Bartimaeus

Before we left Evesham I wanted to fill up with water.  There are a couple of taps along the town moorings, but they are labelled as not drinking water.  I can only assume they were intended to be drinking water supplies but failed some test or other.  We went the short distance back to the lock and found a tap which seemed to be safe to use for drinking.

It was only a couple of miles to Chadbury Lock.  The lock was set our way so I drove straight in, noting that there was a mooring on the "other" side of the lock jetty.  In the warm sunshine, Clare suggested that perhaps we should stop here, at least for while.  I reversed back out of the lock and on to the landing.

The mooring was in a very tranquil spot, though it was surrounded by man-made structures, including: pylons, fences, poles, a lock, a weir and even an A-road roundabout.  None of this made it easy to get good photographs.  What we got instead was a display of bird life.  We had repeated sightings of a pair of kingfishers chasing by, and many more sightings of single birds.  There was also a cartoon style array of single birds of different species: cormorant, heron, goose, duck, moorhen.

We went for a short walk in the afternoon, but were limited to a number of fields that had recently had cows in them before we reached the one where the cows currently were.  At dusk, large numbers of bats appeared above the water.  Looking out across the low ground towards where the sun had set we got close up views as they flitted about just outside our windows.

The next morning was sunny but with a thick mist over the water.  In the absence of any shops, I decided to make some bread.  We continued to enjoy the bird display as the bread was proving, so we were still there for lunch.  There were a few other boats passing in both directions.  After lunch we set off through the lock in the sunshine, though there were occasional cloudy spells, seeing more cormorants and kingfishers as we went along.

The batteries were not quite fully charged when we reached the Craycombe Turn moorings.    The open outlook from these moorings was very appealing.

The view along and across the river was spectacular, but the bird life was restricted to a few ducks.  The noise from the nearby A-road was intrusive when sitting outside too, and there was nowhere to walk except along the side of it.

The view from the window the next morning made up for the other limitations.  The recently trimmed willow trees on the opposite bank had an other-worldly look already, but the unusual sky reflected in the still river left me feeling we were on another planet.

We set off late morning and soon worked through Fladbury Lock.  Like the previous lock, the village it is named after is on the opposite side of the river from the lock, and so there is almost no chance to visit.  This lock had no visitor moorings either and very stern words in the guide book forbidding stopping here.  One of the advertisements in the same book is for a butcher's shop in the village.  I wonder if the butcher knew that no boaters would be able to reach the shop.

We didn't even notice Tiddle Widdle Island as we approached Wyre Piddle, but we did see the flags and umbrellas of The Anchor.  I knew that, again, the lock would not give us access to the village, but the pub moorings would if it was open (no other pub moorings were available).

We moored up, deciding to at least have lunch if the pub was closed.  On the way up the steps I spotted some electric hook-up points.  There were a few people in, and we got a friendly welcome.  We quickly established that we could have lunch, and that the paid-for overnight moorings included electric hook-up.  I'd been thinking we were due an equalisation charge on the batteries - ideal.

As we were finishing our meal on the terrace I saw another narrowboat approaching.  They looked like they were deciding whether to stop and wondering if they fitted.  I invited them to come alongside us as that would be easiest.  We went down to take ropes from them and help make them secure.

The couple on board had hired the boat to do the Avon Ring in a week.  We have done that before, but we did it with a crew of eight or more.  They stopped long enough to have a drink and a pleasant chat before heading off again - they have some distance to cover.

In the last week, we have had intermittent problems starting the diesel engine.  The pattern was far from clear, sometimes it was a warm start other times a cold one.  We'd always got it going by driving electric for a while and then trying again.  My best theory is that the starter battery is on its way out.  This is the battery that went completely flat when we were in Edinburgh in 2022.

So this afternoon I repeated a trick we used back then.  The bow thruster has two 12v batteries of its own at that end of the boat.  They are identical to the starter battery, so I "only" have to swap one with the starter battery to test the theory.  Lifting the batteries in and out is tricky, but I managed it without feeling I was straining any muscles.  I initially put the battery in at the stern the wrong way round, but noticed before connecting it up.  It was a lot easier to turn it round in situ than getting it in or out.

A quick check when I'd finished confirmed that the bow thruster still works, and the engine started first time.  So a 100% success rate, but a sample size of one. After my work-out moving batteries, we had a little explore of the village in the late afternoon sun by exiting through the pub.