Caption

The Worcester and Birmingham canal opened in 1815 and is about 30 miles long, running from as the name suggests, Worcester to Birmingham (and back again). It passing through some very scenic Worcestershire countryside and at one point, passes through Bournville in Birmingham, the home of Cadburys chocolate. In these 30 miles the canal has 58 locks, climbs 130 meters and passes through 5 tunnels (with the longest being 1.5 miles).

This panorama was taken about half way up the longest chain of locks on the canal (30 locks in total), climbing 60 meters in just over 2 miles. This makes it one of the steepest chain of locks in Britain. It is said that the locks fill and empty very quickly, so it's possible to do them all in a morning!

During my time taking the panoramas on the canal, quite a few narrow boats passed me going in both directions. Some people seeming to have got the idea of how to get through a lock as quickly and easily as possible while others seemed to take a bit more of a leisurely approach. The weather was fine, I had my wife and daughter with me for the walk and they even managed to get a ride on a canal boat between locks! A very memorable morning shooting panoramas.

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Location

Europe / UK-England

Lat: 52° 18' 46.15" N
Long: 2° 1' 56.96" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Equipment

Taken with a Nikon Coolpix 990 and a FC-E8 Fisheye lens. Mounted on an simple L shaped bracket. 4 portrate frames taken 90 degrees apart with the fisheye circle just touching the top and bottom of the frame, while being clipped on the left and right. Stitched using Panotools and seams manually removed. Finally converted to a QTVR Cube using PanoCUBE and added QuickTIme for the web's autorotation widget.