Worcester to Upton Jazz and then.... Stranded!
Another busy week. Andy stayed on the boat while I whizzed up to Manchester for a reunion with 6 of my old school pals. We used to holiday and camp together 50 years ago!. .. some of them I hadn't seen for 48 years, and it was so beautiful; we were all fundamentally unchanged, and I discovered that I could pick up after 37 years in Australia. Amazing.
We were headed for Tewkesbury. This time through the locks out into the river, not a volunteer to be seen. Someone's got to open the very heavy lock gates.
Big lock, large enough for oil barges and bulk carriers. Very exciting.
We calmly moseyed down towards Tewkesbury.
We are still not sure what this building is, but it is near Severn Stoke.
It's a lot more relaxing motoring along the river as there are way fewer obstacles, and we had the downhill current with us.
Up ahead was Upton on Severn, where we were hoping to stop and look in on the Jazz Festival which was on right now. We didn't think we stood a chance of mooring anywhere near the little town, but guess what?.... our stars aligned once again.
Andy's brother and sister-in-law joined us, we had dinner at the little Muggery (above) and enjoyed a great musical evening. This band are local, professional, and very friendly. Don't have a photo of the others, but there was six of them, including a Euphonium, all over 70 years old. Great fun.
After a remarkably quiet night, we motored downsteam to Tewkesbury, passing working barges moored up to a working quarry, but it was their day off.
We arrived in Tewkesbury and moored opposite a popular pub with a huge TV screen, and realised there was a big match on tonight.
Needless to say, we heard every goal scored!!!!
We spent the afternoon wondering around Tewkesbury township. We visited the beautiful and historical abbey.
Another surprisingly peaceful night and we observed our surroundings on a Sunday morning.
We took brother and sister-in-law out for a day trip up the Avon. This included exciting stuff such as filling up with diesel.
Gorgeous Babies. 😍
Another quiet night in Tewkesbury. Next morning, having discovered how good the facilities are at Tewkesbury marina, we took full advantage, did a Pump Out, bought gas, and topped up with water as we had both had lovely hot showers the night before.
We were feeling like truly seasoned boaters until, 1.5 k's up the River Severn, we heard a funny noise and broke down...... on the river..... somewhere in the middle of nowhere, or at least that's how it feels on the water!
Stranded!
This was not a great situation. We are Silver members of River Canal Rescue, so we gave them a call!. At this rate we will have to upgrade to Gold membership!
The rescue people used our location to sort out an engineer. This required sending them an SOS with our coordinates.
They were able to find someone an hour and a half away, but he needed us to be on the riverbank, and we were tied to some dead branches on the wrong side.!
We managed to drift down to a fishing pontoon, and discovered a trampled track, so i followed it back up towards Tewkesbury.
When I emerged, I found myself at a Garden Centre near Tewkesbury. I texted the RCR man and he turned up about an hour later, so we made our way to the river.
How quaint you might say! Anyway, he knew exactly what he was doing, diagnosed a leaky seal in the gear box, and advised us that it was very close to being stuffed, and how lucky were we! The thing to do now was to monitor the leaking and top it up with gear box oil as we travelled. Luckily we had some!.
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