Bartimaeus

There is a small charge for the moorings at Tewkesbury, so I went along to the lock-keeper to pay.  There isn't much boat traffic at the moment, and he was happy to chat.  I mentioned that we had seen the fast moving water in the Severn and wondered about over-staying the posted 48 hour limit on moorings to allow the levels to drop.  He was very supportive of this idea, agreeing that pressing hard in to fast flowing water is not a lot of fun.  He also recommended some sights to see in the town.

The next morning was cloudy and cold, so it seemed a fine idea to start by exploring Tewkesbury Abbey, and then moving on to the John Moore Museum.  We emerged as they closed for lunch, and explored the narrow alleys in the old part of town before looking for our own lunch.  As we were finishing that I realised that another museum was available, but about to shut - and it wouldn't be open the next day.

We hurried across to find that we had missed the general entry times, but we could still go in to see the funfair exhibit.  The exhibit was the work of one man over five years.  It had been bought by a councillor and donated to the town.  There were five working rides, each started by pressing buttons.

At closing time, the staff said that they had a meeting later on, so we were welcome to stay and view the rest of the museum.  Upstairs there was a diorama of the Battle of Tewkesbury and long explanations of the events surrounding it.  It all sounded depressingly similar to the Battle of Bosworth, but this time the other side won.

During the evening I noticed that the water levels on the Severn were dropping as expected, but there were regular spikes in the level.  Further research confirmed that these were tidal - remnants of the Severn Bore - having crossed three weirs.  I have long wanted to see the Bore further down stream, but so far the timing has always been wrong.

The next spike in the water levels was due late morning, so we went across the Severn Ham again to the viewpoint over the weir opposite the Upper Lode Lock.  We could hear the water running over the weir as we approached.  There was more of a drop in the level than last time we'd seen it.

Over the next twenty minutes, the water gradually rose - the last bit of the bore.  We were soon looking at still water with no sign of the weir underneath.  The clouds gave way to sunshine completing the transformation.  We got a distant view of a kingfisher flying along near the far bank.

We'd seen the work boat Eric again earlier on.  While we were having lunch back on Bartimaeus, it drove by.  Instead of pushing a huge barge, this time it was towing a small plastic boat.  We can only speculate about the circumstances.

In the afternoon we walked down towards the Lower Lode Ferry shown on my map.  On the way we came across signs describing various aspects of the Battle of Tewkesbury, including one describing Queen Margaret escaping by crossing the river on horseback at Lower Lode.  There was no sign of a ferry when we got there, and we had no horses, so we didn't get a chance for a drink at the pub on the other side of the river.  I've updated the map!

Our way back in to town brought us near to the John Moore Museum again.  We went in and enquired about seeing the Old Baptist Chapel which had somehow not been part of our visit the previous day.  We were taken across the road and shown around.

On our way back to the boat we had a close-up view of a kingfisher, this time on our side of the river.