This morning we said farewell to Tim and Sam on nb Plan B, who we’d had a drink with, out on the canal side yesterday evening. They surprised us by giving us a handful of cooking apples; they had a massive carrier bag full of them from another boater they’d met.

I took Eira out for a short walk in the morning and found some blackberries. Sarah couldn’t resist making me a crumble from the later 🙂

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I also took the chance to explore the entrance to Dudley tunnel, which Sarah had been around earlier. They have guided tours, which we booked onto for the afternoon. You can also arrange to have your own boat towed through by a tug, but we’re not going that way…not this time anyway!

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Before we went on any jaunts, we needed to do an oil change, so we made the most of the cooler weather in the morning to get that done. It all went slickly, naturally!

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The tour was very interesting. Sarah and I went on separate trips, so we had one of us on the boat to look after Eira. We had tried leaving her on her own, but she wasn’t having any of it and would have disturbed the neighbourhood for miles around with her barking if we’d both left her, she wouldn’t settle for some reason.

There are big open spaces in places, where the roof has been mined out. There are also some large enclosed caverns, one of which they use for putting on concerts, pantos and the like. The area in the photo below is jokingly known as the Hanging Gardens of Dudley.

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The network of tunnels goes on for miles, including a lower level, but most of it is closed off now as it’s unsafe or flooded. In fact, a portion of the trip is through a much more modern tunnel adding in 1989 to allow for a round trip, avoiding a now unsafe part of the network.

In the old days boats were “legged” through the tunnel by men lying sideways across the boat with their legs ou the side, pushing with their feet along the tunnel wall. I got to have a go, but sadly no photo as Sarah wasn’t there with me. When they weren’t legging the boats along, they would pole them by sticking their boat hook in the ceiling and pushing on it, or pushing on a boat pole off the bottom. The bricks were all hand made and different sizes and colours, and took a bit of a beating from all the boat hooks being stuck into them.

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In the afternoon we did a pumpout – a boat moved on last night, so we moved to the other side of the basin so we were in prime position. It’s a great little mooring spot, with a grass area for Eira and the toilet block and water tap all close to hand – and all secure and locked up after the museum closes at 5pm.