Back to Droitwich Spa marina, and an explanation

Wednesday 3^rd September

It rained a lot overnight and was still a bit drizzly first thing, but the sun came out by breakfast-time.  This mooring is rather shady and we’d rather have been in the sun, but as everything outside was soaking wet we did some packing before we set off to descend Hanbury locks.  The forecast for the afternoon is atrocious so we wanted to be packed up and ready to drive home before the weather arrived.

The start of the Droitwich Junction canal.  The boat roof shows the result of mooring close to trees at this time of year.  It's clean, but cluttered.

When I met yesterday’s lockies they told me the morning procedure if we went down before today's had arrived – check the two pounds between the locks, and if they are low don’t use the side ponds, just lock down as normal and you should have enough water in the lockful you take with you as you go down.  By the time we moved off this morning, the two on duty today had already checked water levels and were filling the top lock for us.  We were their first boat of the day.

The bottom gates on this flight have to be propped open to stop them swinging closed.  This year smartly painted new props have been made – by a volunteer, of course.

Apart from the brisk breeze, the weather was perfect – warm and sunny, although the lock beams remained wet and I quickly got a damp bum.

Nearly there - entering the bottom lock

Jess likes to be off the boat when we're locking, but she has to be on the lead here because Saltway, one of the main routes out of Droitwich, runs very close to the towpath.  Once the boat is in the bottom lock she goes back aboard for the short trip into the marina – it’s a very long way round on foot, which wouldn’t worry her in the least but is not practical for us.  We only had one lockie at this point so I stayed off to give him a hand.

The pound below didn’t need any extra water, so he opened the side paddles first.  This saved half our lock water in the side pond, ready for use the next time the lock is filled.  This will save depleting the pound above.

He had spied a boat on its way out of the marina, so we left the gates open and I got back aboard from the steps before we went into the marina to find our berth.  I had checked it out on foot yesterday and thought I knew which it was – there were only two empty berths along the whole pontoon, either side of a distinctive boat, it should have been easy!  I chose the wrong one.  So after executing a perfect entry Dave luckily spotted the (admittedly rather small) number … and had to reverse out again.  The wind was so strong that rather than shuffle around to get into the right place, he returned to the wharf area to turn and make a fresh attempt, again smooth and successful.  We have realised over the years that loading and unloading our boat is a great deal easier and quicker from the bow, so we rarely reverse in.  We left for home at 12.30, which was very good going I thought.   Apart from an hour or so's driving in torrential rain our journey home was easy.  Bonjour is now in her winter mooring, but we plan to be out again around the end of the month, depending on water levels of course. At least we should have more options than if we had stayed at Calcutt, where we would now be stuck until that stretch of the Grand Union opens again.

Now, you may remember we encountered a tug moored inconsiderately at Blower’s Green, on the day we went down the Stourbridge 16 (26^th August, posted 1^st September).  NB Rune had the same problem just the other day, 2 weeks later, so yesterday I wrote to the Dudley Canal Trust to ask for it to be moved, saying it was “an example of extremely bad mooring practice and is a great irritation” - polite I think, but clear. 

The offending tug

Within two hours Becky from the Trust had got back to me, promising that it would be moved today.  It is one of the historic boats owned by the Trust, and is normally moored in a short arm at the junction but this had been blocked by a fallen tree, hence the emergency mooring - though it should still have been at one end of the bollards!  It had been escorting the electric trip boat in case it ran aground and needed assistance in the low water conditions on the Wolverhampton level.  She emailed again this morning to say the trip boat was on its way to collect it, and by the time this is posted it should back at the other end of the Dudley tunnel.  OK the skipper should have known better, but what a swift response when it was brought to their attention!  Thanks and well done Becky.

Today’s stats; 3 locks, half a mile.

Trip stats

Thanks to canalplan.uk for the calculations.

95½ miles, made up of 20 miles 6½ furlongs broad canals, 61 miles 6¼ furlongs narrow canals and 12 miles 7¼ furlongs large rivers.

128 locks; 45 broad, 80 narrow, 3 large.

3 lift bridges – 28 and 26, both manual and Shirley Drawbridge, which is electric, all on the North Stratford.

1 aqueduct large enough to be noticed, over the Avon on the Grand Union at Leamington Spa.

9 tunnels; Shrewley (9433 yds), Brandwood (353 yds), Edgbaston (105), Broad St aka Black Sabbath (83), Galton (122), Netherton (3027), Dunsley (25), Cookley (65) and Dunhampstead (230), a total of 2 miles 3¼ furlongs underground.  This figure does not include the Black Sabbath bridge in Birmingham, as it’s technically a road bridge with buildings along one side – at least canalplan.uk doesn’t think it should be included.

Waterways in order of passage; Grand Union, North Stratford, Worcester and Birmingham, BCN main line, Dudley numbers 1 and 2, Stourbridge, Staffs and Worcester, River Severn, Worcester and Birmingham again, Droitwich Junction.

