The Worcester and Birmingham Canal Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury

Navigating Highland glens,

rolling countryside, river valleys and city sprawl,

Britain's canals cut a sedate path

through some of the country's finest scenery.

Canals were the transport arteries at the heart of an industrial age.

A network of locks, tunnels and aqueducts

helped carry goods to every corner of the land and beyond,

transforming 19th-century Britain into an economic superpower.

Today, over 2,000 miles of restored canals

offer a gateway into a different world.

For me and many others, the towpaths alongside them

offer the perfect way to explore this heritage on foot.

Welcome to Birmingham. I never thought I'd say that at the beginning of a walk.

But any Brummie would proudly tell you there are more canals here than there are in Venice.

Technically, that's true.

But I'm not here for gondolas and ice cream.

I'm here to discover why this city and canal network was the epicentre of the Industrial Revolution.

Birmingham was known as "the city of a thousand trades".

By 1759, it was the heart of a manufacturing phenomenon.

At least 20,000 people

were employed producing everything from steam engines and buttons

to toys and guns.

According to one industry leader,

this success was down to the "super-activity" of the people.

But this wasn't the only factor.

By the 1790s, canal mania was born and these new superhighways

crucially accelerated the delivery of raw materials

and the distribution of goods.

And I'm hoping that the rain's going to stop.

And it has.

My walk today is along the Worcester & Birmingham Canal.

And, curiously, it starts here,

a narrow gap connecting it to the rest of the city's waterways.

The canal was built to connect the city and the sea at Bristol.

It changed the fortunes of the entire country,

so this is a tale of two cities, and a journey from 18th-century industry

to 21st-century escapism.

The Worcester & Birmingham Canal was a shortcut to the River Severn,

and ultimately the ports at Gloucester and Bristol.

Digging began in earnest in 1794.

Birmingham was destined to become the workshop of the world.

My two-day walk follows the entire length of the 30-mile canal,

starting in Birmingham

and cutting through the beautiful Worcestershire countryside.

The towpath eventually takes me to another great city of the Midlands,

Worcester, birthplace of the great British composer Edward Elgar,

and home to the world famous Royal porcelain.

It's going to be a walk of contrasts

along a route at the heart of the golden era of British industry.

I might have a damp start, but I'm off to meet Graham Fisher,

canal author, expert and a boy from the Black Country,

who can hopefully shed some light on what makes this canal so special.

-Hi, Graham.

-Hello, Julia.

-Hello.

-This is a special canal.

-Yes.

It means quite a lot compared to other canals.

You've got at least eight different canals here with their own stories to tell,

but the Worcester & Birmingham seems to tell the lot -

industrial archeology, nature at its finest, somewhere to walk my dog.

-This is a significant canal in the Industrial Revolution.

-It's hugely significant.

It provided a route from Birmingham to the Severn.

It also helped access goods made in Birmingham to Worcester, and stuff from Worcester here.

It was said that if something wasn't made here, it wasn't made anywhere in the world.

-It was the heart.

-It was.

Goods from here could be taken to Worcester, then to the Severn,

downstream to Gloucester, Bristol, the great ports beyond.

Goods manufactured in this very spot could go anywhere in the world.

-It's a wet day but what have I got to look forward to on this canal?

-It's pouring down!

That just adds to the magic of the waterways!

Between here and the end of the city environs, you've got so much to see.

You've got tunnels coming up.

You've got a famous name, Cadbury's. I understand you like chocolate.

-I love my chocolate!

-A special stop for you.

Chocolate crumb was brought up from the Sharpness Canal to be processed at the Bournville factory.

Then you suddenly burst out of the city

and are surrounded by a cacophony of birds, nature, greenery.

It's absolutely splendid.

At Tardebigge, you're looking down these winding locks

over the valley towards the Severn. It will melt your heart!

Sold! You've got me.

-Bye, Graham.

-Bye bye.

It's already clear that canalside development has played a huge part

in rejuvenating the city.

Over £488 million has been invested since 2001

and new buildings and apartment blocks abound.

