Droitwich canal Thursday 31 August 2017

As the Bird in Hand was closed last night we went to Namaste Indian eatery, well that's what they call it and it was packed. There were two tables for 2 unoccupied and one of them was reserved, by the time we had eaten our popadums every table was occupied. They have a special Sunday to Thursday deal with 3 courses for £9-95 our meal worked out cheaper than a take-a-way.
The moorings were surprisingly quiet after midnight so we had a good nights sleep.

This morning started sunny and stayed that way, We didn't get away until 1030hrs as we visited Limekiln Chandlery for more polish enquiring about diesel prices while we were there, 67p lt. which I thought was fair.
We set off down through York Street lock and then backed up to Limekilns service wharf for diesel, while we were there I noticed that a black water pumpout was £14 so that was added to the purchase. As our pumpout connection is on the port side I had to turn round and come back in the other way to do that. All in all it was half eleven before we were on our way again. While we were in the basin the air ambulance visited the other side of the river for some reason, but he wasn't on the ground very long.

To get from Stourport Basin to the River Severn you have to drop down through 2 sets staircase locks. As we dropped down the second chamber of the first set I went to set the second read for us. There was something very unusual happening, a CRT person was oiling the paddle gear.

I mentioned the other day about scaffolding handrails on bridges due to a lad falling in while cycling over one with no rail, well this is the one he cycled over back in June 2011 and it still has a temporary scaffolding rail.

The river level is quite low and had very little flow on it but the boat travels much better on wide deep water, 5mph for the same effort as 3½ mph on the canals. We met several boats as we made our way down stream and we had forgotten how many pubs there along this stretch of river with their own moorings. We only had to wait a few minutes for Lincomb Lock to be ready for us. All the river locks are manned and access controlled by red and green lights, a flashing read light means the lock keeper knows your there, a red one stop and a green enter the lock. You can see the water level is well down in the green.

In the next reach we caught up with a hire boat and tagged along behind him as far as Holt's Lock. Here the red light was on so the hire boat stopped as he should, I was a bit further back and dropped all way. Looking through the binoculars I could see the lock keeper leaning on the top gate looking at us, the gates were open but she had forgotten to switch the light to green after the last boat left.
We shared the lock with the hire boat but as we were on the outside we left first, we had also been travelling quite a bit faster than them, but when we left they kept up with us as far as Hawford Junction where we turned into the Droitwich canal.

Looking up as we approached the lock, due to the amount of noise it was making I saw this plane flying over, It looked quite strange, its a vertical takeoff Osprey

The moorings for the lock are a bit confusing, their is a long length of moorings marked Lock Waiting only, but from here you cant get ashore to operate the lock, just at the mouth of the lock there is another floating mooring that says its private but that is the only place you can access the lock side from. Diana walked ahead to check if there were any mooring spaces above Lock 2, there is room for 4 boats to moor here, She called back it was all clear so I started setting the lock, I had just gone in when 2 boats cam up the river and it was fairly obvious they were coming up the lock but we thought they were together, however the back one carried on towards the lock so I shuffled over and let them in beside us, the other waited on the wait pontoon.
The end result is that there are now three of us moored above lock 2 for the night and since we have been here a couple of hire boats have also come up, but continued on along the canal.

Today's Journey

9¼ Miles 9 Locks in 4¾ Hours