Merry Hill (Dudley No. 1 Canal) to Red House Glass Cone (Stourbridge Canal)

In Delph Top Lock

We are moving on today and as we have a lot of locks to do we left early, just after 8am, well it is early for us!  The sky was a bit grey but at least it was dry.

Going down the Delph locks

At the Bottom

We set off along the canal and shortly came to the top of the Delph Locks.  The original nine locks, built in 1779, were greatly affected by subsidence due to mining in the area resulting in the middle seven locks being rebuilt as six in 1858.  Still referred to as the “Delph Nine”, the bottom lock marks the divide between Dudley Canal No. 1 and the Stourbridge Canal.  The locks take the canal from 356 feet to 441 feet above sea level giving the canal a rise/fall of 85 feet in just 546 yards.

Tenth Lock!

Unfortunately the locks were against us, so we had to set each one, but Kev went down a couple of locks and got them ready each time so we made good progress through them and soon we were at the bottom. There is a pub at the bottom called The Tenth Lock!

Will we fit?

Only Just!!

We then chugged on, this section is very winky wonky as well.  There was also a very low bridge but luckily we just fitted underneath. 

CRT fixing the lock

In Stourbridge top lock

Two locks close together

After a while we were at Leys Junction and we went around the corner and saw the top lock of the next flight of locks the Stourbridge sixteen was taped up. We moored up and went down to the next lock where CRT was working.  One of them was in the water.  They said that one of the paddles was stuck up and he got in the water to see if he could free it, but no luck so they would have to empty the pound so they could see all the paddle and take it from there.  We made them a cup of tea then went back to the boat and had lunch.

Going down the Stourbridge flight

There was a cache right by the top lock so we had a look to see if we could see it and we found it.  We had a few spots of rain but it didn’t come to anything.  After about an hour the lock was fixed, they found an anti-vandal key which you need to operate some of the locks wedged behind the paddle, so once they got that out, they filled the pound back up and we were on our way.

Glass cone in the distance

We worked our way  through the locks and met one boat coming up but the canal is very quiet and didn’t really expect to see any boats.

There are two locks in this flight which are really close together and are almost a staircase but not quite.  Some of the gates kept flipping open after we left them, but that does happen sometimes.

After a while the Red House Glass Cone came into view, this is where Stuart Crystal used to be made from 1881 until 1936, it is now a museum.

We went through a couple more locks, we did twelve of the sixteen and moored outside the Glass cone.  We are staying here tonight and going to have a good look around the Glass Cone tomorrow morning before we chug off.

Moored at Red House Glass Cone