The weekend - Stourport and Kidderminster

Saturday

Saturday was definitely going to be a rest day – we thought we would cruise out of Stourport and find somewhere quiet and rural to have a relaxing afternoon watching the final three Six Nations matches (and put a map together of the the waterways we have travelled - see the bottom of this page below each blog entry).

We had to get through the basins first which meant going up a couple of broad beam locks straight off the Severn.  

The first lock is overlooked by this chic hotel, the sort that I would expect Steve (my middle son) and Amanda to stay in if they were visiting us.

These locks are really deep so you can't see the boat at the bottom unless you go right to the edge.


We stopped for water, diesel and gas and then went onto the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal (pronounced Staffs & Wusts)  and back to narrow beam locks.   

The outskirts of Stourport weren't too bad.


We cruised out into the country, moored up and settled in to watch the rugby.

We are following the Staffs & Worcs canal all the way up to Authersley junction to the west of Wolverhampton where we will turn off onto the Shropshire Union canal to head for Cheshire.  We covered the northern section of the Staffs & Worcs from the Trent & Mersey down to Authersley junction earlier in the year.

Sunday

We decided to get through Kidderminster on Sunday as we have heard it’s not a very safe place to be.  As it was, it was quite pleasant as the canal runs right through the town.  The only shot we have is of the church taken from the lock.

Soon after Kidderminster we passed this bridge which is how freight traffic used to get onto the river Stour.  There is a disused lock just through the bridge.

This part of the canal is cut through red sandstone and is consequently quite narrow in places.

Here the canal runs under a village through a short tunnel cut in the rock.

This stone marks the border between Staffordshire and Worcestershire.

 

We moored here to catch the last of the afternoon sun.

Unfortunately something went wrong with the SD card in the camera so we lost most of Sunday’s pictures.  There were some great ones of dozens of gongoozlers surrounding our boat as there was a pub right on the lock.  We also lost the ones taken in Kidderminster and of a cave cut into the sandstone that used to house canal horses.  Another interesting one was of the boat going under a viaduct when a steam train from the Severn Valley railway went overhead.

We were both upset about this but believe it was down to a fault occurring when the camera ran out of power - oh well, a lesson learnt - on the plus side we had been smelling the curry wafting up from the slow cooker all day!

This was the sunset from our kitchen window on Sunday evening.

And this is the only picture we have of the five locks we went through today.