Strensham

 Today's Navigation - River Avon

We were a little slow getting away this morning but Mike set the lock (we had moored alongside Wyre Lock) before we untied. Unlike comments made in a previous blog, this lock proved to have very difficult bottom gates, not helped by the fact that the ends of the balance beams threatened to go out beyond the edge of the lock so that when pushing hard against them, either to open or to close, great care is needdd nit to end up in the river below.

The lock is an unusual diamond shape. Still not found a really convincing explanation for why just the one lock on this navigation is this shape but several interesting theories can be found here.

A short distance brought us to Pershore and the water point and elsan service. We were rather overdue on the latter and toped up the former just in case.

The next lock, Pershore, is also unusual in having a single ground paddle for filling the lock, set a little distance away from the lock. This paddle also has a gearing mechanism the same as the locks on the Upper Avon and not, we think, seen elsewhere on the Lower Avon - the two sections were restored quite separately and have quite different engineering designs. Perhaps this was fitted in a later maintenance project.

Another multi-arch bridge, Pershore Great Bridge, where - coming downstream - the navigation arch is not visible until the last moment as trees on the bend hide the sign. It replaced a set of treacherous stepping stones.

The Great Bridge is now paralleled by Pershore New Bridge built to carry the traffic of the 20C rather than the 15C! Even so, traffic in 1926 was nothing in comparison with today.

All three locks today have something unusual and Nafford Lock has a pedestrian swing bridge right in the middle of  the lock which has to be swung out of the way to allow boats at the upper level.

By now it was lunch time so we managed to squeeze onto the very short mooring at Burlingham Wharf - only room for one 60 ft boat and that touching the trees at either end. As we were tying up the promised rain arrived.

When we had finished lunch it was still vey wet so we waited a while util a dry patch turned up. Alas, no sooner had we set off but the rain clouds spotted us and poured even heavier rain onto us!

The next bridge at Eckington is also multi-arch but we had no difficulty in seeing which is the navigation arch. This one was built in 1720's but replaced one dating back to 1440. It carries quite a bit of traffic on a B road - traffic lights are needed to cope with the narrow width that can only permit traffic in one direction at a time.

A two mile uninterrupted stretch followed - wide and open to allow steerers to get very wet in the rain! We had earlier checked with the Navigation Trust that there is now a visitor mooring at Strensham Lock which is what we made our planned destination. It would probably have been getting towards twilight if we pressed on to Tewkesbury - there are almost not moorings in between -  another hour away. In the event, if we had done that we would have ended up very set and chilled so we were very pleased to find a space beside the lock. The stove was very quickly lit and we were soon quite cosy inside in the dry.

9.6 Miles - 3 Locks