Rain was forecast for this afternoon, so we headed off in the morning, and moored up by lunchtime in the village of Tibberton, just outside Worcester’s suburban sprawl. This is the view from our bedroom window. Though we only came a few miles, there were twelve locks, so we had a busy morning. A family of battle swans came to see us off, or perhaps chase us away. Tibberton has two pubs, Speed the Plough and The Bridge… … though…
It’s 1751. On the death of his brother, George Coventry becomes sixth earl of Coventry, and inherits a hundred year old brick manor house. Determined to make the place more contemporary, he hires an unknown designer, Lancelot Brown, to remodel the house and grounds, and a budding Scottish architect called Robert Adam to work on the interiors. The result was a masterpiece. Brown later became known as Capability Brown, the great landscape gardener. Gone were the highly formal garden designs…
Worcester is not just the place that strange brown sauce comes from, it was also the home of the composer Edward Elgar. This is just a statue of him of course. The real Edward Elgar did not have pigeon shit on his head. Elgar had little formal musical training, and initially had little success as a composer. He eked out living as a musician, teacher, and conductor of the band at the Worcester lunatic asylum. It was not until his…
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…
We’ve been back in SF for several days now, and I haven’t got around to writing up our last day in London, so it probably isn’t going to happen. You’ll just have to make do with the pictures.
This morning my brother took me foraging for food in the lanes and fields near his house. We scored big on wild blackberries and mushrooms and also a few damsons. The mushrooms made it home, but the rest were consumed on the spot. Then it was off to the visitor center of the Severn Valley Railway. These is the the Lady Armaghdale, a transexual steam engine that formerly masqueraded as Thomas the Tank Engine. [Archival photo] Of course, we all…
We’ve spent the past two days packing up our stuff on Wharram Percy, and have now handed it over to our manager. This year’s trip was 554.7 miles and 375 locks, so that’s an average of about six miles and four locks every day. Here’s the journey in Google Maps. At the start of the trip Paula bought some potted plants for the roof of the boat. The begonias have been in bloom ever since. Today we sacrificed them to…
We did the last few miles down to Stourport today, and are staying with my brother and his family. Their back yard has been taken over by a mother mallard, and eight rapidly expanding ducklings. They have a very small ornamental pond but a duck decided to nest there and raise a family. Pretty soon the baby ducks were big enough to start eating the pansies and other ornamental plants, so they decided to start feeding them to protect the…
Today I saw a wild badger for the first time in my life. Sorry, I did not get a picture as he went underground before I could get the camera out, so instead here’s a wood carving of Badger and Otter from Wind in the Willows. This was from the National Memorial Arboretum a few weeks ago. They have a complete set of Wind in the Willows characters that are not a memorial to anybody so far as I can…
We visited Wrightwick (pron WIT-ick) Manor… … twice yesterday, one to pay homage to the gardens and art collection, and again in the evening for an outdoor production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. First, here are some views of the gardens. Now a few more of William De Morgan’s creatures. Could this be the Ancient Mariner taking aim at a ornithologically questionable albatross? With a sea serpent ready to gobble up the carcass of the soon to be impaled avian? Here…