Snowman from an enterprising restaurant
We are not fair weather boaters, and don't mind some difficult weather during our boating, but the unseasonal weather has made it very tricky. On Sunday the snow flurries in Birmingham lessened but on Monday there was still plenty of ice and snow around making life quite difficult. We had thought that if it was not snowing we would move along the Birmingham Main Line towards Dudley. It soon became clear that although this was perfectly possible to proceed, getting on and off Albert, and operating locks in particular, would be hazardous. With this in mind we decided that we would take a couple of days away from Albert and hope that a thaw might set in.
Some brave daffodils in Birmingham City Centre
Immediately we had decided to leave the boat the snow on Albert's roof started melting and we wondered if we had made the right choice; maybe we could proceed earlier than we thought. This was somewhat reinforced by our walk to the station to take a train home - it was much easier moving around the city centre than on Sunday. However, a shaded windy underpass near New Street confirmed our original view that it will take some days for a thaw to really set in. We had great difficulty getting down a slope and other pedestrians were actually sliding down the slope as if on a ice rink and predicting "someone will break their back".
We thought the technical difficulty of appearing in a production of Wolverhampton 21 on ice was too challenging and we doubted if we would gain any marks for artistic impression!
Albert's roof is under there somewhere!
We will return to Birmingham shortly and hope we can move on.