That is until I get to Edgbaston,

home not only to the cricket ground, but also to Birmingham's posh.

It doesn't take long to get to the place where the trees begin,

as it's sometimes called.

It was the vision of the landowner Sir Henry Gough Calthorpe

in the 1700s, to keep Edgbaston a rural oasis

in the heart of an industrial city, free of factories and warehouses.

A very attractive proposition for the well-to-do of Birmingham.

Edgbaston became THE place to live

for the increasingly prosperous middle classes

who wanted to escape the stench, smoke and noise.

In 1791 an Act of Parliament granted the Worcester & Birmingham Canal Co

the authority to cut a waterway through his estate.

Objections to the impact of the canal meant the project dragged on for 24 years,

with a host of engineers putting their name to it.

They needed to placate landowners, while ensuring water to the mills

wasn't affected.

But Sir Henry had clout in Parliament,

so there were agreeable clauses -

no towpaths, warehouses or wharves on the side of the stately home.

Landed gentry could transport their goods for free and were granted fishing rights.

It's good being powerful, isn't it?

What it does mean for today's Birmingham

is that it provides people with a place to escape within city limits.

Continuing south, I'm almost at the outskirts of Birmingham,

approaching a station with a very familiar name.

Bournville.

There it is.

The Cadbury factory, a great British institution.

Its position suggests that, back in the day, it must have had some connection to the canal.

More importantly, how can the producers bring me so close to a chocolate factory,

and not let me go inside?

It wasn't just residents of Edgbaston

keen to find a green enclave.

Cadbury's moved here in the 1870s from grimy industrial Birmingham

with the trail-blazing vision of creating a worker's paradise.

Richard and George Cadbury spent Sundays strolling the green fields to the south,

trying to find a suitable spot by the canal to escape the slums of the inner city.

Bournville was the result, not only the base for their factory,

but the first planned community in the world

with shops, churches, schools, reading rooms and hospitals.

For 40 years, the factory enjoyed a working relationship with the canal,

bringing in raw materials like cocoa beans from Ghana.

And their famous chocolate being exported to the colonies until the 1920s.

But even as the train arrived and the canal declined,

it was used on a minor domestic scale by the factory into the 1960s.

-To make matters worse...

-SNIFFS

..when you sniff the air, I'm not lying, it smells of chocolate.

From sights to smells,

it's the simple pleasures of this canal that I'm starting to enjoy.

-Hiya.

-Hi, there.

-Where are you off to?

-London.

-London?

-London.

-Proper London London?

-Proper London.

-How long's it going to take you?

-Between seven and ten days.

-Why are you doing that?

-To celebrate Roy's birthday. He's 65 on Monday.

-Happy birthday!

-Thank you.

And we wanted to do something different, cos we own a pub.

-You didn't want a night in a pub so you got a week on a boat?

-Yes.

Who does all the driving?

I do. June does all the locks.

-You've got the hard job, June!

-Yeah.

-What an adventure!

-It is at our age.

-We should be sitting and knitting. LAUGHING:

-No, that's boring!

-Have a fantastic time!

-Thank you very much.

As Birmingham finally fades into the distance,

the canal disappears into a one-and-a-half-mile tunnel.

Unfortunately, there's no towpath, which means I have to go overground,

just like the boat horses used to,

although donkeys were often favoured

as they were small enough to hop on board.

No such luck for me.

On soft ground,

a horse could only pull a cart weighing half a tonne,

compared to 50 tonnes on a canal.

A massive housing estate

built in the 1970s after Birmingham's slums were cleared

now stands at Hawksley, in what used to be open farmland.

A mile on, and I'm in rural Worcestershire.

Once on the other side of the tunnel,

I'm in a very different scene.

The canal now nestles beneath a canopy of high trees

surrounded by rolling green countryside.

After just over eight miles,

my walk passes the quaint little village of Alvechurch.

This sleepy hollow is the birthplace of Godfrey Baseley,

creator of The Archers,

the longest running radio broadcast anywhere in the world.

The Worcestershire countryside

was supposed to have inspired his rural soap opera.

