Battling the Tame Valley

During the first two weeks of November, my friend and I took a hire boat around the ‘Warwickshire Ring', that included a scenic detour round the Tame Valley Canal, writes David Davis.

On this canal one of the most impressive structures is Chimney Bridge, a Grade II listed footbridge which I'm guessing must be around 100 feet high.

Drop off the top

Sadly some of the locals seem to have thought it would also be impressive to drop something very large off the top of it, as we found out when we nearly capsized, on colliding with what turned out to be a submerged leather sofa! Ouch.

Surviving this, we worked our way down the Perry Bar Flight, only to feel the tell-tale sign of 'something wrapped round the propeller' at the foot of Lock 11.

Not a good idea

Unfortunately the usual advice to 'try a quick burst of reverse' did not turn out to be a good idea...

We had been snagged by several dozen metres of metal cable—very strong, but very flexible. It had already wrapped itself round the propeller shaft many times, and a burst of reverse only succeeded in knitting even more layers round in the other direction! A final burst of forward throttle merely finished tying the knot.

A scary sight awaited us when we lifted the weed hatch!

Three hours

Our hire base had to drive out to rescue us, and spent over three hours the next day cutting us free. The poor fellow said he'd never seen such a mess in 26 years of hiring.

Having phoned up the C&RT emergency line to warn them of the submerged sofa at Chimney Bridge, I gather we were unlucky enough to be cruising that way just a week or two before some much needed scheduled dredging.