A bit of a hitch

Tuesday 11^th August; Pershore to Evesham

Today it was hot from the word go, the sun blazing from blue skies.  Soon after 8 I was in the cool of Asda, but had to go down to the Tesco Metro as well as Asda only had 4-litre bottles of milk which are too big for our fridge.  The greengrocer and baker were open, and I could get rid of the recycling behind Asda too.  We slipped our moorings just after 9.

Sunscreen and wide-brimmed hats were the order of the day right from the word go.  Once through the diamond-shaped Wyre lock we were on the outskirts of the delightfully-named Wyre Piddle.  If you don’t like puns you must look the other way round here.  There was inevitably a narrowboat called Piddler’s Progress, and an advert for a café bar which made us laugh.

In the sweltering heat the occasional light breeze was welcome.  We had several good views of kingfishers, then saw a lapwing being hassled by a crow – or was it the other way round?  We were soon at Fladbury lock.  The instructions for using the Avon locks specify tying up with both bow and stern ropes and expressly forbid the use of centre ropes.  The top paddles are so fierce you can see why.  If you are wise you only open the paddles a little way until they are completely under water, otherwise your boat will be thrown about dangerously.  

Many of the locks behave like the ones on the Grand Union, where you open the paddle on the side you are tied up first and your boat will be gently held in to the wall.  Others didn’t, and your boat wasn’t, hence the need for ropes fore and aft.  The Avon locks are a hassle – the gates are heavy, you must tie your boat up properly, and it takes ages to fill them.  The instructions are also to leave your exit gates open, which is a great help where picking up crew can be very awkward, but rather a nuisance if the last boat through was going in the same direction as you!  For our lunch stop we got into a new mooring for us – Craycombe Turn.  It’s right by a busy road, so we don’t fancy it for an overnight stop, but for lunch it was fine and even had a bit of shade.   

It was as well we had stopped there, as the next mooring at Chadbury lock had no shade.  There were trees across the lock, but Meg won’t walk across the lock footboards, which on the Avon are made of a metal mesh.  And she refuses to be carried.  The river levels are quite low at the moment and we wondered if this canoeist was going to shoot the weir.

We slogged on in the heat of the afternoon.  The river might be low but there are still hazards – heavy bits of wood still float along at or just under the surface.  There was a massive clonk-BANG and a large chunk of trunk bobbed up in our wake.  It didn’t hit the propeller thankfully – that happened to us once on the Curly Wyrley and it stopped the engine.  Anyway, things seemed to be ok, but after a while Dave realised our steering wasn’t as it should be.  We were soon at Evesham where we moored, not without a little difficulty, on the Riverside visitor moorings just past the A-road bridge.  There is a lot of shade here, but even with all the hopper windows out it was stiflingly hot.  Two boats we had met in Pershore, Coracle and Mobius, joined us but went on to Workman Gardens to be nearer the town.  But Coracle came back as the gardens were noisy with groups of people drinking.  By then Dave was down the weed hatch looking at the rudder, which had come out of its cup and was resting on the skeg.  He and Andy, from Coracle, tried to lift it back but it wouldn’t play.  

 Rudders shouldn't be at that angle

We were thinking about going to bed when we were called outside to see an amazing lightning storm – two in fact.  One was to the east (we found out later it caused a heavy downpour over Stratford) and one to the north.  The lightning was mostly behind the clouds, several times a minute, but we couldn’t hear any thunder.  The northerly storm had forked lightning going to ground in shades of pink, yellow and orange.  Every now and then someone saw a meteor (it’s the time of the Perseid shower) or a satellite going over.  We eventually turned in an hour later.  There was neither rain nor breath of wind.

 9½ miles, 3 locks, clonk-BANG.