So we've come to Walsall for our holidays....

Small Flip Flap today whilst I decided what we were going to do...  Weather played a role as it has done this week where dodging the forecast rain preoccupied us.  But there were options;
1)   Stay here.
2)  Go boating, the forecast this morning was showers, clearing and sunny later...
3)  Go visit Walsall.

I opted for Walsall, bikes out off we went in a straight line on a cycle route into town centre, then just as you get close, cycle route finishes abruptly and then you have an argument.  

When David does this alone he saves his ire for when he sees me again.  Marvellous.

But by following yer nose we arrived and a big fat Wow!!!  

This is the Town Basin, I have to say not massively attractive, WaL was not here.  But behind me and stupidly I forgot to take a photo, was The New Art Gallery at Walsall, opened in the year 2000.

The bulk of their work was bequeathed to the Borough way back in the mid 1970's by Sir Jacob Epstein's widow. I had not heard of him either but it seemed he was a big wig artist who had worked in Paris and knew Picasso and many more artists of that time, this was his collection. So here are my faves from today. 

Town Basin

Pierre Bonnard

Pissarro

Renoir

Stanislas Lepine:  The Canal.

 Loved this Constable below, the second photo is a detail from it of loading wood onto a barge. 

Constable.

Modigliani.  We have a beautiful naked woman print of his above our bed!  

Gauguin

Cezanne

Picasso 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti- Elizabeth Siddal, his wife.

Recently the gallery had held a competition of sorts, the public voted on their favourite works from their collection in different categories, the one below: Les & Ernie by Andrew Tift was the winner in "Animals and Birds" which I loved;

and Mary Fedden's work Flowers in Tuscany won the "Flowers and still life"  beaut.

Renoir, I have visited this garden in Montmartre where he sketched this scene.

So what looked like a wasted morning was a terrifically stupendous amazeballs visit.  It's ten minutes from Birmingham New Street train station, so come.

So having dodged a whopper shower, we hardly argued at all getting back to the boat, well after David had yelled out that I was going the wrong only to have Mr Google (and me) disagree with him..... 

We set off again after lunch, we are still on the Rushall Canal.  Who's ever heard of it before yesterday?
Not me.

Winding through fields, horses and sheep looking at us.... their expressions say not many boats go along this canal, it's hard to think we are so near the city.
Lovely views, no houses here at all, well visible anyway, all going swimmingly......

Then this happened.

Trusty old carrier bags.

We were going to go into a pub on the canalside, which the book says is the oldest pub in GB. 

Now funny that as we thought we had visited the oldest pub in GB two years ago in Nottingham, part of that building was hewn out of a rock face, this one here The Manor Arms at Daw End Bridge, Rushall, says it dates from 1104 and first licenced in 1248.....  Either way, being down the 'ole, then the heavens opened up and frankly that killed the mood so we didn't go, but we will next time.

I gave him coffee but feared the rain would dilute it.

Race Relations Board would have something to say about that name I would have thought.

Four miles on and the Rushall Canal/ Daw End Branch (It has two names), meets with a junction with on the right The Anglesey Branch and the left with The Wyrley and Essington Canal, aka 'Curly Whirly'.   The Anglesey Branch was where we were headed.  But tonight we only got as far as the best bit of low hedge facing the south east, this was for TV reception.  Today was Election Day, we had filled in our postal votes last week and as we live in one of the knife edge swing seats in the country, we wanted to watch the results.

This was the first time this year the telly has been on, on the boat we listen to the radio mostly for news and the web of course.  I never remember how to start the telly, but miraculously it worked and we watched like a lot of people till 2am.  It wasn't boring at anyrate.  We put the engine on again to boost the batteries well after 20:00 hrs, no need to fear Reader, the nearest boat was 200 miles away.

Supper was smoked salmon on bread, no butter but thick horseradish sauce instead, sounds very odd but try it, whole bag of kettle chips, bottle of wine, several beers, sausages, fruit and yoghurt dessert, coffee and chocolate, cheese and biscuits.
We needed the extra supplies with all the election talk.