Small earthquake in Chile, not many hurt

A narrowboat struggles to untangle a rope round the prop

Today was the sort of day that reminds me of that famous Times headline summing up a very minor news event in terms that made it even less attractive to readers. It was, in short, a day that was neither quiet, nor exciting but mildly diverting all the same.

We seem to be running out of river quite quickly now. Today we covered eleven miles from Evesham down to Pershore, dropping through only three locks on the way.
It was easy cruising on a generally wide and smoothly flowing river but there was something of interest at each lock. At the first, Chadbury, we discovered narrowboat Cider with Rosie stuck just outside the bottom gates with a rope wound round the prop.
We patiently waited in the lock while they tried to free it, wondering why they didn't move across to the landing stage to do the job. Eventually they realised it wasn't going to be a quick job and we helped them pull the boat across.
The previous day, out on a cruise-about with friends, we'd come the same way and been helped through the next lock, Fladbury, by Avon Navigation Trust volunteers who were collecting cash for the Trust at the same time. Good idea.

Three's a crowd - and there's another round the bend

The river was so quiet we moored below the lock for our picnic lunch and not a boat came past. Today we came through the lock and no less than three narrowboats and a plastic cruiser were crowded into the narrow exit channel waiting to go up.
It was a long, east run from here down past the handsome houses of Cropthorne straggling high above the southern bank, then a rather bleak stretch between flood banks before coming into open country again. It was here we came upon another narrowboat trying to rescue a sheep which had got itself in the river (why do farmers not put some electric fencing up along their banks as sheep regularly fall in while stretching for tasty nibbles?). Shortly afterwards, historic boats Thea and Owl passed us heading upstream.

An odd shaped lock at the oddly named Wyre Piddle

The entertainingly named village of Wyre Piddle straggled along the northern bank, with a hotch-pox mix of old and new, large and small riverside houses and then we were at Wyre Lock. This is a curious diamond shaped affair, reminiscent of one or two on the Oxford Canal, which leaves one wondering how to position the boat – or get one's lock wheeling crew back on board.
Pershore's Abbey tower had been in view for a while now and there was a good length of moorings along the side of the recreation ground, though we couldn't get Harry's deep stern into the edge.

Elegant Georgian buildings in elegant Pershore

What a contrast Pershore is to the rough and ready Evesham. It's a handsome, classy town of Georgian and Victorian houses, many with balconies or side archways for the horses and carriages, and a rich mix of independent small shops from secondhand book sellers to interiors to ironmongers.

Just a portion of the Abbey survives

Beautiful carving by Tom Harvey

It also has an Abbey which survived Henry VIII's ravages a little more intact than Evesham, with its fine tower and the stump of its nave still sound. In the grounds of the Abbey the trunk of an old elm tree has been exquisitely carved by Tom Harvey into the form of a monk reading.

A traditional Romany encampment on the edge of town

The day was rounded off by another vignette when we came upon a traditional Romany gypsy encampment on the roadside verge by Pershore bridge. Two horse-drawn caravans sat quietly there, a couple of men relaxing in one while a woman tended a fire on the ground and horses grazed there and across the road. Around them were some small tents, a trotting cart and a few dogs.
It was a scene that could have been played out across many years. We were intrigued to know more about them but, if boaters can get irritated with the often tiresome questions from passers-by about life on a boat then the widely disliked gypsies must feel even more defensive and resentful of intrusion. And I wasn't about to buy some 'lucky heather' to pay for a few minutes of their time so we left them alone.

Beware - the rain falls mainly on the plain

I think I should have been grateful that the forecast heavy rain never arrived yesterday. I've been looking at Google today and discovered that when it does rain here, boy oh boy, do bad things happen.

The calm river now compared with 2007 below

Evesham has been a regular, severe victim of flooding from the river for many hundreds of years. The really big one in 2007 was unimaginably huge when you compare these photos of the riverside then and now. It's not just the height of the water that's scary when you're sitting in a boat, it's how quickly the river can rise. Back in 1998, it came up 19 feet in a few hours! Static homes were swept off the nearby caravan site and boats off their moorings to be crushed against the town bridge arches, threatening it with serious damage. There's nowhere off-river you can escape to in that time; just trust your luck to some tall mooring posts.

The park bandstand in 2007

And as it looks from our window today

It's the low lying floodplain land that gives the Vale of Evesham the fertile soil that has made it a centre of fruit and vegetable growing – glass houses and polytunnels abound.

