It was misty overnight but that soon cleared this morning, we set off at 9 am as we wanted to be on the river Severn before lunch, We passed through a couple of multi arch bridges, the first at Eckington bridge which is all stone and undergoing some serious repairs thankfully not the navigation arch.
Its rather a bad photo into the sun, as needles to say as I tried to shoot it from upstream I got the dreaded “Card Full” message, so it was a quick swap and take it into the sun. We met the Avon Trust boat coming upstream so thankfully Strensham Lock was with us, this is the only one we needed to work.
We arrived at Tewkesbury Lock and I went for a word with the lock keeper, yes we could come straight in, straight, the lock is at right angles to the
River Avon. The lock is mechanised and an alarm sounds before the gates move, even so there were three people still leaning on the rails when they started moving. I have a feeling this lock keeper was on duty last time we were this way.
Once the gates were shut his assistant requested details of our licence, bought online so no print out. Once out of the lock we passed the old mill on ourleft and a wide beam that had been moored on the lock moorings followed us all the way to Gloucester.
By now the sky’s were clearing again with some very interesting cloud formation.
We probably met more boats on the Severn in 3 hours than we did in 3 days on the Avon, the river seemed to be running very slowly until we got to The Partings, it was here that I phoned the Gloucester Lock keeper to tell him our location but he was expecting us and the wide beam and said the lock would be ready for us. As we rounded the last bend before the lock I could see the gates opening so I carried on slowly against the wall and then as I got to the lock put a bit of power on to take us in. Although he filled the lock very slowly there is still quite a drag on the bows where the water comes in, you can’t sit at the back of the lock because there is a road bridge across it. There weren’t many boats moored in the basin and someone was sailing a model yacht.
We both carried on through Llanthony Bridge and although the lock keeper told him we were coming we still had to wait. We stopped right outside Sainsbury’s for Diana to stock up before continuing along the canal. Some of the bridges we can get under without them being opened but we had to wait for Hempstead Bridge for the bridge operator to hand crank it open. He was showing us a red light to indicate we should stop, once he had dropped a barrier this changed to a red flashing light to indicate the bridge was being made ready, just before he started to crank it open the light changed to green which meant we could proceed, I thought it better to wait until the bridge was open. We carried on along the canal under a few moor bridges before mooring for the night.
Today we had spent 2 hours on the Avon, 3 hours on the Severn and 2¼ on the canal.
Today’s Journey
27 miles, 4 locks in 7¼ hours
No comments:
Post a Comment