Two days of traveling, and we are back on our boat Wharram Percy, which is currently moored in swan-infested Worcester (pronounced Wooster, like Bertie).

This is the River Severn, which we have navigated before, but we are actually moored on the Worcester and Birmingham canal, which we haven’t been on before. We’re likely to head up towards Brum, and when I say up, I don’t just mean north. The longest flight of locks in the system lies is in this canal.

We already had one swan come by demanding handouts but we fooled him. Alex, who manages the boat for us when we are not around, had left us a fruitcake, so we fed some of that to the swan. By morning it will probably have sunk.

One of the riverside houses is using decoy swans to scare off the real ones.

Don’t come here looking for breadcrumbs, swan, or we will paint you green.

They are safe from swans, but the rest of their front yard has been taken over by a homeless fairy encampment.

One old wall by the river has stones marking the height of the various floods, dating back to the great flood of 1770.

Interesting that the people of Worcester are systematically recording every devastating flood for two and a half centuries, instead of, say, moving uphill.

You may wonder why I didn’t post yesterday, describing our experiences going through the channel tunnel. Thirty miles long, the train goes at a hundred miles an hour, and this is the view.