The C15th Round House is one of several old buildings

I remember on many road journeys dropping down from the scenic hills and picture postcard villages of the Cotswolds into the flatlands of the Vale.  It may be a centre of agriculture but that's not where the money is these times and the area always had a reek of being down-at-heel compared to the posh affluence on the Tory hills above it.
Never more than now. Charity shops, cheap stores and closed frontages abound while foreign voices fill the streets. The agri-businesses offer ready work for Poles, Rumanians, Portuguese and every other nationality whose home countries have high unemployment and poor living standards.
Life must be hard back there to work in agriculture here – I've done it as a student and it's the toughest of work – especially for minimum wages, rough accommodation and quite likely exploitation too.
The other side of the river from the main shopping area lies Dock Street, a ramshackle road of small shops that has become the home for ethnic stores of every sort. Without them it would doubtless be even more down-at-heel than it is.

The Abbey's surviving tower is under repair

All that said, riverside Evesham is pretty enough. There's a large park sweeping uphill to the remains of the old Abbey that must have dominated the scene before Henry VIII flattened it. Now just a tower survives, clad in scaffolding for restoration at the moment to ensure it continues to survive for many more years.
And the weather forecast remains fine for the next few days so I don't need to have bad dreams about those flooding pictures.

So where was all that rain?

We dressed for the rain but it never came

They forecast storms and tempests but they didn't happen here. Tug Harry didn't have to turn into the Ark.
After tieing up early yesterday because of the forecasts, what rain we got didn't arrive until midnight when it was heavy enough, briefly, to wake us with its drumming on the roof.

Not quite Lords; village cricket Bidford fashion

In the still-dry previous evening we had managed a walk round Bidford's huge green where a village cricket game at its most bucolic was underway. Fielders in shorts or tracksuit bottoms outnumbered those in whites and a few pints were hidden behind the boundary line to refresh the deep fielders between balls. There was even a youngster of about ten making up the numbers!
Back at the boat, we had a late evening visitor: a kingfisher perched on our bow Tee-stud.

Our late evening visitor posed briefly for the paparazzo

This morning it was still raining but was slackening by ten a.m. so we donned our wet gear and set off. Half an hour later it had stopped completely.
Only four locks separated us from our destination, Evesham, and the river was flowing just that bit faster to help push us on our way. Best known lock on the stretch is Harvington/Robert Aickman – all the Upper Avon locks have double names to commemorate an individual or group associated with the restoration.

The Robert Aickman memorial lock

This one celebrates one of the most influential figures in the renewal of the inland waterways. Aickman helped found the Inland Waterways Association in 1946 and campaigned for the waterways for more than twenty years.

A rather handsome looking bronze bust of the campaigner

He has his name writ large across the top of the lock as well as a handsome memorial, centre of which is a fine 3D style bust. What a shame that this impeccably kept lock was spoiled by a mound of rubbish around and under one of the benches - bottles, packets, almost a full set of men's clothes including pants (what did he go home in?) and even chunks of broken up plastic packaging chucked in the hedge. A good job Harrywoman was on hand to get it cleared up.

Shameful - the litter which Harrywoman cleared up

Just on from here, George Billington Lock (built in six weeks so its terminally ill donor might be able to see it finished) sports a curious small tower beside it. This is a memorial to Eric Pritchard, who built the tower as a lockkeeper's hut as well as other works on the river.

Not an errant space capsule but a lock hut

After this it was a simple, smooth couple of miles down to Evesham. The lock here is a bit of a demon to a newcomer: there's a large semi-open weir before it and you sneak past this still wondering where the lock is, the only clue being a 'left' arrow in the distance. And there it is, a sharp left turn off the river with currents pulling you every which way and nowhere obvious to moor if the gates are closed. Fortunately they weren't. It would all be a seriously sweaty palms job if the river was swollen. Or if the weir had been as fast running as the fierce open weir back at Harvington.
Evesham Lock is where the Upper Avon ends and the Lower Avon begins. A famous triangular lock house spanning a disused second lock chamber used to be the base of the Lower Avon authority until the two Trusts sensibly merged.

Evesham's lock house was flooded four feet deep in 2007

The house was badly damaged in the 2007 floods – which shows how high the waters must have risen – but has now been rebuilt.
Leaving the lock we went under the town bridge and onto a long length of pleasant parkside mooring. We'd just tied up when the rain began again - but even then only briefly.

Back where it all began

Moored across the river from Bidford Boats

We are moored opposite Bidford Boats where we began our first narrowboat holiday some 35 years ago.
Our first and our last. After suffering all the mishaps and arguments that befall most newbie hireboaters we vowed 'never again' and spent all our other family holidays on land. Until we eventually bought a little plastic cruiser and edged slowly back towards narrowboating.

