Friday 23rd October; Commandery to Perdiswell Park
It’s quiet at the Commandery in the late evenings now. Any live music from the nearby pub stops abruptly at 10 and there are few passers-by after that. The Vue cinema over the way is open, but the road traffic drops off very quickly. So we had a quiet night, and woke to dull skies and rain on and off all morning. In the dryish spells Meg got walked and the paper was bought, coffee was drunk and the paper read. We left at about 11 and pottered gently up as far as the little park before bridge 12, the one with the mural painted along it. On one of the earlier bridges was an odd message
It’s a pretty little park, popular with dog walkers, one mile from the Worcester end of the canal and 29 from Birmingham. It seems quiet enough for a safe overnight stop - well looked after and no litter.
We had lunch, and as the weather had cleared Meg had a good game of ball before we continued along to Perdiswell Park and our usual mooring spot at bridge 17. We could see something orange in the water as we rose up Bilford Bottom lock. It was a traffic cone, right in the middle of the channel, and it disappeared below the water as I emptied the top lock. Luckily the local CRT volunteer was around and would deal with it after we had gone through. The sports centre car park has lots of cones marking out the routes for entry and exit and this is the fourth he has had to deal with.
As we moored, we realised that one of the piling hooks had been left at our lunch stop. It wasn’t that far away, so I went for a gentle jog back to retrieve it while Dave attacked the lid of the gas locker. He had to drill out the bolts holding the brass ‘Gas’ plate to get at the rust underneath – Halfords is not far away, so it wouldn’t matter if he had no spares. He rust-treated it, and started putting undercoat on just as the ABC hirers from Lowesmoor Basin in Worcester started to pass on the first day of their holidays. Only two today, but both going far too fast. I was lighting the fire by then. We have been trialling ‘Homecare Eco50’, which is half and half coal and compressed wood waste. It looks like coal (ie black and dirty) and is supposed to be just as hot, but produces less smoke and fewer harmful emissions, as well as using wood waste. I can’t comment on the smoke, but it lit well (we start with newspaper and kindling, with a broken compressed-sawdust heat-log) and seemed to be just like coal, nice and hot! It comes in 10kg sacks, and we got ours in Wickes. Price-wise it’s very close to coal from what I remember the last time we bought some (75p per kg), but we thought it didn’t last quite as long as Excel. We will get it instead of coal, as we don’t have that many fires, so we can use it to cut our emissions even if it costs a little more. But I’m not sure what we would do if we lived aboard.
Chuffed alogside the pretty park at bridge 12. Shame about the dog bin!
2½ miles, 5 locks, 1 recovered piling hook.
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