The towpath eases gently along for another six miles or so,

to the halfway point on my walk.

It's well worth heading onto the bridge for a charming view,

a nice reward at the end of day one.

That beautiful 18th-century spire marks a key point of the walk.

This is Tardebigge, where the author of a surprise best-seller moored up

during the bleak years of World War II.

Tom Rolt's 1944 book Narrow Boat

was the story of his travels with his wife

along what remained of the decaying canals.

To his surprise, it was a hit with both public and critics.

It seemed to appeal to national pride

and the determination to preserve Britain's heritage.

He writes, "If the canals are left to the mercies of economists and scientific planners,

"before many years have passed, the last of them will become a weedy, stagnant ditch

"and the bright boats will rot at the wharves to live on only in old men's memories."

A puzzled Tom Rolt was inundated with fan mail.

One letter was from another author who shared his love for canals.

He proposed the formation of a society

to revive Britain's neglected canal network.

The young author was Robert Aickman,

and when Rolt invited him on board his boat Cressy

moored here at Tardebigge, they decided to form an association

with a mission to restore 2,000 miles of canals across the UK.

It looks like they did a pretty fine job, too.

This is where they met and decided to revive the canal network.

They set up the Inland Waterways Association.

That's not the only thing that makes this part of the canal special.

The village gives its name to the longest flight of locks in the UK.

But I'm saving THAT for tomorrow.

At the start of day two, this dramatic two-mile flight of 30 locks

lies ahead of me, lowering the canal 220 feet.

I'm starting at lock 58

and as I drop downhill, so do the numbers.

Descending the flight will take me to lock 29.

Lock number one is still another 15 miles away,

the prize at the end of my walk, when I finally get to Worcester.

15 miles of canal and you might have noticed that this

is actually the first lock, lock 58.

-Hello.

-Hiya.

-This is the last one!

-It is.

-How long has it taken you?

-Five hours.

-Five long hours!

-Mostly in the rain.

-Yes!

So we had to keep morale up with hot drinks and food.

-What have I got to look forward to?

-Lots of lovely stuff.

It drops about 200 feet or so.

Just lots of good scenery, lovely scenery, and boat people.

-People on the canal.

-Nice? Friendly?

-Very friendly. Very colourful.

-How many times have you done this?

-First time.

-So big adventure!

-Yeah.

-Fantastic. Good luck, ladies. Nice to see you! Bye.

-Bye.

At lock 57, you pass the old engine house,

which used to help maintain water levels in the canal.

When it takes an average of 90,000 gallons of water

every time the lock gates open, you realise

why the canal engineers needed to stockpile water close by.

Tardebigge reservoir continues to keep this flight of locks in action,

with feeder channels now directing water back into the canal.

Nice little diversion.

The terrain at Tardebigge had presented a major geographical obstacle for the canal builders.

The route had travelled from Birmingham on a plateau,

but here the canal needed to descend some 220 feet.

The initial solution incorporated 12 boat lifts

that would move boats up and down.

Worried by the price tag of such an elaborate scheme, only one was built

and the canal engineer John Rennie was drafted in to assess the plan.

He concluded that it wouldn't survive rough treatment from the boatmen,

so the boat lift was abandoned in favour of the locks we see today.

That's a lovely sight, to see lock after lock after lock.

Negotiating the flight is considered by boaters to be a rite of passage.

It's definitely one for the checklist.

The canals are packed with the technological wonders of their day.

Of all the surprising engineering feats, this is surely

one of the most impressive.

It is a long way to the bottom!

It feels like time for a cuppa.

I'm hoping to meet lock keeper Alan Trove and his wife Barbara at lock 18, where they live,

right next to the water.

-How long have you been here, Barbara?

-20 years in November.

I bet you've seen just about every conceivable boat with every kind of person on it.

We've even had a chap on a boat, who'd boated for 30 years,

-stepped across the bottom gate, caught his foot on the collar, fell in and it killed him.

-No?

-Yeah.

We see quite a few things here!

If you had to describe life on this canal,

how does it work through the seasons?

-What's it like in the winter?

-Quiet.

