It was raining this morning, so we watched the radar and waited till it stopped at about eleven before setting out. We lucked out. There were bands of rain on either side of us all day, but it stayed dry on the Staffs and Worcs. The locks are fairly evenly spaced out on this stretch of canal. We did seven of them today, with reasonable gaps in between. We were faced with a decision in the late afternoon, either to…
Canal and River Trust keeps telling boaters to save water by sharing locks if there is enough room. Apparently some swans got the message. This morning we went back to Stourport Basin, got the transmission fixed (though we still have the annoying screech around 1,200 RPM) and headed north. The lock from the basin to the canal is a tricky one. The ground crew has to cross a busy road to get from the basin to the lock itself, and…
Some days the first cow of the day turns out to be a rhino. You may wonder why we haven’t been posting recently. Remember when I wrote …in fact the Stratford Tourist Board will do almost anything to stop this information from coming to light. If I am pecked to death by swans in the next few days you know who to blame. Well, it wasn’t that. But nobody bothered to ask! You people just don’t understand the threat of…
The aim today was to get back up to Stourport before rain forecast for lunchtime turned up. We did not quite make it, so the last hour or so we had rain and drizzle. Getting off the Severn and into Stourport basin is tricky. There is a right angled turn from the lock landing into a staircase lock, followed by a short pound with an awkward turn into another staircase lock. As we were coming up through the lower staircase…
We made it back up the Severn as far as Worcester before the rain started today, so we moored up in a swan sanctuary. Yep, that’s right, Worcester seems to be a sanctuary city for the fascists of the waterways. What’s next, political asylum for Canada geese? We saw someone feeding the swans an entire sack of swan kibble. No wonder the river here is infested with them. Don’t the recognize the dangers of swan attack? There’s a reason nobody…
It was raining this morning, so we delayed starting till almost lunchtime. The rain stopped, and we even got some sun this afternoon, but the wind was blowing hard all day. The second lock, at Nafford, has an awkward dog leg approach with weirs on either side. That’s the one where we saw the half submerged narrowboat on the way up. It’s still there. I made it to a lock landing OK, though not the one I was originally aiming…
It was a lovely day today. We spent the morning wandering around Evesham some more, and revisited the Almonry Museum, with its wonderful and random collection. For instance, I am not certain what these shiny things are, because they weren’t labeled. I’m guessing Roman buttons from the other stuff in the case they were in. This was next to them, similarly unlabeled. The spoon I recognize, though it is small. Perhaps a Roman baby spoon? The fact that Roman spoons…
We had a slow day today, with a run to the supermarket and another outdoor play this afternoon. This was As You Like It done by an amateur group from Cropredy. In true coarse acting style Touchstone stole the show by being louder than the other actors. Still, the sun was shining, the barely audible Rosalind was pretty, and the England won the Women’s Cricket World Cup. All in all a good afternoon. I promised a review of the play…
The strangest things turn up in church carvings sometimes. Why is this naked woman riding a deer? That looks more like some pagan fertility rite than a christian symbol. But then the same set of misericords also has a mermaid combing her hair… … dragons… … a camel carved by someone who had never seen a camel… … domestic violence… … and this one. Goodness knows what is going on here. Why are that woman’s legs so small that they…