Tuesday 22nd September; Commandery – Lowesmoor Basin – Diglis Basin
It was a beautiful sunny autumn morning at the Commandery moorings (although we were chilly in the shade) and the ducks were poking about beneath the oak tree breakfasting on acorns. They waddled off as soon as I had grabbed the camera though!
I walked back up the canal to Blockhouse Bridge and crossed the canal. I was on the lookout for what was listed as a social enterprise bakery, but the place that I found was just a café, as were all the other ‘bakeries’ on Google, except for a Greggs. I went on into town, and ended up getting my bread in M&S. I was also on the hunt for Lush, which turned out to be at the far end of the High Street, overlooked by the Cathedral. As they didn’t open until 10 and I was way too early I went back to the boat. Edward Elgar, however, was above all that kind of thing.
He has turned his back on the city streets, preferring to gaze at the Cathedral where he used to conduct at the Three Choirs Festival, which continued till last year and will, we hope, resume next year.
Not terribly busy today
I went back to Lush later. I stopped buying ‘normal’ shampoo in bottles a few years ago and now I always get the solid shampoo bars from Lush. They are not cheap, but they are really good and last way more than twice as long as an ordinary bottle - and you are not including any single-use plastic in your purchase. Meanwhile, Dave had taken Meg up to Fort Royal Park, and then gone to get his hair cut. Then we went down Sidbury lock, stopped on the service wharf for the full works, then turned in the basin and made our way back up again to Worcester Marina at Lowesmoor Basin where we moored on the nearly-empty wharf. Dave found out yesterday that there were no hire-boats expected back and an engineer would be happy to change the fuel filters for us. They did it straight away, took the old engine oil too, and only charged £20 so we were well pleased, especially as there was no water or grot in the fuel. Then back we went once again towards Diglis. We had help at Blockhouse lock this morning from Steve, who lives aboard in Lowesmoor Basin and takes new hirers through their first lock. We have seen him several times before, and his help is always welcome! But he wasn’t there this afternoon. Boaters are asked to leave Blockhouse lock empty, to help water levels in the pounds below. The two locks to the river are pretty big, bigger than standard double canal locks, so the levels above need to be kept topped up.
We went on down to moor just before the water points at Diglis for the rest of the day. We took Meg for a walk down past Diglis river lock and over the footbridge to have a look at progress on the fish pass. You can’t see what’s going on though; the pass is being built between two sets of piling which obscure the view.
But we did see some metal bits, which looked like reinforcing rods, being craned in.
We went down to an area where the fishing is owned by a local club to get a closer look, but still couldn’t see much. We did see a couple of big trees caught on the weir though – it wouldn’t do to have been on the river when they were floating along!
There are some metal sculptures near the footbridge on the western side of the river. They were installed in 2013 to commemorate the opening of the cycle and walking route created through a partnership of Worcester City and County Councils and Sustrans.
The cyclist standing by the Cavalier is the Olympic gold medal-winning Ernest Payne, who won his medal for England in the Team Pursuit in 1908. He also played football twice for Manchester United as an amateur.
The Roundhead is accompanied by a man we thought could be a canal engineer, but he turns out to have been Sir Charles Hastings who founded the British Medical Association, the BMA.
The Roundhead and Cavalier are there, of course, because of the Battle of Worcester, the last battle of the Civil War, fought on 3rd September 1651. We returned over the footbridge. Meg really dislikes some surfaces – on this bridge she insisted on walking on the metal edge of the deck.
There are several blocks of flats with good views of the river and its surrounds. This is Oil Basin – the sides are high and there is just one (presumably) floating pontoon at the far end. Will this ever be used as a private marina, I wonder?
This afternoon we heard more sobering news on the government measures to try and curb Covid-19. Now all pubs, bars and restaurants are to close at 10 pm from Thursday, was it? Anyway we thought we’d help the local economy by eating early at the Anchor. We ate in the Boathouse, which is effectively their function room, where we were the only diners. We sat opposite the wide-open doors to the courtyard, and felt quite safe. Their system worked well, the beer was good, so were the chips, but the menu is reduced to standard pub food (not really surprising). We had burgers and wished we’d had the fish and chips.
5 locks, less than 2 miles, new fuel filters, clean fuel.
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