Walking the waterways (1) : Stratford-upon-Avon Canal

One of the things i do a lot is walk along inland waterways. Some i have visited many times and know really well, and indeed in quite a few cases i have walked the full length. In this new series i write about these waterways that are as familiar to me as the inside of my wallet.

The Stratford-upon-Avon Canal starts at Kings Norton Junction where it splits off the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. The canal was built between 1793 and 1816 originally intended as a way to get Black Country coal to Oxford and London without going through Birmingham.

Kings Norton Junction

Just by Kings Norton Junction is the Kings Norton Stop Lock, originally intended to stop water flowing from one canal to another (in the days when canals were owned by rival companies). Its the only guillotine stop lock on the canal network.

Kings Norton Stop Lock

The canal runs for over 25 miles and has 56 locks. It has feeder reservoirs at Earlswood where a number of manmade lakes were built, these are now used for fishing and a nature reserve.

Canal feeder channel at Earlswood

The canal winds on through Warwickshire, meeting the Grand Union Canal at Lapworth (Kingswood Junction). This is considered the boundary between the Northern and Southern sections of the canal. After Lapworth the canal continues south heading through some of the most beautiful countryside to finally end up at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Wootton Wawen

The canal has a junction with the river Avon, in the original plans for the canal it was intended for the canal to stop short of the river (about where the railway station is now) but wiser heads prevailed. By the 1950s the canal was in a poor state with navigation impossible on the Southern section. This section was put at risk at Wilmcote where a bridge (bridge 59) needed replacing and the council wished to avoid the expense of providing sufficient headroom by applying to have the canal legally abandoned. Two canoeists proved the canal could still be used and the canal survived. In the 1960s it was restored to working order by pioneering the use of volunteer labour (and also prisoners from Winson Green HMP!), the process of which helped also spur on the survival and restoration of canals elsewhere in the country.

Bridge 59 in Wilmcote

Nowadays the canal is very popular with pleasure boaters with Bancroft Basin in Stratford always busy with visitors to the historic town. I've visited the canal dozens of times over the years (and taken 1000s of photographs!) The following links may give an idea of what the canal is like:

• Kings Norton Junction & Northern Section
• Earlswood Lakes
• Lapworth & Kingswood Junction
• Wootton Wawen
• Wilmcote
• Stratford-upon-Avon

Bancroft Basin in Stratford-upon-Avon

Tile motifs of the Victoria Line

The Victoria Line is the most intensively used line on the London Underground. It is a fairly recent addition to the network being built in the 1960s and opening (in stages) from 1968 [1]. One interesting feature of the new stations built for the line, which runs from Walthamstow Central to Brixton, is that every station has a unique motif incorporated into the tiling [2].

These motifs were intended to aid identification of the station for passengers though a casual visitor might have a bit of trouble working out what some of the motifs stood for. Finsbury Park for example has a motif of a pair of pistols as it was where duels took place in the past. Warren Street has a maze, or you could say a warren?!

Finsbury Park

Warren Street

[1] Oliver Green, The London Underground (Ian Allan, 1987) p. 59
[2] Chris Heaps, BR Diary 1968-1977 (Ian Allan, 1988) p. 13

700 departure

I was stoked to finally get to see one of these new Class 700 units in London at the weekend, i finally was able to photograph and video this one at St Pancras after twice being thwarted by other trains getting in the way at the wrong moment at Blackfriars!

Old and new on London rails

I headed down to London yesterday to continue my exploration of the capital's extraordinarily complicated railway network. I explored around Kings Cross and Moorgate, with the aim of seeing a Class 313 for the first time (time is running out to do this as they are due to be withdrawn in a year or so).

Signalling problems out of Moorgate meant that finding a 313 was a bit difficult though i did manage to see one in the end, and indeed travel on it too! I was also able to see one of the brand new Class 700s which was a nice bonus. You can see my photos here.

A Personal Computer History (4) : Macworld

In 1995 i graduated from university and began work in one of the first web design agencies, actually it was a traditional print design agency dipping its toes in the then new world of the web (Netscape 2.0 was still in beta, thats how prehistoric this was). Most of the people in the company used Macintoshes and naturally after a while i wanted to get one myself...

Macintosh SE, where it all started

My first Mac was a Macintosh SE i bought second hand from a Cash Converters. It worked fine though the floppy drive had an annoying flaw in that while it could read floppy discs it had formatted itself fine these discs were unreadable in any other Mac and the same with floppies from elsewhere. My first Mac was an island therefore, though i was able to use a Localtalk bridge and Ethernet to access the SE from an iMac later on...

Mac Plus

The iMac yes, my first proper and brand new Mac was a Bondi Blue iMac. This replaced the Tulip PC as my main computer and set my computing down a new design and not programming orientated path. I've still got the iMac (and indeed the SE) though i'm unsure if it works. The last time i was using it i was trying to use OpenBSD on it and configure X Windows.

Over the years i managed to accumulate a mountain of Macs... at one stage i had over 18. I've still got many of them now including a PowerMac 7200, Mac IIci, a Macintosh LCIII, a Workgroup Server 60, a Mac Plus and my pride and joy a Mac 512K (which was the second ever model). I use this as a stand for my digital clock.

Workgroup Server 60 atop a tower of LCs and Mac IIs

Nowadays i'm on my second Macbook though of course nowadays it is used with a plethora of other devices including a Chromebook Pixel and an iPhone SE. We've come a long way from Pong clones and Cheese Nibbler for sure.