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