Monday morning began with a pleasant surprise as our 'leapfrog' friends, on their boat Oakfield, http://nboakfield.blogspot.co.uk/ Keith and Ann arrived and moored behind us as we were considering our options for the day.
After a walk down to look again at the river levels (green) we all decided it was now or never to venture out onto the river section leading south to the start of the Droitwich Canal. This has only newly had it's restoration completed, so we wanted to show our support.
After coming down through the first lock, we breasted the boats up and moored for water etc. Richard ran back to help Oakfield down and then they filled their diesel tank. We parted company as Oakfield went down through the 4 narrow staircase locks.
I tried to enlist the help of the locky by asking if we could come down the lock, to which he replied 'help yourselves', not really what I wanted to hear, as I was a bit nervous of doing something wrong!
Anyway, I managed to get the heavy gates open in time for Richard to bring the boats in, but was unable to even turn the mechanism on the paddles to drop the water. I had already had to go down to the second lock and drop the water first, so the top lock would feed the bottom. So we swapped, me on the tiller and he the paddles!
What a mistake! As I tickled out of the lock, the wind and my gentle approach to the Lister engine was not a good combination, and I glided across the middle pound like a lame duck!
Richard pulled the boats with the front line on the butty and a I gave it some throttle to recover and enter the lower lock gates. One of the straps holding the boats together had snapped in my miscalculation and Richard had to do a repair job in the lock.
Out on the river, we sailed along gracefully, not really being pushed too much.
Oakfield weren't allowed to share the lock so we slowed a little so they could catch up as the entrance to the Droitwich canal was a mystery to all of us!
Entrance to the second lock.
Oakfield coming out of Holt lock, approaching the beautiful 1827 iron bridge designed by Thomas Telford.
The entrance to the Droitwich canal was hidden to some extent from the boater, asking for a 360degree turn on a flowing river, to moor on a floating pontoon in order to open the gates of the lower lock. Oakfield turned first and moored as we had continued on to spin on a wider part of the river and moor behind them.
The locks on this canal begin as widebeam and then past Droitwich they reduce to single. We were therefore able to longline into each lock and fairly quickly make progress up the 8 locks to Droitwich. Oakfield were very helpful in that after leaving each lock, they dropped a paddle so that by the time we got there, the lock was in our favour.
The day was long though, as Droitwich hadn't really been the target, mooring places were none existent as you can see above! There was quite literally no opportunities to stop anywhere unless a lock landing was used!
So we followed behind Oakfield and eventually moored on the edge of the town area for a couple of days where the sides were piled and we could use stakes.
Our muscles ached after all the locks we had just done, so we spent some time just relaxing and exploring the quirky, proud, interesting little town. Brine extraction was it's claim to fame and the subsidence in the High Street is it's legacy...
Ann had said it reminded her of Noddy's Toytown, as all the houses lean in different directions onto each other, bizarre to see. We managed to spend another couple of nights in the purpose built marina for visitors to the town another few hundred yards into town, and watched the neighbouring rising Salwarpe river with intense interest!
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