On to Evesham

The weather’s been a bit mixed today, sunshine and showers , but we missed the worst of it as we were moored up for lunch. We passed several large caravan parks right beside the river.

caravan park with the weir top left

Unfortunately many of these are affected by flooding so the caravans all have cantilever floatation tanks fitted beneath them. These rise up with the water then, as the levels subside, return the caravan back into position.

green floatation tanks underneath all the caravans

My photo isn’t very clear as the sun angle was wrong but if you’re interested you can see better photos HERE

We’re now moored in Evesham, opposite the rowing club. As we moored up, a brass band stared playing in the bandstand over in the park and this made washing the side of the boat so much more pleasant. You should have seen how thick the spiders webs were! We’ll turn round tomorrow and do the other side but that’ll take longer as that was the side next to the pontoon and has twice the number of sticky webs on it.

Roast Belly Pork and a numpty!

Many thanks to Keith on n.b. Kotuku who told us about the butchers in Pershore Market.  We paid a quick visit this morning and took his advice and bought hot roast belly pork for lunch. It was delish! We also bought some lamb sausages (never seen them before) which I’ve frozen for later and some hake steaks from the fishmonger. Hake always reminds me of holidays in France, poached and served with beurre blanc (butter) sauce. I’ll make it next week and share the recipe with you.

Morris dancers on Pershore High Street

It rained quite heavily overnight and until about 11.00 this morning but by the time we set off it was nice and sunny again, if a bit windy.  We saw the black swan again just past Osier Island and he followed us for a couple of hundred yards posing for the camera. What a beautiful bird.

Yesterday when we were at Fladbury Lock I noticed lots of signs all over the place.  “No swimming in the lock or in the lock entrance”  “Keep back from top gates as there is a risk of swamping your boat” (or similar wording) “All boats must be tied to bollards front and stern when emptying or filling the lock”.  When the empty lock was filling so we could go in, the rush of water through the top gates was ferocious so we were prepared to be very careful when going back up today. The lock approach coming upstream is very narrow and on a bend and just as we got there we saw someone in a wetsuit swimming by the lock landing. He saw us and got out of the water and walked up to the lock. He helped us empty the lock so that we could go in but then rushed to the top gate and started winding the paddle before Roger had even got against the lock side, never mind tied our ropes round the bollards. I had to scream at him TWICE to get him to stop. He said he was only going to open the paddle half way!!  If he’d done that he would have swamped our boat without a doubt. He got the message and disappeared, turning up again later in a coracle messing about near the weir. The man’s a numpty!

We’re moored back in Evesham in the same spot as Thursday night but we have a slight problem. Our River Avon licence, which was glued in the cratch window, has disappeared. It was there when we set off from Pershore and the cratch sides have been down all the time we were travelling but when I went to close up for the evening it had gone. Just the glue marks remain so we don’t know if it’s blown away, unlikely, or been nicked, again unlikely.  We’ll have to try and get a replacement as we’ve still got 10 days or so left.

Evesham

Today we set off down river again towards Evesham.  I know I keep raving about it, but the River Avon is just SO beautiful.

We cruised through Bidford, through the narrow navigation arch of the single file road bridge and saw trout swimming around the bridge stanchions.  The water is just amazingly clear and in most places you can see the bottom and all the plants and fish. Unlike the canals we haven’t seen any rubbish either.

Every lock is dedicated to it’s benefactor and there are information boards telling you all sorts of things about the people who paid for the locks and the people who actually built them. Most of the time they seem to have been built by prisoners from the local jails or borstal. That’s what I call real community pay-back!

We’re now moored in Evesham and had a quick walk round the town this evening. Abbey Gardens are really pretty and were full of well behaved people having fun. The rowing club is opposite us and tonight must have been beginners night as the rowers didn’t have the same skill or speed as those we’d watched at Stratford.

The Natwest Bank - beautiful

Tree sculpture in Abbey Gardens - The Penny Whistle