The curious steel framed structure of the Avon's first lock

We've left Stratford Basin and its thronging tourists for the tranquility of the River Avon, a simply delightful river that offers pretty countryside and an entertaining mixture of riverside houses and hamlets.
The Upper Avon from Evesham up to Stratford, like the Stratford Canal, was in utter disrepair fifty years ago and its restoration was spearheaded by the same local architect and boater, David Hutchings, who had fought to get the canal back open.

Memorial at the lock to the man who led restoration

Hutchings was, by all accounts, a person whose ability to persuade authorities and conjure money, gung-ho spirit, roll-his-sleeves up and muck-in style would make even the most supercharged of the rest of us feel like sofa slugs.
Locks were rebuilt in weeks rather than months, generally using volunteers from local prisons and borstals as well as enthusiasts. Having not been properly navigable since 1870, it was back in service in five years.
It certainly doesn't look like a bodged-together waterway these days. Far from it: the wide locks are impeccably maintained and there lots of decent, flood-proof moorings. All credit to the non-profit making Avon Navigation Trust that runs it and an object lesson to C&RT perhaps.

Binton Bridges, one of many pretty spots on the river

Speaking of floods, we are sitting at Bidford-on-Avon, awaiting the forecast deluge of rain over the next hours with a mixture of trepidation and expectation. Yes, the river comes up fast but, boy, does it need to come up. It's very, very low.
For the first time on a river we got firmly stuck midstream going into the top gates of a lock and had to be pulled off by another boat. The river's so low it's off the bottom of the  depth scale. Hardly surprising, given the weather. Yesterday was another scorcher. We moored at the remote Pilgrim Lock and Vicky hung the washing out between the floodproof posts to dry in the sun. (Incidentally, hidden behind trees here are a water and elsan points since the spot is, presumably, at times a caravan site.)

A sunny afternoon, drying washing on the mooring posts

Here in Bidford we are in one of the more sizeable spots along the upper Avon but it's hardly big. It's a tiny, sleepy hollow of a spot, a single riverside street devoted, in the main, to the modest passing trade of boaters and picnickers with one-stop shops, take-aways and a couple of pub/restaurants.

Major structural repairs in progress on Bidford's bridge

It's sleepier still right now for the medieval bridge across the river into the village has been closed to vehicles for several months now and won't re-open until October. A crop-spraying vehicle snapped an axle pin when crossing, went part way through the parapet and narrowly avoided plunging into the river.

The sleepy hollow that was Bidford today

Still, we have a phone signal, a shop and a pub. We could be marooned for months and survive!

All the world's a stage

The man at the centre of it all

It certainly is here at Bancroft Basin in Stratford – and we boaters are indeed merely players on it. Bit part players at that in the continuing drama of William Shakespeare which has enthralled the world for four hundred years and draws thousands of tourists to his birthplace here.

Beside another fine tug, this one built by Dave Harris

The Bard and his creations await the next wave of tourists

Most of them, to judge from our viewpoint, from Japan. Japanese tourists seem to wash over Bancroft Gardens like waves on a beach, pouring across the ground and around the famous monument to the Bard, then retreating to leave it empty before the next rolling breaker arrives.

Prince Hal lifts his crown but no-one is watching

And all of them – as you'd expect – photographing everything: the statue of Shakespeare and the surrounding bronzes of his most famous creations, the boats, the boaters' dogs, the plants, each other and themselves (with those notorious selfie sticks of course).
Some of them photograph details with the same relentless intensity - snap, snap, snap, snap - I used to see in Japanese engineers snapping away at details of rival new cars at motor shows. Poor friends back at home having to sit through an evening of saki and 'snaps of our trip to Stratford'.
It really is a huge entertainment though naturally some boaters manage to grumble about it. What a grumpy bunch we are!

The eternally depressed Hamlet

The monument to Shakespeare is an understandably popular destination. The bronzes of the playright and of Prince Hal, Lady Macbeth, Falstaff and Hamlet are exquisite and the stone base on which the Bard sits staring rather sternly out at the modern world has some of his great lines. Most, sadly, seems to be missed by the waves of iphone wielders busy snapping each other with a hand on Yorick's skull or stroking a charming boater's dog.

Alas poor Yorick, yet another photo opportunity

The statues are free to look at of course; unlike much else in Stratford which has to be 'Experienced' or eaten (I don't think I've ever seen so many restaurants in a square mile, all of them busy).

Ghastly Shakespearean analogies and puns abound on shop names, though there are classier frontages on the quieter streets it has to be said and it is easy to leave the dawdling geriatric visitors and crocodiles of teenagers behind.
Being cost-conscious boaters we opted for the gourmet gastronomic experience of 'the best fish and chips in town' followed by a self guided walking tour of the old streets courtesy of a Stratford Society website. More of that next time.

