Ever wondered what treasures lie at the bottom of the Birmingham Canals? Every year, about 50 volunteers spend two days removing an estimated 20 to 30 tonnes of rubbish from the Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN). The Annual Birmingham Canals Clean-up weekend is the perfect chance to have fun, meet new people, and help clear shopping trolleys, tyres, bicycles – and …
Birmingham Canals Clean-up 15-16th March 2025
The Annual Birmingham Canals Clean-up weekend is a great opportunity to have fun and meet new people while clearing shopping trolleys, tyres, bicycles and even more exciting treasures from the canal! It is hoped this annual effort on the BCN will help keep the less well used parts of the BCN and Black Country network from getting choked up with …
The Big BCN Cleanup
This years BCN clean up will see us return to an area not visited for many years, based at Ocker Hill on the Walsall Canal the teams of Volunteers will clean the lower Walsall, Tame Valley Canals and Ryders Green Locks. Day Volunteers can sign on at Ocker Hill Depot from 10am, or at the Malthouse Stables in Tipton at …
Albion Foundation Workparty – A sleep(er) on the job
We had a great workparty with the some of the Albion Foundation staff. Clearing the narrows above the railway bridge, in addition to the usual motorbikes and supermarket trolleys, we hauled in this railway sleeper, complete with chairs. I’m not sure what is the heaviest lump we have got from the canal – the (empty) safe we got last year or …
Work Party clearing at Titford Pools
The team worked seriously hard to clear some of the fallen trees blocking the entrance to Titford Pools. Looking at the amount of cut wood, they kept themselves warm, despite the cold (though dry) day.
Soho Loop Workparty – 16 Feb 2013
The work party on the Soho Loop was a major success – much rubbish and scrap metal retrieved from the canal bed. Some of it needed serious effort to get it off the canal bed – Mike Powell’s “Anson” provided a good test of the breaking strain of synthetic line hauling a shopping trolley buried deep in the mud. (The …
Kings Norton Cleanup – November 2011
Congratulations to the team taking this out of the canal in November 2011 How on earth did anyone get these railings into the canal?