Down but not all the way out (of Birmingham).

 We had an half hours lay in, and Helen and Amy went into town to buy milk etc and a Sunday paper. We were on our way down the Farmer's Bridge flight at just about 1100. Two hire boats had set off well ahead of us.

It was a lovely morning and plenty of folk walking, jogging and cycling up and down. I am always interested in some of the rubbish people tell their friends about how locks work and about the cut generally. 

It was much easier to work these lovely locks with three as you can work ahead and drive from one into the other.

There has been loads of new buildings put up it seems since we were last this way. I think they call it Newhall Square that is between locks 7 and 8 where the little side arm went off, Whitmore's Arm. This is represented by the water feature. For information there is a little Co-op in the square too. The old factory seems a little lost but makes a good feature. The area where the square is was once a silver and electro plating works

I'm not sure what the heavy steel work is for but there are bridges above bridges here as we dive under Newhall Street where the old Assay Office was, an important place in Birmingham.

We soon caught up with a couple on a hire boat who were making heavy weather of going down the flight. We helped them down the flight and agreed to help them down the Aston flight too. I always see more detail in a photo of this mural than I do from the tow path.

The hire boat stopped up the top of the Aston flight for a well earned cup of tea and we went ahead of them. It is great to think that these bridges have been here for nearly two hundred years soon.

The Aston flight are also pretty easy to work as the first 8 and nice and close together.

We were planning to stop at the Aston Cross Business village moorings. It has 24 hour security and has about 4 or 5 moorings if everything is nice and close. It seems that boats are abandoned for long periods though. You can see 'Holderness' moored up at moorings with the fake lock water feature. The site was built on the old Climax Tube Works.

After lunch I was still hearing the hire boat that we had left to do the last three locks of the Aston flight. They then reversed back to us to tell us that they couldn't get the paddle locks undone. They had black anti vandal keys and they just turned. I hopped on their boat with our keys and they opened not trouble. They had phoned their hire company to be told they needed the silver key as the black ones are not that good. They had provided them with two black ones! I gave them one of ours and they said they would post it back to us at the end of their holiday. We wandered out of the business village to post a letter, and have a walk. Just up the road was an old pub the Golden Cross that was built for the Holt Brewery in 1867. It was converted into flats into 2012.

Next door was an old public lending library that had this foundation stone. The Ansell's were a local brewing family. It looks like it is a community building but not a library.

The clock tower in the round about was moved her from a little up the road where the lay out has been changed. It was presented by Lewis Spokes Richards to the Manor of Aston Local Board. He was the Chairman of the board in December 1891.

We walked up a bit further and came across another fantastic Victorian pub, the Barton Arms. We had come out with no money and no masks, but now we know where it is we will be back.