Back on the toe-path at last

Crossing the Edstone Aqueduct

At last! We are back on the move. After five days enforced rest, the dislocated digit is recovered enough for me to limp about and certainly to steer the boat.
We've both been going stir crazy sitting in Wooton Wawen, even if listening to England whup the Aussies in under three days to win the Ashes did relieve my immediate boredom. All the same, I've never read so much, nor done so many Sudokus, codewords and crosswords. Harrywoman kept herself more than busy; repainting the pole and plank as well as the stove chimney and re-varnishing the dogbox too but I was confined to foot-up listening to Blowers and company on Test Match Special.

`A fish-eye view of the boat from the low towpath

But today we finally decided to get moving towards Stratford. The run to Wilmcote was a good 'sharpener' with just one lock, though several of the narrow bridge holes were so gummed up with silt and sludge that we ground to a halt and had to force our way through.

And a view of the skyline for Seadog Brian

The route took us across the celebrated Edstone Aqueduct. By Poncysyllte standards the Edstone is small beer but it is still nearly 200 yards long and crosses a deep valley in which run a road and railway on its brick piers. Like the others on the canal it is a cast iron trough, built up in sections, and just wide enough for a boat, with the towpath down at trough-base level. That makes for some unusual photo opportunities as you can see.

You can't get back on there

There were no other boats around so we were happy to linger on the aqueduct - the Shakespeare Express steam train runs on this line on Sundays and that would have been a photo opportunity. Sadly it didn't turn up.
We moored for lunch at a curious spot on the edge of Wilmcote where the remains of a bridge, scattered bits of brickwork and a haunted looking copse of stunted trees and dead vines marked the likely site of an old lime burning wharf.

A worm's eye view of the crew and the repainted chimney

We found a footpath through the wood which led to the railway line (and crossed to the field beyond). A steam train was due so we settled down to wait for it – only to be told off by a diesel train driver who slowed to say we should be behind the fence as we might be mistaken for suicides! Didn't happen when I was a lad – train drivers used to wave and toot when we stood by the lineside.

Rood Ashton Hall going backwards very quickly

As did today's steam train driver when he passed – going at quite a clip, though pulling his coaches in reverse, if that's the correct parlance, which didn't make for such a glamorous photo. For steam buffs the engine was ' Rood Ashton Hall' an ex-GWR loco.

Halfway down the Wilmcote flight we see Stratford ahead

Lunch done and train spotted, we pressed on down the Wilmcote flight of eleven locks. I was happy to steer for a change and let Harrywoman do the lockwheeling. There were some volunteer lockies on duty at the top lock but even my limping around didn't persuade them to leave their post and see us down the flight. Not to worry, though; we soon had a slick operation going and we moored up at the bottom of the locks just outside the Stratford by-pass.

Toe in the water - shortly followed by everything else

This makes the score four-nil. Four duckings to me; nil to Harrywoman. By now I've probably even fallen in more often than Seadog Brian.
Unfortunately, this time I hurt something other than my pride. As I bobbed to the surface I thought my left foot felt a bit squiffy and, sure enough, as I peeled my clothes off in the shower I discovered the big toe was at a jaunty angle.

I don't think that big toe should look quite like that

I've broken bones before – as you've probably gathered I am a tad accident prone – and I know they usually hurt a lot and swell up a lot too. My toe wasn't swelling and didn't hurt too much so my self-diagnosis was that it as dislocated. Harrywoman offered to pull it straight; an offer I graciously declined. An A&E visit was definitely necessary.
Now, it you must hurt yourself then take my advice and do it somewhere like here: right opposite the Anglo-Welsh hirebase at Wooton Wawer. While I limped around, Harrywoman took charge. She spoke to the hirebase guys who phoned a taxi to take us to the walking wounded centre at Stratford upon Avon and offered a temporary slot in their part of the basin while we were away.
Twenty minutes later I was limping into the Centre and keeping my fingers crossed they'd be able to fix it. If not, it was a long trip to Warwick A&E.
Less than an hour later I was walking out with my toe strapped up and back, more or less in working order. There hadn't even been a queue.
An X-ray confirmed it was dislocated, the brilliant A&E nurse gave me a cylinder of party gas (nitrous oxide to you innocent folk) to inhale from and pulled it smoothly back into position.
Instant relief: I'm not tap-dancing quite yet but it sure feels a lot better. So thank you NHS, thank you Anglo-Welsh guys, thank you friendly taxi driver and thank you Harrywoman for controlling your laughter long enough to get help hauling me out of the water and taking charge of everything after that.