Before I start this week's vlog, to celebrate the Journey with Jono and
Narrowboat Experience collaboration we've created a series of clothing and mug
designs you can purchase. There are both Narrowboat Experience and Journey with Jono
t-shirts and my favourite, an Alice, Munchy and Molly t-shirt and mug. The
limited edition items are only available until the 1st of December and there's a
link in the description below to the Art By Anna-Marie page. Good morning.
Well, today I am leaving Droitwich Spa. I'm going through a couple of swing
bridges. Some of them are open, some of them are closed and about five or
six locks but Droitwich Spa has been a nice place two moor up. The basin is
really good. It's completely secure. You have your British Waterways key to
get through the gates there. There's all the main necessities in the town. Lots of
different variety of shops and takeaways and restaurants. Main supermarkets
Waitrose, Morrison's are very, very close to the canal.
[ Music ]
Leaving the basin within the town, right away we need to travel through three
swing bridges before heading out onto a small, narrow stretch of the River Salwarpe.
Then as a bit of a surprise, is the M5 motorway bridge-tunnel and just after
it are some more locks including a staircase lock just south of
Body Brook. Let's hope that name isn't a reality! Sweeping past Droitwich Spa
Marina towards Hanbury Bottom, Middle and Top Locks before turning onto the
Worcester and Birmingham Canal at Hanbury Junction. I've been a little bit
surprised with the lack of mooring on the Droitwich Barge Canal. Purely because
of those high weeds. It proved to be quite difficult to find mooring spots. There
were probably three spots, maybe four in total all the way from the River Severn
to Droitwich Spa itself. There are a couple more on the way out, going towards
Birmingham and Worcester Canal but if they just cut the weeds back, it would
be a lot better. There were some really nice mooring spots with beautiful views
and lovely and quiet you can be really remote, even though you're quite
close to the town but we couldn't moor there because of the weeds. So I don't
know if that's on purpose or if that's just the way they want this canal to
look so, some canals you can moor up 99% of it. The only places you're not allowed
two moor are when there's designated signs, at winding holes, lock landings,
water points, weirs, that sort of thing.
[ Engine revving ]
You're pleased with that?
Kath: It's alright.
No bumping, no scratching. Kath: I think something fell over inside.
So I'm travelling behind Kath today. Anna-Marie is
up ahead dealing with the swing bridges and the locks and I am going to sweep up
behind and close them all.
We thought we might be able to do both the swing bridges at the same time and
just go straight through but there's too many people around, walking through the
park, taking dogs for a walk and they would probably get a bit annoyed. So we
are going to do them individually.
It looks like these swing bridges are a
little bit more complicated, or a bit difficult than originally thought. So
it's my turn to get off my boat and help Anna-Marie, see what on earth is going on here.
So what's wrong with this one do you think?
It's the same as the last one. I think what happens is
they shut the gates well but overnight, the gate moves a little bit
and it jams the padlock in. So I need somebody on this side pushing like, just
doing pumps of pushing it so I can wriggle the padlock out. I am doing
the bridge wiggle. There we go, it looks like it's done.
Kath: Two for that one as well Jono.
Two for that one, okay, that's brilliant. Thank you.
Are we catching up? Kath: Yes, we're definitely gonna win.
[ Music ]
Today Kath and Anna-Marie from The Narrowboat Experience are running a
scoreboard for who helps the most at locks. Of course, I'm expecting huge bias as
there are two of them!
[ Music ]
We're now in the river section. There are a couple of warnings in the book about
not mooring up along this stretch because if the river floods, it rises
very rapidly and there's lots of high walls all up all around to contain the
water and obviously the two locks to stop it flooding the canal itself but
today it's as flat as a pancake.
[ Music ]
Okay. This is when having a chimney or anything that's high up on a boat could
prove difficult because the tunnel ahead is extremely low. There is a barrier this
side to tell you and I think it's going to hit my aerial so I might turn my aerial
on its side and just go really slowly and hope for the best.
I can imagine if you've got high top boxes or anything quite high on the roof
this is where you'll get stuck.
[ Horn Beeps ]
[ Music ]
This is crazy low for a tunnel. I've never known anything like it.
Going through tunnels and bridges like that, out of the blue make you really
think about the amount of things that you should have on your roof and how
high they should be. I think I need to look into changing my solar panel
brackets and all it would take is another tunnel like that, or a bit more water, or
I might not have filled up with water this morning and the the nose of the
boat would have been higher and I could have been into it in a bit of a pickle.
So, I think it's about time I changed my brackets.
[ Music ]
She's all yours now! Anna-Marie: Awsome! I must say it is nice to see other people controlling
Molly and Molly actually listening to them and doing as they say as well because
obviously, there's the owner, dogs will predominantly always do what their owner
says but will they do what other people say and seeing
Anna-Marie in a distance with Molly and telling Molly to sit and she actually
sitting and following her rules, it's quite nice to see. Good old Molly. Well
done, I'm proud of her.
We met viewers Graham and Bev right at the top of the staircase ready to go
down and it's always great to meet viewers as you're traveling around the
system but he had a double whammy today because he obviously also watches
Narrowboat Experience and he saw me as well as those two and he was like,
whoa!! So that was really nice to see.
[ Music ]
[ Gushing water sound ]
It's really peculiar, it's almost as though we're draining the pound. I suppose we
are a little bit as much as a lock. It just feels like we've opened some
huge paddles and it's just emptying the whole canal. That's really weird. it's
never usually this strong.
So just as I go under this bridge, I do a hard turn left and then we're on to the
Worcester and Birmingham Canal.
I've moored up on some Armco and Narrowboat Experience, Lazy Days have just
moored up ahead of me and we're going to sit and stay here for a couple of days.
We've got a bit of work to do. I've got a bit of editing,
they've got painting and things to do so, finally, that was a tough journey today.
Even though it was only a relatively small amount of locks, the last three
locks - the start of the Droitwich Canal from this direction, we're really slow
and because they're very deep locks, they needed to fill side pounds and back
again and it was quite busy, there were two boats coming down as well so,
pleased to get through those and even though it's sort of lunchtime, it's
absolutely shattered. This week I'd like to thank three top-level Patreon
supporters. Stuart Bell from County Durham in the North East of England. Mark
Gaultiere from Ohio in the United States and Joan Smith from Texas in the United
States. Thank you so much for your support. In the next vlog, I give the helm
of Alice to Anna-Marie. Scary! and I explore the broadcasting
facility for long wave and medium wave transmissions at the Droitwich
Transmitting Station. Until next time, see you later.