Christmas Day

Last night we watched television until it was time to make our way to St Peter's Church on the other side of town for their midnight communion service. This was well attended - the church is not large but almost all seats were taken and it was a very friendly atmosphere, led by the vicar.

On return to the boat we had to maintain the tradition of leaving a glass of whisky for Santa - and then making sure that an empty glass was left to be found in the morning by the true believers. We did, however, check on Santa's progress via the Norad website. It did seem that that a very large number of presents had already been successfully delivered - austerity and Brexit not withstanding!

We did not attempt an early rise today but Mike was on to the veg prep before long. With almost all of the elements of the Christmas dinner ready we could relax until much later when Andrew was due to join us after driving up from Devizes. However, just in case he reached us early and we wanted to cruise out of the marina, we also filled with water and made various waste disposals.

In the end it was around 1 o'clock when Christine received a text from Andrew saying that he was just about to set off. With an estimated hour and 40 minutes, we had time to walk off some of our lunch (another of Christine's soups)  and went down the first part of the canal to the motorway tunnel, passing the staircase locks on the way.

Coming back we found a path whose start point we have seen several times before but not followed - it was less obvious at the other end. However, it did seem that this was once a well made track with a good base of hardcore.

Alongside was a plantation of young trees - a somewhat odd collection of sometimes non-native species.

The track crosses the brook by a couple of bridges which looked part of the canal restoration works. The track then went up to the staircase locks from the single below, to cross over the canal to the farm field on the offside.

We do not have any specific information but it looks very much as if this was constructed as an access route for the heavy machinery and materials needed top restore this section where the locks had to be created from bare land, rather than re-build the originals. This was necessitated by the intervening arrival of the motorway which otherwise blocked the route.

This conjecture does answer the question why was the bridge at the tail of the lower staircase lock so wide and substantial. Today the bridge serves no active purpose although there is a gate into the field but firmly marked to indicate that it is private land!

We returned to the marina entrance and continued along the towpath to the top of the three original locks that drop down from Hanbury Junction with the main Worcester and Birmingham Canal.

The automated river warning system told us unambiguously what we already knew, that the River Severn is currently closed with high water levels following recent rains.

Time then to return to the boat and just a couple of minutes later Andrew pulled up, with both our walk and his drive taking the estimated times!

This blog is being written as the meal is starting to cook so reports of whether it all worked or not will have to wait for a further update!