Next stop on the Avon was Bidford, a most attractive village with all the shops that you might need, including a hardware shop and a butcher. However its most important feature is its multi arched bridge built in 1482 by the Monks of Alcester, and still in use by today’s road traffic, I doubt there is much that we can build today that will still be in use in 600 years.
We over nighted in the George Billington lock cut, George died, very young at 37,but he donated the funds for the building of the lock which was completed in 6 months with the help of boys from the local borstal. He was able to see the finished job two weeks before he died. Sadly the very attractive Fish and Anchor Inn is on the other side of the weir stream and was tantalizingly out of reach. Need more wine!!
This lovely river is disappointedly defaced by tattered scraps of plastic festooning the trees and shrubs up to a height of ten feet approx. obviously left behind by last Julys flood. I don’t know how nature will clean up it’s act without the intervention of man who left behind the mess in the first place.
THURSDAY 17TH APRIL 2008
We cruised into the centre of Evesham under the Workmans bridge, which I thought was rather splendid to have been built just to allow the workman to get to work, but on crossing over the bridge I saw that it had been named in honour of the then Mayor, Henry Workman, silly me!!
We moored in the shadow of the Abbey Clock Tower and walked into town and to the station to meet Ashley, Jacquie’s son, much needed reinforcement for the forthcoming trials and tribulations.
The weather in the afternoon was splendid, so we decided to stay put in this great location, and I set about painting out the damaged to the hand rail inflicted by the Stratford, Clopton Bridge.
FRIDAY 18TH APRIL 2008
We left with the intention of staying over night in Wyre Piddle, just because we liked the name of it.
We passed through a couple of locks with beautiful old mill houses alongside before we approached a mooring place to stop for lunch, we discovered it was now a private mooring, we did the right thing and motored on, only to run hard aground.
After much pole pushing, rocking of boat, transferring of weight and revving of engine. Ashley and I got down to our underpants, donned our wellies and entered the water, again after much shoving, heaving , but not sweating this time, we managed to move it about a metre, but it was still stuck fast. The nice man on the end of the phone at The Lower Avon Authority said that if we were still in the same place on Monday, he would get a tug to us. We are doing a puzzle and writing blogs at the moment awaiting a passing boat that might be able to pull us off.
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