A very short cruise to the junction

Sunday 12^th October; Dunhampstead to Hanbury Junction

It was cold and grey this morning with a dank autumnal air.

Not so gloomy that people won’t get out to enjoy the water

After a while the air was dry enough for Dave to do a bit more work on the bottle-damaged area of the starboard side while I started work inside on removal of the drifts of dog-hair which always accumulate no matter how little she seems to shed day-to-day.  We set off mid-morning for the short hop to Hanbury Junction.  Just beyond the visitor mooring at Dunhampstead is the previous home of Trinity Boats, whose hire and boat-building business has now moved to the old Anglo-Welsh base at Tardebigge.  Yesterday was the official opening of the new business whose principal work is fit-outs. 

A rogue apostrophe I think

The café/trip boat Patricia is currently moored there, but has just gone on sale with Evesham Marina. 

The picture was taken from their Facebook page.

It was an uneventful cruise to the junction apart from a hold-up at one of the bridges, where a dangling bramble swiped at Dave’s head.

Hey!  That’s mine!

So there was a slight delay while we reversed back to the bridge hole to retrieve it.  I had the grabber in my hand in case his hat fell into the water, but the bramble wasn’t giving its trophy up easily.  I got the secateurs and snipped off the dangling bits I could reach before we moved on. 

Expert reversing!

We had the pick of the moorings at the junction so chose the best bit - furthest from the noisy road bridge and away from the overhanging trees which make the other spots rather gloomy.  It may be overcast today but at least here there is a trickle of solar for the batteries.  I left Dave getting on with various jobs and made the trek to Waitrose for milk and some snacks for our journey home tomorrow. 

We didn’t do much after lunch.  Dave took Jess for a decent walk but I was tired, having walked as fast as I could for the 3 mile round trip to Waitrose and back with a heavy(ish) rucksack.  Instead I looked up the opening hours of the carvery at the Eagle and Sun back at the bridge as we didn’t have anything planned for our evening meal and I didn’t feel like cooking.  It is under new ownership and their grand opening is …. in a couple of days’ time.  Never mind, I had the ingredients for pastry and made an onion quiche so at least it wasn’t beans on toast again.

There was quite a bit of boat activity with hire boats on their way to and from Black Prince to the north or ABC, Diamond Resorts and Canal Boat Club in Worcester to the south.  We didn’t bother to look but could hear several boats turning at the junction, to or from the Droitwich direction, too. 

Less than 2 miles, Dunhampstead tunnel, 1 hour’s slow cruising.