Two Weeks on the English Canals--Day 10

Day 10
Monday
July 29, 2002

     We bid farewell to Warwick and were underway just after 8:00 AM. We were about to attack the dreaded Hatton Flight. Twenty-one locks over two miles. We knocked off the first two locks and were approaching the third when Lyn, who had been doing advance scouting ahead, came running back toward us. She brought us the news that an essential part of the mechanism of the third lock was damaged. Nobody was going anyplace until British Waterways could fix it. We all pulled over and tied up. British Waterway people putted up and down the towpath in ATV's towing little wagons, sometimes full of tools or large iron pieces, sometimes empty. The best information the British Waterways folks could give us was that it might take most of a day or more to fix the problem and may involve draining the entire pound (the channel between two locks.)
     Tom, Lyn, and van driver Pam hastily consulted about the planned schedule. They decided that we would take the excursion today that had been planned for two days into the future, effectively time shifting our schedule to accommodate the repairs. Tom and Lyn would stay with the boats to monitor the situation with lock repairs. If repairs took longer than a day, we would have to turn around and go back to our starting point the way we came, rather than returning to Nuneaton in a loop.
     So we were off to the Black Country Living Museum. This museum is a 26-acre site on which there has been reconstructed an authentic coal-mining village of the early 1920s'. The village had originally been at a different location and had been moved to the Museum site and rebuilt exactly, stone by stone.
    A huge seam of Staffordshire Thick Coal, 10 yards feet thick and close to the surface, provided the financial support for villages such as this. For those who are stout of heart and body, the Museum actually provides access to the innards of what was a real coal mine.
       All the authentic working shops are here: the general store, the nailmaking shop, the baker, the cobbler, and so on. Oh yes, there is also an authentic working model of an English coal miners pub of a century ago. The establishment, however, does not require one to be an authentic coal miner to drink there. American tourists, parched by atypically warm English weather, will do.
      In addition to the shops there are a number of carefully reconstructed cottages that do an effective job of providing glimpses into the everyday lives of the villagers. There is even one cottage that, when rescued from the original site, was suffering subsidence, the sinking of the earth as the coal beneath is removed. The cottage was rebuilt exactly as it had been, skewed and twisted by the sinking land. Appropriately enough, it is called the "Tilted Cottage". There was a woman inside, dressed in period clothes, talking about the lives of the people.
     "It was a wretched life," she said, "but the Western World would not have progressed without their efforts."
     Near the back of each house was a pile of coal, perhaps 100 pounds, which was used for heating the house. There were pens attached to some of the cottages where chickens appeared to thrive and in one instance, a contented looking hog dozed, snoring loudly.
     Several times each year the museum sponsors a "Living History Weekend". The Friends of the Museum spend the weekend living in 1920s conditions in the cottages. They attempt to wash, cook, clean and entertain themselves without all the modern conveniences that we take for granted. The public is invited to watch.
     After we left the museum, we expected to return to the boats, still stranded below the locks. Instead, the van returned us to the Waterman Pub, near the top of the locks, Pam, our van driver, had been informed by cell phone that Tom and Lyn were at the top of the locks. As it turned out, the British Waterways workmen had solved the lock problem in good time so Tom and Lyn, by themselves, brought both boats up the entire flight of 21 locks. They had lashed the boats together and one drove both boats while the other worked all the locks and sluice gates. Lyn was understandably very tired and was lying down, but Tom met us at the pub and carried on in the best of nautical traditions, trying not to let his fatigue show.
     The Waterman Pub is a large and friendly bar and restaurant overlooking the Hatton flight of locks and the surrounding farmland. The pub includes a large outdoor seating area at the back where patrons enjoy a splendid view of golden fields of wheat and barley, and emerald pastures complete with grazing horses. Here and there, a rustic red brick farmhouse snuggles among trees at the edge of a field.
     Our Waterman moorage turned out to be a beautiful spot. Hot-pink fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) covered the bank rising from the towpath, helping to make this a very pleasant place to spend the night.