. In the end we were running along and he disappeared out of sight.
 
We often walk the canal towpaths, not so much in the Birmingham area but a bit further afield, we find it very relaxing and one thing you nearly always find a pub along the way. My friend and her partner sold their house about five years ago and bought a live-on canal boat and we have spent many happy times with them whenever they have been in the Midlands, Ray's grandparents both came from canal families, and I found one of my ancestors was a boatman in 1850, and another had a pub in 1813 the Navigation Inn, would you believe, Causeway Lane, Great Heath,
Foleshill, Coventry, we went to find it only to discover it had been demolished about 20/25 years ago although we were told it was a listed building, I'm trying to find a photo and more information about it.

We have often thought about buying one ourselves, but not to live on.
 
PINT OF BITTER SHANDY

Di, I'll meet you outside the Rat Pan, I'll be wearing blue jeans and my new coat I got from Matalan.

Silve, Some friends of ours from here in North Devon bought a narrow boat and went down to London in it and under Tower Bridge.
 
Our friends did that too, apparently you can spend 5 nights moored in the London area but have to have a tugboat escort to navigate parts of the Thames because of the tides, they had to leave about 5 a.m. on the day they left.
 
Ar, the Cut

Canals are marvellous places, but you weren't made welcome when I was little -- the boatmen and lockkeepers and their dogs had no time for nosey urchins like me. The bus garages, tram depots and even the railway engine sheds were much more welcoming. Even so I covered a few miles exploring the towpaths and, in the later 1950s, got to know them better when a friend of mine acquired first an old ex-WD pontoon (£10, he said) and later a dumb coal boat (a snip at £25), which I did most of the pulling from Olton to a mooring near Bordesley.
Around that time I was working for the City Architect on the Museum of Science and Industry, formerly Elkington's factory in Newhall Street, which bridged over the canal in a very rickety way - it's been demolished long since unfortunately. A guy named Madeley from the City Engineer's and I had to do a structural survey, of which the most important bit was the span over the canal. At that very point was a former lock which had single gates operated from the towpath, leading to a long finger of masonry with an overflow sluice on the other side. We closed the gate to get access to this finger, to do our stuff. Meanwhile a working boat came up to the lock, opened the gate and moved off, leaving us stranded on this narrow strip in the middle of the water. "Hey, boatman", shrieked my colleague Madeley, "Close the blasted gate behind you!". There was a muffled response, and further discussion ended with two fingers, and we were on our own.
Half an hour later another boat came past, and a kind person closed the gate behind them to let us off our tiny prison. For a time this was a legend in the annals of that office. Nearly 50 years ago now!
Peter
 
In the mid fifties along that section of the Birmingham Canal between the then Monument Road,(now Middleway) Ladywood and Dudley Road was a area that coal barges were moored sometimes up to three abreast.
Now it was known that those vagrants who were turned away from the 'Spike' in Western Road due to whatever reason on a weekend would often make their way onto the canal and doss down in the barges.
In the constabulary at the time I frequently worked the 'beat' adjoining the canal and with a colleague off an adjoining beat, we would, in the early hours, sort out who was on the barges.
One always worked this two handed for obvious reasons.
This one night I recall waking one young man who turned out to be a bit of a greyhound for no sooner as he was awoken and he saw our uniforms he was off like one. He ran the full length of some three barges leaping from one to another. He must have been still half asleep for he made one mistake at the last barge. He jumped the wrong way and had to wade back ashore. We escorted him, with noses inclined, to where he had to be taken. I can recall the desk sergeant was not too pleased with the results of our early morning canal walk............. Will.
 
AW, this reminds me of an incident my daughter relayed to me when she was new to the constabulary.

Apparently the canals are a good escape route for theives who target the canalside factories and offices, as well as muggers. On this particular occasion, she and a colleague, both in plain clothes and on foot, were chasing a suspect mugger on a bike. On coming across an innocent teenager with a bike, her colleague showed his warrant card and asked if he could borrow the bike. The lad refused on the grounds that he'd lost a bike like that before.
"But I'm a police officer," the colleague explained.
The lad remained unyielding, replying, "And so was the bloke who nicked me bike the last time!"
 
