Wyre Piddle

 Today's Navigation - River Avon

The service we opted to attend at St Peter;s in Bengeworth, was at 10.30 so we had a lazy start before walking up the hill to the church. This was an 'Informal gathering' - a new experiment for the par5ish started only three weeks ago following the appointment a new vicar to stimulate a new initiative in the church. He aims to combine a pattern of continuing traditional worship with more modern forms, especially aimed at families with young children.

We were warmly welcomed and offered coffee or squash and a biscuit. The service was indeed in as style that is becoming its own tradition in evangelical congregations. The music was led by a single musician, a skilled singer and guitarist. The service was lay-led and the new vicar gave the talk. There were perhaps 50 adults and almost 20 children and young people.

Chatting to people before and after we learned a little about the context of life in Evesham at the moment. For some time, the main economy has been either market gardens or industrial scale food processing. One factory, for example, imports and packages fruit from all over the world, just to supply Waitrose. Both of these drew heavily on workers from eastern European countries which explains why so many of the shops in Bengeworth have geographical specialities.

Just one of these shops. Only atypical in that it refers to Kurdish produce.

However, following Brexit, a large proportion of the workers have returned home, either because they no longer have a permit to work here or because they find the context unwelcoming. We were told that, as few local people are willing to do the work, many of the market gardening businesses have collapsed. It seems that, fro some people at least, there is a very real concern for the future of the area which has few alternative industries to rely on.

On the way back to the boat we diverted to take a look at the site of the old church. This picture is taken from a sadly defaced information panel.

The 1870 demolition gang really took their task seriously and most of the site is now an open green area.

Just a single structure, the base of the tower, remains. At a later date it was repaired and given a roof.

Back at the boat we rapidly changed into boating clothes and moved about 100 m along the moorings to the water point - we were getting quite low. Only when filled up did we set off properly.

Although when we came to take this photo of the rowing club on the opposite bank there were none out, both yesterday and today it had been very busy with rowers of all skill levels - quite a few beginners were being given instruction.

Many of the locks, more soon the Lower Avon, have very wide weirs, like this one at Chadbury, our first lock of the day. There is also a canoe portage facility and a fish ladder.

The locks are becoming much deeper and their construction below Evesham is very different. On the Upper Avon we found that the gates were very difficult to ove but the paddles very easy. Here, we are finding the converse - the gates, more like those used by the main canal network, move smoothly but the paddle are pretty difficult.

On the main network, the traditional designs have largely been retained with just a few experimental options tried over the years. The result blends well with the landscape and has the accumulated benefit of many iterations in the design. On the Avon it feels as if the restorations teams wanted to be different and also drew inspiration from the Brutalist architecture which was in vogue at the time. As a result, a lot of detail had to be 'bodged' as small unforeseen issues had to be fixed. No doubt we are approaching the time when  these designs will be considered 'heritage' and will have to be preserved as important examples of their time.

At Fladbury Lock, signs record two floods of recent times, but we wonder whether that of 2019 was even higher. It certainly was very devastating and we have read on the Avon Navigation Trust web site just how significant that has been for their ability to run the navigation.

This event coincided with a period in which many of the staff and volunteers have retired or, sadly, died. The inevitable loss of income during lockdown has impacted their ability to keep their work force and they have had to manage the whole operation with just four paid staff. Some of the previous team have remarkably stayed on as volunteers even in a reduced role. We have been noticing the growing impact of a much lower level of maintenance especially regarding in water vegetation. For example. many fallen trees have been left dangling in the water,. gradually gathering even larger amounts of floating debris,. At times the width of the navigable space is very much reduced and visibility at corners can sometimes be hazardous.

By now the grey sky and occasional rain of this morning had given way to brighter sunshine - giving us this great picture of Cropthorne Mill at Fladbury Lock.

When we arrived at Wyre Lock the overnight visitor moorings were just too attractive (more in terms of timing than view!) and so we left the descent of this unusual diamond shaped lock until the morning.

10.0 Miles - 2 Locks