Wyrley and Eddington canal

[Chezzonmark]

Hi everyone , we're new to boating and will be bringing our boat down from up north ,mooring on W&E willenhall/ brownhils area by our house. Having walked some if it recently,we noticed there is not a lot of action in the way of boat traffic. Lots of weed and some parts seem pretty impassable. Has anyone been this way recently?

[Rob-M]

The W&E isn't a particularly busy waterway, there is generally a lot of traffic in May when the BCN challenge takes place but the rest of the year fairly quiet.

[nicknorman]

6 hours ago, Chezzonmark said:

Hi everyone , we're new to boating and will be bringing our boat down from up north ,mooring on W&E willenhall/ brownhils area by our house. Having walked some if it recently,we noticed there is not a lot of action in the way of boat traffic. Lots of weed and some parts seem pretty impassable. Has anyone been this way recently?

Willenhall isn’t very close to Brownhills! In canal terms, anyway. Brownhills / Pelsall is fine, Willenhall perhaps less desirable. But generally the W&E is quite reasonable, if little used. There may be a weed problem this year due to the temperatures, but not usually.

 

Be aware that you can’t just buy a boat and plonk it on the canal at the end of your garden. Licensing rules mean you have to have a pukka home mooring, or use the boat Bona Fide for navigation throughout the period of the licence - aka continuous cruising. You can of course request that CRT allow you to designate your end of garden mooring as your home mooring, but you need their permission and to pay a fee. They do patrol every couple of weeks so they will catch you if you don’t comply.

 

Haven't been on the W&E this year, but done it a few times previously. It’s mostly surprisingly deep and easily navigable. The trip up to Anglesey basin is great! As long as you don’t mind being below an extremely large volume of water!

[pearley]

Back in May the amount of rubbish in the section from Sneyd to Pelsall was far worse than previous years. Possibly because the rubbish boat from Wolverhampton is no longer running. 

[BEngo]

We went there in May.  Shallow,  narrow in places, weedy and well supplied with rubbish, again in places. Plenty of gtaffiti.  Nonetheless an enjoyable trip.  Pelsall is lovely, The folks at Longwood are friendly and Anglesey basin and Chasewater are worth the effort. The section that is regularly traversed by Tucana is noticeably better!  We didn't go to Norton Canes as we had done that twice before and found it a bit boring.  Good boatyards at the end though.

N

[john6767]

The W&E is little used, and this year was closed for sometime for the repair to a culvert, so with that and the hot weather I can imagine there is more weed than usual.  It is not normally weed but rubbish that is the problem!  We last did it in May on the BCN Challenge, in torrential rain early in the morning, I don’t remember too much about it therefore but we had no specific problems then apart from being cold and wet.

[Chezzonmark]

Thanks for the reply Nick Norman we realise that you have to move every 2 weeks but as we live in Bloxwich, we will be mooring anywhere from the Brownhills to Willenhall areas so we can have easy access locally.

[Boater Sam]

I don't think that amount of movement to and fro will satisfy CRT's continuous cruising requirements.

[nicknorman]

19 minutes ago, Chezzonmark said:

Thanks for the reply Nick Norman we realise that you have to move every 2 weeks but as we live in Bloxwich, we will be mooring anywhere from the Brownhills to Willenhall areas so we can have easy access locally.

Ok well please be careful where you moor it. The wolverhampton side of Pelsall is not the most salubrious! They say there is safety in numbers when it comes to mooring and this is true, I think mostly because if there are always moored boats in a certain place, it’s normal. Nobody notices. If there is a stretch of canal where no one ever moors and suddenly there is a moored boat, it’s unusual and may attract the attention of the local bored youth!

[Boater Sam]

When was the Wyrley and Essington canal renamed?  Is it just finger trouble?

[Chezzonmark]

Sorry predictive text lol