Worcester Shrub Hill

Today's Canal - Worcester and Birmingham

Despite the forecast being rather dire, the day turned out reasonably pleasant. There was a chilling breeze at times but by the afternoon we had both blue sky and an attempt to drop sleet/snow/hail - which came to very little, not even enough to decide which is was!

We were off in slightly better time today and soon made our way to the first of three pairs of locks - Tolladine. Just as the lock was ready, Christine waved at Mike to tell him there was an urgent phone call which took nearly 45 minutes to deal with as well as follow-up.

The next five locks followed smoothly even though almost all of them were set against us. After a bit  of discussion we opted to moor up at the George Street bridge, close to Shrub Hill. This is probably the best place for shops as either today or tomorrow we wanted to do a little shopping in the city centre.

We had lunch and then set off to see what the shops had to offer. The main objective was shoes and slippers. Altogether we bought from three different shops - one independent, one Clarks and the other Pavers!

By the time we returned to the boat there was not really time to go further so water and elsan will have to wait until morning.

We did manage to find a very old mobile phone at the back of a cupboard and charged it up to see what it could do as a substitute for our normal picture taker. Alas the results were not great. The first shows just after we set off - but probably most phones would struggle in this light. 

Soon after, whilst trying to take a shot of the work on the new towpath (aka fast cycleway) we realised that all was far from well so that is it for today!

After we returned to the boat Mike spent rather longer than anticipated trying tackle a rather irritating problem - the  rear hatch cover had become very difficult to bolt securely. We think that either it or the cabin door frame has distorted just ever so slightly, perhaps less than 1 mm - the doors fit tighter as well. Not a lot that we can do about that but we did manage to adjust the hatch and bolt holes so that it can be closed, albeit with still a little care.

4.0 Miles - 6 Locks