Although we remember the good times by the local canal, I can remember my Mom who lived with her Aunt in Fazeley St after her Mom died when she was aged 3, that it was a regular thing up to the time she left there in1934 people commiting Suicide on regular basis, mainly Friday nights. :(
 
John
Why is Dave writing when this is his busy time the Bank Holiday :D :D :o
 
In 1896 Brian's gt.grandfather was found drowned in the cut after a night in the pub. :(

I did a bit of courting under very damp canal bridges. :D In the days when they were being ignored, and the detritus of the city was dumped in them. Brian lived in Amberly Grove, Witton, their house was on the edge of the Thame Valley :?: canal. He spent a lot of his youth shooting rats with an air pistol.
 
Hi Di
My Mom & Dad lived in Ambeley Grove when they were first married in 1935 I could have been conceived there I have a Post card from their best friends I will find it tomorrow and let you know the date, this site gets better by the day, LOVE YOU ALL :D :D :D :wink:
It was right near the canal & The Barn Club
 
There was a woman who lived by the canal brindge on Winson Green Road. When a cat or the dog had an unwanted litter they would be taken to her to be "humanely put down". I always thought it strange that no one questioned the amount of dead animals found floating in sacks around that locality. :roll:
 
I know Seebee its a standing joke as he told us he would'nt be on for a while as he was getting busy at the Holiday Camp. :) :lol:
 
Now I had a fascination with that section of the Birmingham Canal at Monument Road for two reasons. Firstly, as has been said it was a good place for the baddies to break into the factories backing onto it and it being less frequented by the man in blue and easy escape route with the proceedings. The second reason was the more important. It took one away from the 'maddening crowd' (the good old general public and more importantly the beat sergeant) who had a knack of diverting one from that what you wanted to do and that in my boo,k in those days was to have a 'drag'
No way could one enjoy a ciggy when they were about (unless one was wearing a cloak- but that is another story)
My mate from the adjoining beat was also a smoker and this particular night joined me. This time we joined the canal at the same point and started walking towards Vincent Street. We were free and enjoying our smoking and generally chatting when it happened -
I saw a head just above a low roof of one of the factories. I called out and the head went from view.
Calling on my mate to get up after the person (he was far lighter than myself) I cupped my hands and he put his foot into it and I heaved him upwards.
Now that part of the bank was wet and slippy and it resulted in us both falling on our 'oraces'. The head re-appeared above us for the was obviously no way he could escape over the other side of the roof.
Endeavouring to muster as much dignity one could while getting up and tidying a dishevelled uniform I enquired what he was doing up there.
The reply was that he was lost.
That was it - smoke time was over and it was nick-nick work time and this was done on his arrival beside us.
He asked it we did not know him. To which I accepted I did not but immediately put a tad more pressure on the grip I had him in.
At Ladywood nick the desk sergeant had been dealing with an older lady and I can recall how he completely dismissed her and opened the door and without asking opened the cell door and we put our villain in.
"How did you get him in" he asked and went on to explain this 'gentleman' had just come out having done seven years for putting forty eight stitches in a policeman's head.
As a nineteen year old sprog I was cock a hoop at all the attention I, and my mate, were given by the older officers but if I had not gripped his arm so tightly and without my mate - what may have happened
 
The allotments were next to the The Barn GSH. Brian's dad kept pigs on his during the war. There was a scam, somehow or other he managed not to give half of his pig to the government :?:

That part of Witton hasn't changed at all. The Barn is the there, the houses as they were. The only difference it the flyover above Moore Lane.

It's a small World Alfie. Brian was born in the Grove in '35. We've still got he conveyancing that was done on the house when my in-laws bought it. :D
 
Di
Thats what I like about this site well its fantastic.
I've learnt more on this site than from my family,
Example Grace got the Birth Cert of my Uncle who died 11 months old then my Grans Marrige Cert and I found that my Uncle was born three months after they were married.
I've asked the remaining members of the family about this Samuel and nobody
knew about it and they are 76 & 74.
God Bless the Brum Web Site
 
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