West Mids Meander: Day 10

A lovely sunny morning, and we set off at about 8.45 with tannoy announcements from some event at the race course ringing in our ears.  The river looked lovely in the sunshine.

At Bevere Lock, the lock keeper told us to watch out for a boat that had run aground above the lock, having apparently not taken sufficient notice of huge great signs advising boats to keep to one side.  The person on board seemed to be hiding.  The lock keeper had told us that help was being organised.

At Holt Lock we were joined by another narrowboat, Free Spirit, who then took the lead on the next reach.  We started meeting quite a few plastic cruisers, and one of them was all over the place and came very close to hitting Free Spirit.

A huge cruiser was coming out of Lincomb Lock, and we were surprised to find there were three more boats behind it.

At Stourport, Free Spirit were going up the locks to their home mooring in the basin, but we wanted to moor on the river.  The pontoons were busy, but we circled round again and by asking a cruiser to move back a couple of feet, we just about fitted onto the pontoon outside the Angel Inn, only overlapping the lock mooring section by a foot or two.  We went for a walk and found Amy Jo on the water point, so had a catch up with Chris and Steve. We had lunch at the pub, then went for a walk.  Stourport is under the impression that it’s a seaside resort, with a funfair, crazy golf, and ice creams.

We walked through the fun fair and up the riverside path, where the River King trip boat was just setting off on a Motown Cruise.  It headed quite a long way up the river before slowly turning around.

It later came past up heading down towards the lock, and then back, very slowly.  Up the river is a Motor Yacht and Bungalow Club (!) and a huge caravan site with loads of spaces for tourers.  Back at the boat it’s been really warm, and we have been sitting out in the well deck, wishing the Boat Club on the other side of the river would turn their music down a bit.

7pm Update:  Adrian had just commented that he couldn’t remember seeing River King make it’s final return to base (scheduled for 6pm) when we saw boats heading up the river — including, as it turned out, River King being towed by a cruiser.  There were cheers from people on the bank as the rescue mission passed by, and the passengers on the trip boat were melodramatically calling for help.

11 miles, 3 locks.  (114 miles, 146 locks)