The Black Country Ring

Many people who travel on narrow boats will be familiar with the idea of a round trip (or ring), using the interconnections of the various canals to travel in either a clockwise or anticlockwise direction, ending up where they started.  Famous examples include the Cheshire Ring, the Four Counties Ring and the Staffordshire and Birmingham Ring.  Today, on my bike I competed the Black Country Ring.  It's not mentioned anywhere, but is about 30 miles long and uses the Walsall, Tame Valley, Rushall, Daw End and Wyrley and Essington Canals.  

I'm not surprised it's not mentioned, it might not be described as the most scenic, travelling as it does through the former industrial heartland of the West Midlands.  Not a single moving boat was seen along the length of the ride, which wasn't surprising as one of the pounds on the Walsall Canal is currently drained for works.  Still it takes in the highlights of the Ray Hall (M5/M6) Interchange and this is where I stopped to take this picture.  I'm on top of the canal embankment, adjacent to the M6 on one of its elevated sections.  It's hard to imagine how many tons of soil had to be banked up to create this canal.  The M6, by my estimation is at least 20 metres above the ground level at this point.  I was looking down on the roofs of houses on the other side of the canal.

I waited until the afternoon for my ride to get the best of the weather.  The morning was taken up removing the sanitary ware from the downstairs toilet, stripping the wallpaper from the walls and setting out the replacement toilet and wash hand basin so I can get the last of the fittings from a local DIY store to connect everything tomorrow.  I was quite chuffed, everything went without incident, despite having to cut the hot and cold water feeds and fit new valves so that I could turn the water supply back on.