Car Shuffle Day

We are returning home tomorrow for a couple of weeks and so today was the inevitable car shuffle and cleaning day. Whilst Mike does the easy part of collecting the car, Christine takes advantage of his absence to clean through. On this occasion she also wanted to process three loads through our washing machine.

The trip to Droitwich involved taking a taXi to Hartford Station, train to Smethwick Galton and change then to a second train to Droitwich with the final leg by taxi back to the marina. The first taxi driver, who lives barely 100 m from where we were moored, proved to be very interesting to chat to as we drove to the station. He used to work at Winnington Works, just across the river. In fact, he was born on the site! The original owners of the works which opened in the mid 19th century, had a positive attitude to their workers (at l;east for the time) and they built  some houses on the site mainly so that workers who were also part time firemen could be immediately on hand. It seems that in the early days, the processes were not always stable and so fire fighting was a not uncommon experience. My driver's father was one such fireman.

My driver had various roles on the site including shunter. BR brought trains of wagons carrying raw material to the entrance to the site but the company were then responsible for shunting each wagon to the unloading point and re-assembling the train ready for BR to collect. In more recent years, personnel were expected to be multi skilled and he ended up as a process technician, over-seeing the operation of the chemical processes.

It seems that although the main part of the site that produced soda ash closed four years ago, there is still a plant producing bicarb, which is very much in demand. It occupies a small part of the site but attempts to sell off the site have been thwarted when interested developers (for housing, of course!) see that they would have to build their houses around the remaining chemical works! A detailed and fascinating report of the changes at Winnington can be found here.

He also told Mike that an ICI research lab on the site in the 1930s created polythene - initially as a result of an accidental failure of an experiment into something different. According to the BBC, it then took five years to discover how to make the product on an industrial scale but it play an important role during the following wartime developments including radar systems.

Once Mike reached Droitwich Marina he briefly called at the shop as he had just sorted out what paint had been used for the black gunnels - we may soon need to touch up thew scrapes that seem to have been acquired, even in two weeks!

After a call at the new Lidl store for rolls for tomorrow's journey, it was back to the motorway for the two hour journey back to the boat. Although there are long term road works where traffic speeds are restricted, there were no unanticipated hold ups.

During the afternoon, Christine spotted cygnets for the first time this season - she only used 'a very very tiny' morsel of food to tempt them into a close-up shot!