Monday 8th April

We did quite a lot of boating today as we were going through Birmingham and wanted to get through and out the other side in the day. The canal system through Birmingham was built for a purpose and that certainly wasn't the leisure industry.
Here's us setting off at about 10 o'clock.

By midday we were in the heart of the City with traffic buzzing around alongside us and overhead.

The canals are not unattractive but they were built to get goods from A to B as directly as possible, so quite a few long straight canals with not much to see but the backs of buildings. A total of 16 miles, 1¼ furlongs and 15 locks. We stopped for the night at a place called Catherine de Barnes.