Bad Timing!

 We decided that the lovely Diglis Basin had disadvantages that outweighed its advantages, in particular, lack of Mobile reception, and therefore lack of Internet access, and zero TV reception.  The Central Worcester location is gorgeous and very convenient, but now that we have a nice little car, we felt that we should move to Droitwich, 15 mins drive away, as it has it all!!

We had been waiting for the perfect weather conditions, and when week after week no perfect time came along, one morning we decided to get up and go anyway.  

It is a trip that can take either one or two days, but because of the shorter days, we allowed at 2 full days.

We set off in a mood of excitement, but there were quite a few jobs to do first, like filling up with water, dumping some wee, and offloading our recycling.  We had enough supplies for 2 days, no problem.

At the Locks, there were plenty of Gongoozlers, boats on the move being a rare sight at this time of year.

We had been filling up our Diesel tank (as there was no Red diesel at Diglis), with a 10 litre Jerry can for our heating, but the tank was getting very low so we stopped at Worcester Marina, 3 locks away, and filled up.  

This took a while, with 3 x locks, and reversing into the now cramped wharf which was full of resting rental narrowboats. By this time it was lunchtime, so we moored briefly, then continued to Perdiswell, which is a lovely part of the canal to moor, as we had discovered on our way down this canal at the end of last month.

Next morning we were up very early and enjoyed the travelling, although it was very cold, and the forecast rain decided to start early.

so by 1pm we were moored up again with only an hour to go until the Droitwich turn off to the Marina.

Next morning, we woke up to this scene!

I was nursing a sore back from goodness knows what!  but nothing would stop me getting out of bed and jumping onto the towpath in my pyjamas to get a good pic!

This Blogspot won't let me upload the video, but be assured that the next couple of hours travelling in the snow was very challenging.  People moored up permanently were saying.." oh look, there's a boat coming". !!   We explained that we had run out of milk and wine, so they understood.

There are 3 x quite unusual locks on the Droitwich arm leading into the marina.  I had a bad back, but Andy's fingers were frozen, so we elected that I do the locks.  A man appeared and starting chatting about how he wasn't expecting to see anyone on the Cut today!.  I explained the above, and he announced that he was an off-duty Lock Keeper. "If you've got a spare windlass, I'll give you a hand".  What an angel.  He wasn't really dressed to help,...  slippy leather shoes and no gloves, but he got us through the locks no problem; I was so grateful as by this time my toes and fingers were going numb.

We knew which spot we had been allocated in the Marina, so it looked like an easy job to reverse into our berth.  Hhhmmmm... Not to be.... we both had a go, perplexed that the boat just would not go where we pointed it.  It seems that this spot is prone to windy conditions, and we were too cold to notice that it was windy.  Finally, after three attempts and lots of embarassing noise from the Bow thruster, we managed to pull Double 0 with by brute force by hand!

Hope it's worth it ☹️.

Well, after we had settled in, we realised it was worth it.  This marina is very smart.  There are electrically operated gates, heated floors in the showers,  full length jetties, and we can park right by our boat, which is great, especially as tonight it is predicted to drop to minus 2 degrees. 😭🥶.

Welcome to England, they are all saying!