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Ridgeacre branch


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So why wasn't the fines used to clear up the mess? seems funny that £63k can be fined yet the pollution doesn't get a penny of it!!

 

RWLP the stourbridge extension upto the railway bridge where the canal divides is certainly navigable as I've been up there drawing 2'9" and then backed out again 70'and in the ice!! just as easy backwards as forwards when frozen!!

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So why wasn't the fines used to clear up the mess? seems funny that £63k can be fined yet the pollution doesn't get a penny of it!!

 

Why dont you ask Robinsons? Or even BW 01827 252000. It may have well been there was £180k of which £120 were "costs" that could well include clean up. Whilst Robinsons are recent incidents, this does not alter the fact that the other pollution is from many decades previous.

Edited by Laurence Hogg
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How much of the Stourbridge extension did you do? I was checking that out in a book I have last week

 

Richard

 

You can get to the (firm) end of the basinMy link but no chance of proceeding up the Fens Branch beyond the Railway Bridge - just enough depth to turn in the junction of the two, fortunately. Didn't make it as far as Titford Pools either, last year. After dragging the bottom, we came to a slow halt in some narrows with no real means of knowing whether the depth increased subsequently' with the winding hole (other than at the pools) fast receding astern, discretion won the day.

 

You mention shopping trolleys; I can only think that the supermarkets in Horseley Heath, on the Walsall canal, are well stocked with hand-baskets because judging from the quantity in the canal, they must be clean out of trolleys.

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I must try the Fens branch sometime

 

We tried to get through the motorway bridge on the Portway branch and found a reef of something blocking the way. I have never tried the Causeway Green branch due to extreme cowardice

 

Richard

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Thanks for those, seems like the ridgacre is an unloved and unwanted branch to the powers that be, the clean up and disposal of the canal pollution could well cost more than the T&M breach when the 'special disposal' costs are taken into account.

 

I know this is a different angle but why do CRT have to dispose of 'normal' dredgings the way they do at the moment, I remember a time when dredging and the spoil disposal took place in the same area, either improving towpaths by back filling or raising the surrounding area by spreading the spoil on nearby fields/land. Where there are no pollutants doesnt it make sense to do that still and if so would that free up capital to then undertake these 'special' projects?

 

(I did manage to bring it back on topic in the end)

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I think that the notice that Hairy Neil "borrowed" was put up for the 2000 BCN Challenge. Didn't get a photo of it then but I remember seeing it. It was only at the weekend of the Challenge that the "ban" on going down the arm from Ryders Green Junction was declared. Anyone who went down it would have been disqualified.

 

We did that BCN Challenge in an Anglo Welsh hire boat - just a month before we bought our first boat! Click for log of the weekend

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I think that the notice that Hairy Neil "borrowed" was put up for the 2000 BCN Challenge. Didn't get a photo of it then but I remember seeing it. It was only at the weekend of the Challenge that the "ban" on going down the arm from Ryders Green Junction was declared. Anyone who went down it would have been disqualified.

 

We did that BCN Challenge in an Anglo Welsh hire boat - just a month before we bought our first boat! Click for log of the weekend

 

It is still out of bounds for the Challenge, from the 2012 BCN Challenge Rules

 

Additionally British Waterways have asked that boats do not navigate the section of the Wednesbury Old Canal from Ryders Green Junction towards the Ridgeacre Stub because of excessive pollution. At the time of revising these rules it is no longer possible to navigate to the winding hole.

 

In addition of course there were no points awarded for that section on the Challenge.

 

 

 

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I think that the notice that Hairy Neil "borrowed" was put up for the 2000 BCN Challenge. Didn't get a photo of it then but I remember seeing it. It was only at the weekend of the Challenge that the "ban" on going down the arm from Ryders Green Junction was declared. Anyone who went down it would have been disqualified.

 

 

Not saying it wasn't the same sign that had been reused on subsequent challenges, just that I only had the sign away about 4 years ago, tops....

 

Our visit to the arm took place after the BCN Challenge was over.

Edited by Hairy-Neil
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We went there specially because it had various bonus points (seldom-used dead end)- only to find we couldn't get any!

 

When was that? It hasn't scored any points since the BCN challenge restarted in 2009

 

Richard

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The stub that is the canal from Ryders Green Lock to the Black Country Route forms actually part of the original canal to Wednesbury and the junction with the Ridgeacre Branch was placed north of that new road. That the Spine Road was allowed to cross the canal without sufficient headroom for boats was in my opinion a sad decision. BW Managers, if I recall correctly, said the deal that permitted this to happen was to finance towpath improvement on the Walsall Canal. So the navigation was severed and then a public house was built at the Junction, which would have been ideal for temporary and perhaps residential moorings. That decision I believe has been detrimental to boaters. I argued at the time that the Ridgeacre was the first Telford engineered canal on the BCN and deserved better, but these pleas fell on deaf ears, as Martin O Keeffe might confirm. Now that navigable section is so silt laden that any craft that ventures up it apart from a hovercraft, stirs up the deposits that kill off the fish and almost any other living creature that inhabits the waters of the BCN. Beyond the navigable limits the canal continues onto the Metro and Holyhead Road. Other branches that linked with it were infilled some time ago.