-Apart from fishermen.

-For you, what's life like then?

-Boring!

I sit and do jigsaws all winter cos there's nothing else to do.

You can't get out in the garden. You hardly see anybody.

If the sun's shining, you get loads of walkers,

push bikers, fishermen come and sit freezing like this, shivering.

I'm bumping into people all the time, all having a great time.

Families, lads on their boat having a lads' week or weekend.

-There seem to be people still enjoying the canals.

-It is hard work, though.

Some of these top-end paddles, they struggle to pick them up.

Getting through these locks isn't as easy as it looks.

See if you can pick up.

'Alan challenges me and, with the gauntlet laid, how can I resist?'

Right... Yeah?

Here? On there?

Other side? Like this?

Right, which way?

That way or down?

'It's hard work just trying to do this once,

'never mind the 58 times that boaters face on this canal.'

Bloody hard work!

That's hard!

It's extraordinary to think that this lovely cottage, dating to 1850,

has been home to generations of lock keepers like Alan and Barbara.

It's been part of the heyday of the canal,

when chocolate crumb and coal were carried past its front door.

Today, the scene hasn't changed all that much.

Traffic continues, and at least 3,000 boats chug by each year.

But these narrowboats are carrying passengers enjoying holidays,

rather than goods.

I started this walk in the rain and I'll finish this walk in the rain.

A little bit of H2O doesn't stop the Bradbury.

SHE HUMS A JOLLY TUNE

My walk's now drawing to a close.

As I arrive on the edge of Worcester, home not only to Elgar

but also Worcestershire Sauce, the weather clears for the home strait.

Apart from the canal, little is left of Worcester's manufacturing past.

Gone are the factories and warehouses,

which made use of the canal and its link to the River Severn.

The Worcester Porcelain Museum is one of the few clues

that there was ever a formidable industry here.

I'm going to meet its curator, Wendy Cook.

Hello, Wendy.

-Even before the canal, porcelain, for Worcester, was such a huge industry.

-Very much so.

There were four factories operating.

On this site, they were working by the mid 1780s

to produce porcelain for the best customers.

-It was going all over the world.

-Everywhere - America, India, China!

-It grew and grew.

-It was enormous.

-Yes. At a time when industry was in its infancy.

There were very few factories.

Before the canal, how did this huge industry get everything it needed? It needed a lot of materials.

-Mainly up the River Severn, which isn't very far.

-Less than half a mile?

-Yes.

-Yet this stretch of water made such a big difference.

-Yes.

Because the raw materials and the finished products were just so difficult to transport.

So breakable, so heavy.

The canal allowed the industry to expand and produce very much more.

And this is it, the scene of all of that activity as it was.

And now parts are derelict and parts turned into des-res apartments.

They're redeveloping the site, which was about 15 acres.

There were four large bottle kilns, so it was a big employer.

A factory employed 1,000 people. That doesn't happen any more.

-It doesn't make financial sense.

-Not any more.

'It's not hard to see how the final half-mile stretch would have transformed business in Worcester.

'Instead of relying on a mud track to transport delicate pottery,

'it was this little bit of canal

'that swiftly linked to the Severn and was used commercially

'until the 1960s.

'It's been quite a journey for me,

'from land-locked Birmingham on a plateau, down to sea level,

'and my final goal - the first lock of the canal.

'This is where my waterway joins an even bigger one, the River Severn.'

And there it is!

Lock number one.

And the evidence? "Birmingham 30 miles, 58 locks". Yes!

Lock number one finally opened its gates in December 1815

to cannon fire and music, as a hopeful and expectant crowd

cheered the first passage of boats.

Within two weeks, the exchange of cargo was in full flow

between the canal and river.

Everything from china clay to cocoa beans.

The Worcester & Birmingham Canal embodies the Industrial Revolution.

Without canals, manufacturing couldn't have grown the way that it did.

Ironically, these are an escape from modern-day life.

People live on them, walk alongside them, cycle alongside them.

They fit into the countryside like any river, and in cities they're a tranquil haven.

Bet the canal builders didn't expect that.

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