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.