Ray Shill

  • Greenie 1
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  • 6 months later...

We did the Ridgeacre Branch last week, armed only with a Nicholson's and a naive belief that the two winding holes and a pub at the end meant we could get there.

After all, their Navigational Note does give warning about not getting to Bradley workshops out of working hours.

Wrong!!

Within 100 yards of turning in to the branch the prop turned up the infamous jet black muck, not nice to look at. We thought it was old engine oil dumped in the cut from the scrapyard nearby.

Now we know better!

Before we even got to the first winding hole the water was overgrown with floating islands of weed, all of which were just dying to get around the prop. Not wishing to put any part of myself into the black filth I relied on forward/reverse blasts, but gave up in the end.

Unable to turn and with no effective prop, we poled back until we could get Shirl ashore.

Bowhauled (sternhauled?) back to the first bit of bank, tied up and had a row over my determination to "colour in every damn bit of the map".

Needless to say, no more bits of map colouring happened this holiday.

 

We "navigated" (blissfully unaware of the pollution issue) as much as could be passed in June.
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The weed now covers the entire canal after a couple of hundred yards from Ryder Green locks. Not an easy reverse back to the junction with the Walsall Canal either, due to the silting-up; it did result in stirring up some some exceptionally noxious substances. The Stourbridge Extension Canal also throws up some very nasty-looking stuff too.

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We omitted the Ridgeacre Branch last summer "on advice", although I don't recall Ryders Green locks (where we had to fill several of the pounds because someone the previous evening had left all the bottom gates open) or the section from the top of the locks to the main line junction as being particularly gloopy.

 

We made it up the Titford as far as the junction of the two branches, then chickened out as it was getting a bit crunchy underneath!

 

Then for lit relief We made it up the Bradley Arm as far as the first winding hole, then gave up due mainly to volume of weed. Winding stirred up a fair amount of black crap.

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The bottom of Ryders Green still stirs up evil black stuff.

 

Titford is getting worse, it was a struggle to get to the junction this year.

 

Bradley wasn't too bad this year, although with no pumping the interesting orange colour has gone.

 

Anyone been to the roundabout on the Ridgeacre since 2009?

 

Richard

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Years ago when I had a "proper job" as a chemical technician we analysed the black oily muck from the entrance of the Ridgacre branch. What we found shocked us, there was just about everything you wouldnt want to find in that silt, bearing in mind there were dye makers and printing ink factories backing onto the canal is wasnt to hard to imagine possible ancient sources. I imagine BW must have done similar tests and hence there has not been any dredging there. Shame but best to stay clear of the arm for natures sake.

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After checking waterscape that says:

 

Associated Regional Office: West Midlands Waterways

UPDATE (17 January 2013): Could all boaters please be aware that some canal guides appear to indicate all of the Wednesbury Old Canal and Ridgeacre branch can be cruised when in fact the navigable section ends at Swan Bridge.

Could boaters also be aware this small dead end section is currently very overgrown.

Canal & River Trust apologise for any inconvenience this may cause

We attempted it very carefully after this years challenge as it is clearly not offically closed. However once again after only about 500 yards (just past a towpath bridge on the left where the canal bends to the right) we came across an impenetrable barrier of reeds and after coming to a dead stop and mindful of not wanting to stir the pollution up decided not to try to force a passage through and reversed back a little in order to get the bow into the towpath and walked up to the end. Once past the reeds the canal looked fairly clear up to the winding hole at the end other than some small trees at the next bridge that looked deliberately placed across the canal. It is worth walking to the end because if you manage to survive crossing the main road (a challenge in itself!) the bit beyond the road and the bridge and railway basin by the pub are well worth exploring. It was a tricky reverse back to the junction though with help from the bank with ropes and poles.

 

It will be a real shame if this bit of the wednesbury old canal is lost forever as at the moment the start is a fascinating example of old industrial canal and just the type of dead end branch I like to explore by boat!

 

I too would be interested if anyone has managed to get a boat to the end since 2009. We guessed by looking at the state of the weeds it was about 3 years since a boat went through so not too far out.

 

Tom

 

ETA We were mindful of the pollution due to the BCN Challenge rules but they did seem to suggest it was only closed for the event to prevent too many boats attempting it. We kept to tick over the whole time we were there and although bad the muck we stirred up didn't seem a lot different to what we stirred up coming up Ryder's Green.

Edited by Tom and Bex
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Titford is getting worse, it was a struggle to get to the junction this year.

 

 

Off topic but we found turning at the junction worse than getting there this year!

 

Not as bad as 2009 though when we got stuck right in the middle of the junction for 2 hrs in a hire boat!

 

That episode put us off attempting the causeway green arm but after we freed ourselves we were able to get up the portway branch a little way beyond the motorway and turn at the end. We were going to try the pools themselves but didn't want to spend the night stuck there!

