Saturday 8th August
L & J set off towards the Birmingham and Worcester canal as I went in search of milk. We bade farewell, not likely to meet again (emails to follow)
As I returned from the shops, G was anxious for a quick get-away : 3 other boats were preparing to leave. One of those was a butty and so progress through the locks would be slow. We therefore made a quick getaway and caught up L&J on Florence. At the staircase locks we met a hireboat coming down. Despite having done a few they hadn’t much idea. The two ladies were very decorative and watched as their two menfolk steered and flapped about doing ‘lock things’. G asked if they had another windlass, as that could be fetched and the next lock readied. The ladies had said that they were in a hurry to get to Droitwich for shopping. It being 11:00 and they’d had no breakfast. Despite buying loads from Lidl yesterday they had forgotten bacon, the sausage, eggs and mushrooms were ready to go but as they had no bacon they couldn’t have breakfast. The lack of food was obviously taking it’s toll, once they got to the next lock (which was full ready for them to use, but no-one had gone ahead to open the gates) they emptied it and then once they realised they had to refill it again.
We hope they made sense of the flood lock in Droitwich which has a swing bridge across the middle of it.
We continued up to the junction with the Worcester and Birmingham canal where we turned right to head south. We immediately stopped at Hanbury wharf to fill with diesel, luckily just before they closed at 13:00. We then went on to Oddingley to moor on a 14 day mooring. This village has a good murder mystery plot as it’s history. Rector murdered in 1806, he raised the tithe and met his god rather sooner than he’d planned as he was shot. 24 years later a body was found in a barn – the murderer. He’d been hired to kill the rector and was then killed himself by his hirer & the local farmer. Both were dead by then so no charges brought.
Brenda
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