Thursday 18th October; Droitwich Spa marina to Vines Park
Would the Severn make the decision for us? Before all the rain last weekend we had thought it would be good to go round the Droitwich Ring. We kept an eye on the river levels, but of course it takes a few days – three, I think – for the water to get from Wales where it was falling to the navigable part of the Severn. An email duly arrived from CRT to say the locks were closed. The website we were looking at said yesterday that the levels were going down and were nearly at normal levels, but with no further communication from CRT we thought it would be sensible to call the lockie at Bevere lock!
So, with the all-clear for navigation we turned right out of the marina to head for Droitwich. We had to; the first lock is the staircase, which will be closed for cill repairs on Monday, which is just a bit too early for us if we had gone the other way round. We are on the Droitwich Junction canal here, which has single locks, and we had a bit of a wait – a boat had gone down and we waited for the one below to come up before we started. Their boat is brand new, they have fitted it out themselves, and it has been in the water for a whole week. They have had just one hire-boat holiday and still have a lot to learn, which is why they hadn’t realised that sometimes a stiff paddle needs a bit of encouragement to close fully! This caused a few minutes’ delay and by the time we were on our way down there was another boat above and two below.
Above the lock there was a work party of local volunteers clearing offside vegetation. They were taking care to pull as much of the cut debris out of the water as they could, which was good to see. They also run a trip boat for local groups of disadvantaged people so they know what it’s like when bits of reed and so on pile up behind lock gates or clog your propeller. We had no trouble with the M5 bridge – it’s very low and we know by now exactly what we can leave on the roof! (Thanks Irene for the timely reminder meaning I left putting the chimney on till we moor up!) The bridge is not affected by the level of the river Salwarpe, which joins the canal below the next lock and leaves again at Barge lock, where we caught up with the boat in front. It was a hire boat and the crew had fully prepared the lock – you have to swing a bridge before your boat can go in. But now we are on the Droitwich Barge canal, which is wide, so we could share the lock.
We arranged that I would close up while she went on to open the next swing bridge, and I assumed I would then go on to operate the last. You need a CRT key to unlock the padlocks securing the three swing bridges in Droitwich and you can’t remove your key unless the padlock is shut. This normally means you leave your key in the lock till you close up. She hadn’t, but this didn’t matter as I had my key in my pocket. The second swing bridge was left open for us but she had gone ahead to the third. The padlock was on the same side of the canal as me, so no problem, yet …. However, she got back on her boat at the third, where the padlock is on the other side! So Dave had to put the bow in for me to get aboard, push us over and leap off the other side to close up. The young hoodie on the bike who had been hanging about waiting didn’t mind at all – he had worked in the summer taking parties of schoolkids on the canal and was happy just to watch.
We found the park moorings empty and nabbed the lovely spot on the basin end. Look at that lovely blue sky! I didn’t bring my shorts this time, but I wished I had.
Meg of course was agitating for her walk, so Dave took her off to the playing fields while I had a run. The volunteer work boat went past too, after their day hard at work; I couldn’t get the whole of it in the photo as the camera would have been pointing straight into the sinking sun. It must have been a challenge for them navigating home.
It had been a beautiful afternoon but it soon cooled down as the sun set so, with fire lit, we had a cosy evening in.
1½ miles, 5 locks, 3 swing bridges, M5 tunnel.
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