There are in fact two separate experiences here. The Dudley Canal Tunnel Trust, which takes you by electric boat deep into the Dudley Tunnel complex and the living museum, both excellent. Jacquie was dubious, but enjoyed them both, but did decline the walk into the drift coal mine.
It is possible to take your boat through the Dudley Tunnel, but it would first have to pass under a height gauge, which ours certainly wouldn’t and then it would have to be towed through by an electric tug. What is different about this tunnel is that it was a mine for limestone with numerous shafts going off from underground basins, long before it became a through route. We passed through massive caverns with the knowledge that there were vastly bigger ones a 100ft below us. Our guide was informative and dryly humorous in a typically Dudley manner and managed to persuade a couple of chaps to try legging the boat through the tunnel.
Back into daylight and into the Museum, which is an urban Victorian village peopled by friendly staff in period costume, either cooking in the kitchens or making nails or chains, or running the local shops and a bobby on the beat is trying to stop somebody jumping of the bridge completes the image. Many of the building have been reconstructed here prior to demolition in their original situations, but you would never know, it has been done so well and in reality it would take more than one day to take it all in.
Supplies were running low and the internet told us that there was a Tescos less than a mile away. After we had rested a little, a fifteen minutes walk got us there and a three minute taxi trip brought us back to SKYY loaded with all the necessities for life afloat.
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