 

Tom

Edited by Tom and Bex
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Some time in the long ago it was dredged, I remember meeting the dredging team up there, and then meeting a train of boats from there going to the tip on Brades, We then went up to the Spine road, the following year, with no problems at all. With this still in our minds we went up there in 2001, we didn't have any real problems untill the final bridge which was full of shopping trolleys and it took a lot of lift out and backing up and rocking to get past them and up to the spine road to wind, With all the thrutching around we turn the cut black, so unfortunately I'm with Laurence in saying until it is better dredged, keep away from it, because it will kill all the fish in the cut, it smells just like our tanks when stirred up. This is a real shame but I think there are other canals where the money should be spent first - the top of Tittford being one, that is very full these days, although we did manage to wind up there last year but picked a golf bag up on the blade doing so, that took a trip into the cut to get off. :( Its a shame its so bad up there, as I acan remember spinning our boat in the pools and you can't get near them now :(

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Some time in the long ago it was dredged, I remember meeting the dredging team up there, and then meeting a train of boats from there going to the tip on Brades, We then went up to the Spine road, the following year, with no problems at all. With this still in our minds we went up there in 2001, we didn't have any real problems untill the final bridge which was full of shopping trolleys and it took a lot of lift out and backing up and rocking to get past them and up to the spine road to wind, With all the thrutching around we turn the cut black, so unfortunately I'm with Laurence in saying until it is better dredged, keep away from it, because it will kill all the fish in the cut, it smells just like our tanks when stirred up. This is a real shame but I think there are other canals where the money should be spent first - the top of Tittford being one, that is very full these days, although we did manage to wind up there last year but picked a golf bag up on the blade doing so, that took a trip into the cut to get off. :( Its a shame its so bad up there, as I acan remember spinning our boat in the pools and you can't get near them now :(

Shopping trolleys are fairly easy to remove and normally confined to a specific location under a bridge.

 

I feel it's setting a dangerous precedent if a canal can be allowed to slowly deteriorate to the state it is unnavigable and then allowed to be closed due to pollution. If this is the case other parts of the BCN could be at serious risk.

 

Tom

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I should point out that the section in water from Ryders Green Junction to Great Bridge Street formed part of the old Birmingham Canal to West Bromwich opened in 1769, the Ridgacre Branch commenced north of the road ( and was Telford's first involvement with the BCN). So technically another name like Balls Hill Branch, is perhaps a better description.

 

Whether navigation is possible or not, that is the best descriptive name for this section of water.

 

On another level, I repeat what I have voiced before, British Waterways might have been more prudent in ensuring that the Spine Road crossed with sufficient headroom for navigation to reach the Ridgeacre (especially because of the Thomas Telford Link- but they saw with blind eyes and listened with deaf ears on this particular point). It would have been a beacon for mooring beside the pub. So unless CRT invest in the funds for a drop lock under the Spine Road, like that which exists with lock 5 and 6 on the Liverpool Canal Link, the Ridgeacre will no be reached for any BCN challenge in the future.

 

Ray Shill

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I should point out that the section in water from Ryders Green Junction to Great Bridge Street formed part of the old Birmingham Canal to West Bromwich opened in 1769, the Ridgacre Branch commenced north of the road ( and was Telford's first involvement with the BCN). So technically another name like Balls Hill Branch, is perhaps a better description.

 

Whether navigation is possible or not, that is the best descriptive name for this section of water.

 

Ray Shill

 

I always thought the bit from Ryder's Green Junction to Swan Bridge Junction is the Wednesbury Old Canal which is what I refer to it by. I know the remains of the Ridgacre Branch starts the other side of the new road but most guides now seem to refer to the whole section from Ryders Green Junction as the Ridgeacre Branch which can cause confusion.

 

Anyway, here is some pics of what it was like when we attempted it on the way home from the BCN Challenge. Pics and captions pinched (with permission) from Steve Miles Facebook page.

 

58198910201399225447108.jpg

So, lets get started on this branch. Looks nice and easy. I stood on the roof at the front looking out for obstacles.

 

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Weeds closing in but still no hint as to what is round the corner!

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This is what we met at the corner and is as far as we could go by boat!

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So we pulled back a bit to get the bow into the bank and walked the rest

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Tree appears to have been deliberately placed across the canal at Swan Bridge

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Strangely this section up to the cut off at the end isn't too bad...

 

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Former railway basin at Swan Bridge Junction.

 

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So reverse back to Ryder's Green Junction...

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with some help with a long shaft to keep us in the centre and prevent stirring up unnecessary silt and pollution.
Tom
Edited by Tom and Bex
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Well I seem to remember Ferrous trying to get up a section of the Stourbridge Canal on the Fens Branch with similar results, and in fact a Bijou Line boat I was on trying to get down the Stourbridge Arm in 1979.

 

The canal was known as the Wednesbury Canal, but it was also the first part of the BCN to open from near Farmers Bridge to West Bromwich, so it has an important historical significance.

 

Ray Shill

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