ORGANISERS of the popular Black Country Boating Festival are appealing for participants and volunteers to help out.
The annual event is being held this year over the long weekend of September 13-15 at Netherton. Co-organiser Ross Harrison, 31, outlined the challenges of running such a large event: “This will be our 38th festival at Windmill End, or Bumblehole, as it’s known locally. It has grown steadily over a period of time, and our team has grown with it up to a point. But inevitably some of our staff have either moved away or retired, and so they have to be replaced for us to remain viable as an organisation.”
He explained: “We have various roles to fill, from basic marshalling duties, to bar staff, and then there’s the running of the sound stage. Inadvertently it has become the largest outdoor music event of its kind in the Dudley area. It really has snowballed quite quickly. As always we are also expecting dozens of narrowboats to turn up, plus a number of floating traders.”
Andy Tidy of Aldridge, along with wife Helen, has been attending the event for several years. They dispense their own brand of jams and preserves from within their narrowboat Montgomery, also known as The Jam Butty. He said: “The Black Country Boating Festival has always been one of our favourite gatherings. Sadly this will be one of our last events on our current boat, as we’re getting a larger one in the near future. But we’d wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who was thinking about attending, as it’s so friendly. It’s buzzing over the entire weekend.”
The choice of site for the festival is not accidental. It lies at the south-western fringe of the 100-mile Birmingham Canal Navigations network and features one of the best-known and extremely rare waterway crossroads in the UK. Canal enthusiast, writer and local historian, Phil Clayton of Wolverhampton, explained: “Windmill End Junction was created along with canal improvements in 1858 and the construction of the 3027yd Netherton Tunnel to bypass the increasingly congested Dudley Tunnel at Wren’s Nest. The original line of the Dudley No 2 Canal was bisected, creating a four-way intersection, all of which remains navigable today.”
He added: “Other examples are few and far between, but include Rotton Park Junction near Edgbaston Reservoir and the meeting of the River Trent, Erewash Canal and River Soar in Nottinghamshire, but that’s vast and somewhat staggered.”
Interested in helping out? An online application form can be found at www.bcbf.com or via the Facebook page Black Country Boating Festival.
