Tewkesbury

We had arranged to pick up Teresa & Lindsay at Tewkesbury Marina at about 17:30.  As that should only have been about 6.5 hours cruising we had a late start and did a few jobs and washed one side of the boat before setting off at 10 o’clock. The weather was good and it we were having a pleasant run down to to Worcester. At Holt lock the locky warned us that there might be delays at Bevere Lock as the top paddle was broken and they were filling the lock with pumps. When we got there there were three boats waiting but no space for us. With a bit of shuffling along we slotted in between two. I could see the six huge diesel pumps filling the lock. Two boats came out and two more went in. Then three more hire boats arrived. One of them a Black Prince one got himself in a complete mess trying to come alongside another waiting boat. At one point he was directly across the river with his bow pushed up against the bollards protecting the weir. It took us just over an hour to get through the lock, so now we were behind schedule.

We stopped briefly at Worcester where we topped up the water and had lunch whilst it was filling. The rest of the journey down was uneventful until Upton upon Severn where it started to rain. It rained hard then for the rest of the day. We got to Avon Lock at Tewkesbury just after five. The locky came out in the pouring rain to deal with us and was very friendly and helpful. He relieved me of £45.00 for the ANT licence and we chugged a couple of hundred yards up the the marina’s visitor moorings where T & L were waiting for us.

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