You left us in Alvechurch and, so far, our cruise had not been affected by the pandemic...until now! The Met Office forecast (and Rainfall Radar) indicated that heavy morning rain (from Storm Francis) would clear by lunchtime. So we decided to stay put and have an early lunch in the Crown and approach the Tardebigge flight of locks (all 30 of them) afterwards.
This was on the Tuesday of the last full week of Eat Out to Help Out and of course, the Crown was fully booked! (It's only a small pub, so not so surprising!) No problem, there's a pub near to the top of the locks called The Tardebigge, and it is quite large...it was also fully booked. Our final option was to set sail for the top of Tardebigge Locks and get a taxi into Redditch where there are two Wetherspoon's to choose from. Which is what we did!
The Royal Enfield in Redditch served our purposes perfectly, with only a short queue before we could take advantage of Rishi's Dishes. Another Spoons to add to our list of saviours!
By the time we got back to the boat the gale force winds of Storm Francis were evident from this view of a windswept Worcester & Birmingham Canal.
Fortunately, the Tardebigge Locks are quite sheltered and steering Peggy Ellen wasn't as tricky as I'd feared. With the hard work of my shipmates, we reached the Queen's Head at Stoke Pound in plenty of time to exercise our options.
Rather than phone, we decided to turn up on the door to see whether they had enough room (better, we felt, to turn up in person!). Option 2 was to call a cab and try our luck in Bromsgrove. We were in luck and they managed to squeeze us in!
Not only was the food excellent, but I spent the whole evening drinking a new beer (for me) - Lock N Load from Brothers of Ale, a new brewery in Stourport-on-Severn. A very nice drop! Next day we had a short trip (inc 12 more locks!) to Hanbury Wharf and the Eagle & Sun pub for lunch. This was the only pub on our trip where we failed to get a seat indoors, but it was a pleasant day and there was plenty of room in the garden.
This is another pub whose strict adherence to the guidelines will cost them trade unless they relax them a bit or have more staff on to cope with them! Andrew, our lunch monitor for the day, was waiting for at least 20 minutes, outside the pub, just waiting to be allowed back in to order the food! He had the good sense to get another round in!
The afternoon session saw us enter new boating territory (a rare event after 40 years!) by tackling the Droitwich Canals. The first section has narrow locks and the lowest roofed tunnel/bridge you're likely to encounter anywhere with the radio aerial rubbing along the ceiling!
We made it to Droitwich Spa town centre and what a lovely place it is. It wasn't a long walk from our (illegal, we found out later) mooring to the town centre and three very pleasant pubs. (The fourth looked equally nice, but we only managed the three!)
The Talbot was our final pub of the evening after The Hop Pole, the Old Cock Inn and a curry. (We didn't manage the Star & Garter this time).
Next day we traversed the Droitwich Barge Canal, which has wide locks, all the way to the River Severn accompanied, part of the way, by a local charity narrowboat and it's crew who were out training for the first time this year. Pleasant company and help for the hard work of winding locks.
You'll notice the inordinate number of solar panels on Pamela May 2 and that's because she's an all-electric powered boat...which is fine until someone inadvertently flicks the wrong switch resulting in no thrust, as happened at one of the locks.
They weren't intending to go onto the river, so let us go ahead for the final lock. Once we reached the River Severn, I was somewhat shocked by quite how fast the river was flowing. I'd been following the river level rise for the past few days, but nothing appeared to be too untoward and the river level indicators were reading Orange (with a couple of inches before going Red), so the river was still open for navigation.
To compound my apprehension, a hire boat that was travelling downstream and wanted to get onto the Droitwich Canal ended up at least 300 yards past the junction before they managed to get it turned around! Our plan was to head upstream for a planned lunch at the Holt Fleet pub or The Wharf on the other side of the river (which had a landing stage that we'd used many years before!)
Neither of my shipmates said that we should turn back so I put the thrust on and we entered the river and managed to get Peggy Ellen facing the right way and actually make progress against the current without having to strain the engine. We managed about 2 - 3 mph against a current that was faster than walking pace (about jogging speed!) which doesn't sound a lot, but I can assure you it is on a river the size of the Severn.
The key to making progress is to stay out of the main channel and go close to the edge where the water isn't flowing so quickly and there aren't large tree branches floating by! Unfortunately, dependent on the bends and the width of the river, the quieter water often changes sides of the river resulting in a quick dash across to the other side!
After an hour (seemed like much longer in the rain) we finally reached Holt Fleet only to find that there were no moorings at either pub. So we pushed on to the lock. Fortunately, the lock-keeper opened up Holt Lock for us and allowed us to moor up at the landing stage above the lock which was as still as a millpond!
So, we disembarked and headed for the Holt Fleet pub.
They managed to squeeze us in where we had a lovely lunch, warmed up and dried out! When we returned to the boat the lock keeper told us that the next lock (at Lincomb) was now closed, but it was OK for us to stay where we were moored.
We were there for the next day and a half because, even though the flow was considerably less than when we'd come up the river, it was deemed not safe enough to reopen for traffic. There are worse places to be stranded as there were two pubs within walking distance and we had a secure mooring!
The lock keeper allowed us access to the lock island to have a look at the flow of water over the weir. Also on the island was a mini orchard of apple trees and for the first time since I was a child I ate an apple that I'd just picked from the tree...a very juicy Pink Lady!
This is where I'll pause for breath! Less than a week into our two-week cruise and we've had more drama and incident than in an episode of "EastEnders"!
***Spoiler Alert***
Next time we'll be experiencing proper Black Country drinking habits...and much less drama!
