Narrowboat Just Heaven

We left Worcester at about eightish for our first trip up this part of the Severn. It’s much more attractive than the lower reaches.

We arrived at Stourport at 1 o’clock. I had arranged to pick up the keys etc for our new mooring from the BW office. It was difficult to find amid all the building works. After paying a £25 deposit and signing some paperwork I had the keys.

We went up to Kidderminster and settled JH into her new home. Luckily another moorer happened to arrive to attend to his boat and gave us lots of useful information.

We got a taxi to take us back to Tibberton to pickup the car and then drove back to Kidderminster.

We stayed onboard and left for home the next morning.

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Uneventful journey up the river. Weather was good for the time of year.

We moored by the Sabrina footbridge at about three thirty and spent the rest of the afternoon & evening watching the rowers going up and down.

At one point two ‘dragon boats’ appeared and were racing each other - they go pretty fast!

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The next morning whilst we we using the pumpout machine a guy from one of the liveaboards came up and asked us what the commotion was about the previous evening. We told him the story and it seems that the girl’s boyfriend did something similar a few weeks earlier.

We moved over to moor on the pontoons in the main docks and went shopping in Gloucester.

At 13:00 we went through the lock onto the river and stopped for the night on the pub moorings at Lower Lode.

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My sister San, her partner John and my Mum came to see us just after lunch. As Mum isnt very steady on her legs we pulled over to the services area at Slimbridge Boat station for her to get on. We topped up with diesel whilst there.

We took them for a little chug up and down. They left about 3:00 and we went up to Gloucester to spend the night in the docks.

We moored on the Llanthony pontoons and went to bed. We had been in bed about 20 mins when we heard a girl’s voice calling out. We couldnt make out what she said at first, but then we realised she was saying “Help me”. I thought the sound was coming from the abandoned warehouse on the opposite of the dock. So there wasnt much we could do except call the emergency services. I stuck my head out of the hatch and realised that it was much closer. A man from a nearby boat called out “Can you come and help, she’s fallen in the water”. When I got there he had fished out of the water a young woman. She was wet, cold & shivering. We put a blanket round her and tried to find what had happened. All she would say was “He’s left me and gone off with another girl”. I decided to call for an anbulance. It was quite difficult to get the 999 operator to understand that where we were didnt have a post code and didnt have a road name! Eventually an ambulance and three police cars came! They took her off to hospital and we went back to bed.

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We have stayed here for several days, just doing a few jobs on the boat and people watching.

Liz, Simon & the grandchildren came to see us on Sunday, and Caroline, Val & Sophie on Monday.

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We moved down to Purton and Sue & Tom joined us for lunch.

Took them for a little chug down towards Sharpness and back. They had to leave as Tom was milking that evening.

We then went up to Patch Bridge at Slimbridge where we stayed until Thursday.

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Today’s aim was to get through Gloucester and onto the G&S canal.
The summer opening times of Severn locks are 8:00 - 18:00, so we set off at 8:10 for Lower Lode lock about half a mile away. When we got there we found that there isn’t really anywhere to moor up to wait, so we tied up to a large piece of wood. There was no sign of life in the locky’s cabin, I couldn’t get off from where we were so we waited awhile. It was now 8:45, I was just about to go and find the phone number for the lock when a car arrived and someone in the BW uniform got out. At first he didn’t notice us, then he called out “Have you been waiting long?” “No, only about 5 minutes” I lied. We locked through and were on our way. The weather started off as bad as the day before, but by the time we reached Gloucester lock at 12:00 the sun was out and it was warming up. Gloucester lock is currently undergoing repairs and is only open for three one hour periods a week. We had to wait until 13:00 for the next one. Moored up by just our back rope( as instructed by the lockie) in the strong current was a little odd. Through the docks and out onto the G&S, the sun was now out quite strongly and it was becoming warmer. We moored up near Sellars bridge and decided to put the signs on.
We hadn’t done anything like this before and we were a bit apprehensive as we knew that we had only one go to get it right. But after about an hour we had done both sides and she looked really good. Now, with our name on she was definitely “Our Boat”!

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We awoke to bright sunshine and thought “Ah a warm day, we’ll do the signs”. If we go down to Diglis basin there will be room to turn so we can do both sides. By the time we got to Diglis the sun had gone in and the temperature had dropped to near freezing, so we topped up the water and headed out onto the Severn. This was our first trip on the river, though we have both lived near it, further down below Gloucester, for most of our lives. Through Diglis lock where, despite the size of the lock, the drop was only about 3 feet. The plan was to get to Tewkesbury for the night. The weather started to get worse, really cold, windy and raining. On this part of the Severn there are no visitor moorings, so we had to press on cold & wet. We reached Upton about 3:00 and decided to stop for while to warm up. There was quite a flow on the river and mooring in the only available space was a bit of a challenge. We warmed up by the fire and then went into the town to buy some masking tape (needed for the sign fixing).
The rain stopped and the sun tried to come out, so we carried on downstream. We had only being going a few minutes when the rain and biting cold wind started again. We were very pleased when we saw the Avon join from the left. Up the Avon a short way onto the moorings below the lock for the night.

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We embarked on our first ‘proper’ trip, previous trips had just been for a couple of days and only a short distance.
The aim of the week was to move the boat from its temporary moorings at Tibberton on the W&B to its new permanent moorings at Round hill Wharf on the S&W. But we were going the long way round via Sharpness.
We also wanted to apply the new name using stick-on vinyl to the newly painted panels. For this we needed the temperature to rise above 10C. On arrival it was clearly too cold so we put that task off for later in the week.
We moved off down the Offerton flight and moored for the night just outside Worcester.

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