Pershore to Tewkesbury

Captains Log Canal Date 18th July 2009 Travels 13.5 Miles 3 Large Heavy River Locks Current Location On Avon Outside Croft Farm OS Ref SO 902 – 355 Lat – Lon 52.1’02.8N 2 8’37.7W Time to go to Croft Farm, we need to look at our caravan and to make sure it is ready for its next outing. The journey down the river was all very nice. It could have been much better if the weather had been a bit better but at least the weather was much better than forecast! We meet our first miserable boater today; he has a mooring in a nasty place close to a lock on a sharp bend. Not a place to moor a “Tupperware” boat. If you get it a bit wrong it would be very easy to hit it amidships. I would imagine that 22 tons of steel narrowboat would come off a little better than 3mm of expensive fibre glass. He was trying to tell everyone how to steer there boats. I bet he does not sleep well. We had a late start it was getting quite late as we approached Croft farm, and not knowing if we could moor there we decided to play safe and moor outside a pub a few hundred yards up stream (The Fleet at Twyning) This of course meant that we would have to have another pub meal. The food was nicely presented and looked very good but once started to eat, it was to be very average and quite expensive. Shall not bother to go there again. Next morning we go direct into Tewkesbury town centre to do a bit of shopping. Unbeknown to us it was Tewkesbury water festival today. Nowhere to moor. After a bit of shuffling about we managed to moor in very shallow water about 5 ft from the bank and using the new gang plank to exit the boat. After a look around the town, we went back to the boat. It took ages to get off the shallows and to a point where the boat was floating again. We went to Croft Farm to find a suitable mooring place. Now it must be understood at this point that we had been invited to moor there by the land owner. We found a suitable looking bank and aimed at it. No chance. We were grounded good and proper. This time I had to resort to pushing with the boat pole whilst running the engine at full power, eventually we got off and had another go further down stream. Exactly the same again. After another two attempts we eventually we managed to get close enough to the bank to use the gang plank again. It’s never been used before and now twice in one day. We are firmly on the bottom, if the river level drops much we may well be here until the next flood!! If we can get off the bottom we shall go to Tewkesbury Marina on Tuesday.