 

 

A day at Hanbury Junction

Tuesday 2^nd September; Hanbury Junction

We were up early for Dave to walk the two miles to Droitwich station for the car shuffle, and he was away by 8.  After I’d had my second cup of tea Jess and I went to Droitwich too, but only as far as Vines Park, hoping to find some conkers.  The towpath crosses the Body Brook, which looked very full today.  It regularly rises in the winter and dumps silt in the canal.  One year there was so much deposited during the floods that it left an island in the canal after the waters had subsided, and navigation was closed until it could be dredged.   

CRT was looking into ways of catching the silt but I don’t know what became of that idea.  The water was too high to get down and have a look under the footway.

There are plenty of places to walk the dog along various local towpaths, but the only conker trees I know of are in or near Vines park.  I got just three.  A few lay smashed on the ground but most have yet to fall.  There used to be a replica salt barge in the park, salt having been a major industry in these parts, but that has gone and instead there is a wooden outline of the Volunteer, the last Wych Barge (a specialised kind of Severn Trow) to carry salt from Droitwich.  The Old English word wych is associated, among other things, with brine springs which allowed the industry to flourish.  The outline of the Volunteer encloses some white blocks, which symbolise salt pillars, and a sculpture of a salt worker.

The ‘salt pillars’ are engraved with the names of barge operators.

The sculpture, entitled The Salt Worker, was created by Steve Ellis Cooper of Pershore, and is made of 2,700 metal plates resembling salt crystals.  The figure holds a salt barrow, which was used for transporting salt.

The Salt Worker

After playing with Jess’s frisbee we went back to the boat where I finished defrosting the fridge, which I’d started before we went out, and did a bit more cleaning.  Dave made good time on the trains and roads and was back before 1.30.  After lunch we cleaned the bird poo off the cratch cover, took it off and rolled it up.

I carried it down to the car in the marina car park, and drove to J&H Trimmings at Ashwood marina where we had Chuffed’s cratch covered mended years ago.  They will replace the zips and Velcro straps and anything else that is damaged, such as a couple of the stud covers which have got bent.  Meanwhile Dave got busy tidying up the cabling for the headlamp and horn and was cleaning the roof when I got back.

He was frequently held up by chatty passers-by.  This chap was moored two boats behind us.

When we lifted the matting to sweep out the well-deck we realised quite how bad the paintwork on the well-deck floor had got.  Dave rubbed it down and applied Vactan to give it some protection from the weather.  The forecast is for more rain and there isn’t time to do a proper job - that will need to wait for our next trip.  Before dark a series of Black Prince boats went by, looking for a mooring on the first night of their holiday.

 

 

More foraging opportunities

Monday 1^st September; Perdiswell Park to Hanbury Junction

After breakfast I popped round to the M&S Food in the Blackpole retail park to get some chicken for tea (successfully) and some savoury snacks, but it’s a small branch and only had large packs of sausage rolls or pork pies in the very small selection, which did not fit the bill.  I couldn’t be bothered to walk on to Lidl or Sainsburys to see what they had.  After Jess had had a play in the park we were away at about 9.30.  The locks were not in our favour, but there weren’t many to be done today.  Tolladine lock is a good spot for foraging, and we collected some damsons but left the tempting blackberries for someone else.

A squirrel had been crunching the hazelnuts already.  They bite the shells into bits rather than gnaw a hole like mice and voles.

Showers threatened but I can’t remember now if we actually got wet, I think we may have stayed dry this morning.  There is a lot of good artwork on this canal, especially closer to the city.

This one is new, maybe less than a year old.

It wasn’t long before we were at Offerton locks.  A footbridge crosses below the bottom lock between what used to be Worcester Rugby club’s stadium and training pitches.  Not sure what they are used for now, something sporty.  Offerton locks were against us until we met a hire boat on its way down, but we were still up by noon.

The bridge below the top lock has been clouted, I would guess by a tractor trailer or feed lorry.  There is very little traffic on the lane which crosses it, and we have only ever seen tractors, horses and bikes.

We caught up with the boat which must have been ahead of us all morning.  It was going very slowly, barely at tickover.  We weren’t bothered as we wanted a lunch stop at Oddingley, where there was plenty of room.  It would have been lovely to have stayed there for the night, as it’s one of our top spots on the whole network, but tomorrow is car shuffle day so we moved on to Hanbury Junction – catching up with Mr Slowcoach again with half a mile to go.  He didn’t stop thank goodness, as there was only one mooring spot left.  Dave winded the boat and reversed into the space.  With the port side now accessible he painted the area between the gunwale and rubbing strake.  I took Jess and went down to the marina to find out our berth number for tomorrow.

The local fire brigade was doing some pump testing at the wharf

The sun was shining and it was a lovely warm afternoon as we walked back up beside the locks.  The lockies said it had been fairly quiet today.

Our mooring from the farm bridge over the Droitwich Junction canal at the junction

There were several heavy showers later in the afternoon but luckily Dave’s painting had dried by then.  Two Black Princes went by in the rain on their way back to the hire base at Stoke Works.

I found some bigger hazelnuts by the Hanbury flight.  They were bigger and very slightly heavier than the ones I collected at Tolladine.  I was going to break them to see if nuts had actually developed in the dry summer, but didn’t get round to it.  Instead I chucked them into the trees next to the mooring for the local voles to find out.

6½ miles, 8 locks