Stourport

After our cuppa in bed and catching up on social media April Fools ( Jamie’s 1 ingredient cookery book and Heinz chocolate mayonnaise my favourites) we put our shoes on and headed down to check the levels on the river. We’d hoped that after a day of no rain we might just get a window of opportunity to head downstream.

No need to walk right to the board of lights we could see from a distance that there was still a red light and an amber, level falling. We’d not be heading off this morning! The red board by the broad lock suggested that the level was the same as yesterday. Sadly this didn’t make the second decision of the day easy. Cooked breakfast or not? It was a gorgeous morning, just the right sort of day for a cruise. We’d not be heading out onto the river but maybe we should start to make our way the long way round. Long debates about what we should do ensued. Mick really wasn’t keen on doing the 90 locks instead of 14, long days especially in the rain. But if we were to do it then we should make the most of the good weather today and be on our way. Backwards and forwards we went getting hungrier all the time!

We have reasons for wanting to be in Droitwich, but none of them too time sensitive and we can always venture there by bus instead should the river not play ball. Finally we made our minds up, Mick got the sausages and black pudding out, we were staying put.

Now that the winter visitor mooring 14 days rule had finished we wanted to check where would be okay for us to wait for the river to go down. So we headed to the small office by the top of the broad locks. Here a C&RT chap chatted away with us and he was fine for us to stay put where we are, after all there’d be no through traffic. It’s just a shame that he didn’t understand the difference with the Winter Moorings having ended on the 16th March and the Winter Visitor Moorings reverting to 14 days ending yesterday. But this didn’t matter now, he said we’d get no hassle from him to move on anyway.

As we were out and about we decided to have a look around Treasure Island. If we were back at home we’d have ‘Gone to the Seaside’, even though we already lived there. There were plenty of people enjoying or pretending to enjoy themselves. Not many were on the rides and some of those that were looked a touch green! Not our idea of fun.

Damp torn astro turf covered the floor held down by numerous figures, apes, pirates, dinosaurs. It’s a similar size to the fun fair in Scarborough but it also has arcades. I haven’t played ‘shove tuppenny’ for a long time and was surprised to see so many machines there were. What will happen when the 2p is taken out of circulation? Will these games still work with 2p’s which you get in bulk at the machines, or will they all become ‘shove tenpenny’? Glad to see the plastic prizes haven’t improved, but here if you got a black token you could win a goldfish! However they were limited to two per family!!

Once we’d had enough of being bombarded with all the lights, colours and noise we walked along the river, pleased that we’d escaped without spending any money what-so-ever.

The river was flowing fast. Rowers had been out earlier and the one narrowboat that had been moored on the pontoon had disappeared, we hope up the locks to the safety of the canal.

High on the hills above the opposite bank we could see lots of 4 x 4s. There seemed to be tracks through the woods for them to conquer, although one of the vehicles just couldn’t make it up what looked like a very very steep track no matter how hard they tried.

Bungalows and caravan sites surround the grand Lickhill Manor built in the 17th C. During WW2 the house was taken over for expectant mothers from Birmingham to have their babies in safety. In more recent years it has been a nursing home, although bad reports meant that it closed down in 2012. Hopefully it still has a use as it would be such a shame for a beautiful commanding building to fall into disrepair.

0 locks, 0 miles, 9 visible, 2 Easter eggs, 1 bunny, 1 cooked breakfast, 2 many decisions, 0 spent, 2ps, 2 goldfish per family, 4 x 4 because they can or can’t, 1 large roast chicken, 2 boaters who prefer Excel to Taybright, 1 cat who is so so so SO BORED!!!!!