Lazy Day

Wednesday 26^th September

Decided to have a lazy day today and got up late for us. I took Phoenix her morning walk around the marina and found a park in which she could have a good run. The path led us by a field of Evening Primose flowers (so June tells me), down to the river at the new Sustran Diglis foot and cycle bridge just below Diglis lock. I say just below the lock, which it normally is, but today the river was almost the same height on both sides of the lock gate, a very strange sight.

* Diglis River Lock

* Evening Primroses

We then walked along the riverside path towards the entrance to the canal basins and came across these boats moored on the river pontoons unable to move. The river was almost bursting its banks at this point which is normally15 feet below.

* Trapped boats

The towpath between the two locks to enter the canal basin was now several feet under water and it seemed to be still rising although the lock keeper had said that he hoped to open the lock again on Friday.

During the morning we moved the boat to the water point to fill up, ran the washing machine and charged up the batteries. Whilst we were taking on water I spoke to the canal time boat moored nearby and he had been lucky enough to hear the weather forecast on Sunday and had travelled back from Kinver before the river went into flood and had been moored up in Worcester ever since as he had to take the boat back to Lowesmoor Wharf today. He had arrived about 6 pm and watched two South African novice canal boaters take a boat on to the river. He had warned them but they seemed oblivious to the dangers and he wondered where they would have moored with only an hour of daylight left. He felt that hirers should be better briefed on river navigation.

After lunch we went on a guided tour of the cathedral and were surprised to learn that both King John and Prince Arthur had asked to be buried there.

* Worcester cathedral

Looking out over the river from the cathedral grounds near the Watergate we could see that the riverside walk was about 3 feet under water with just the tips of the fence posts protruding from the murky water.

* Riverside Walk and Worcester Bridge

We are so thankful that we decided to join the boys on Nb Chance and travel earlier to Droitwch otherwise we may well have been stuck ourselves.