Shiralee Cruise 2011 #16

Saturday 9th July.
So, where is July? I think we’ve lost April, all we’ve been getting this past week are intermittent showers, April is coming three months late these days. This situation has become the norm over the past five years. How about that, this situation started to develop just before we bought ‘Shiralee’! Perhaps we should have learned by now, if we want to cruise rivers perhaps we should do so in April or May. This year, once again, looks like being a total washout where the Severn and Avon are concerned.

Today we are heading for Wolverley and will stay for the weekend. On Monday we should be at Kidderminster and, after a visit to the ‘Three’ shop, where I will attempt the impossible by asking them to ‘phone their techie department, we will see if we can find other shops. Shouldn’t be difficult, Kidderminster is a very big place.

One of the things I am looking for is some heat resistant paint called Hammerite and is something I will need for when we buy a new chimney. We have no intention of forking out for a stainless steel one, have you seen the price of those? It seems the normal, double skinned variety, fall apart after less than a year. But this is only because the seal at the top end rots away. My plan is to coat this with a protective layer of paint, hopefully it won’t rot through quite so quickly.

The only place at which the inner sleeve is connected to the outer one, is around the top rim. Once that rots through, due to the tar from the smoky coal, the inner sleeve simply drops, which is a very good indicator that a new chimney is required.

The other thing I need to find is a strip of hardwood. When cruising the canals and rivers the water level constantly changes in relation to the towpath, leaving me to adjust the height of the fenders. I want to rig up a tent guy rope affair so as to make this a speedier operation. I really would like to hurry this operation along, especially when we’re caught in a sudden downpour and have to moor up in a hurry.

After Kidderminster we were intending to carry on to Stourport and the Severn, but with all this rain threatening to put the Severn into flood, we have now decided to return up the Staffs and Worcs, past the point at which we joined it at Autherley Junction, and on to Great Heywood, at which point we’ll either turn left or right onto the Trent and Mersey. To be honest I much prefer this option anyway, our early experiences on the Soar have left me rather wary of rivers.

Sunday 10th July.

We took a stroll into Wolverley village this morning because we had been told that buses ran into Kidderminster from the church. What we found instead of a bus stop was a rather attractive pub called The Queen’s Head, named after Queen Caroline who reigned during the latter part of the 18th century and the early part of the 19th.

In order to reach the church we had to climb a short, grassy Public Footpath, which took us to the base of the huge sandstone rock upon which the church stands. In case you are wondering, the name of the church is the St. John the Baptist. Sadly Nicholson doesn’t tell us how old the church is, except that it is Italianate.
Next door to the pub is a tea room, which also sells newspapers, fresh bread and other goodies. The shop has seating inside and out and, when we visited the pub at midday, was quite busy. I don’t recall ever seeing such an arrangement with a pub and tea rooms side by side, but it certainly seems to work. In fact it works twice at Wolverley, since the pub and tea rooms at the lock stand on opposite sides of the canal and both do good business.

We took a different route to the church at midday because Sheila wanted to show me an animal pound and take a photograph of it. The pound was hewn out of the same sandstone rock that lines a great deal of this canal and was built to house stray animals, which would have been held in separate small pens until their owners claimed them and paid a ransom for their return. What Arthur Daly would call ‘a nice little earner’. Walking down the hill from the church into the village, we even found houses that had been carved into the rock, a most unusual sight.

The price of Guinness in pubs along this canal vary wildly, with some pubs charging £3.20, whilst others, like the Queen’s Head here at Wolverley, charge £3.35. We’ve even come across a price of £3.40p. Extortionate is what I call it.

So, having failed to find a bus stop near the pub, we stopped off at the tea rooms by the canal and asked in there. Apparently there is one at the roundabout where the animal pound stands, but we didn’t see it when we passed there on our way to the pub. As a last resort I asked the boater who had moored up behind us, who had been into Kidderminster and knew the area well. Fortunately he had a bus timetable, but all that told us was that there are just two buses a day from here. This means that if I am to relate my tale of woe to the staff at the ‘Three’ shop, we will have to take the boat there in the morning. I have copied all the returned messages into Word and onto a memory stick, which I will take with me. Hopefully I’ll get some satisfaction face to face. I certainly haven’t had much success on the ‘phone.

Monday 11th July.

It looks like a sunny day, which is just as well, because after Kidderminster we’ll be continuing on to Stourport Basin. Now, I know I’ve said we will probably return up the Staffs and Worc, but that might not be the case. According to a local boater the River Severn is quite low at present, despite the rain we’ve had of late, so we may yet continue as planned.

Our original intention was to go down as far as the Droitwich Canal, but that would mean about eight miles of the Severn and another seven miles on the Droitwich, with all the locks along the way, because there are no moorings at the srat of the canal. This could mean up to six hours of continuous cruising, and that’s not what we are about.

Instead we will probably go on to Worcester, moor up outside by the racecourse then negotiate the locks into Worcester on the following morning. By doing this we will be able to continue on to Birmingham and gas Street Basin, which was our original destination.

Oh boy, what a day! We left Wolverley at about 8 am with the intention of stopping off at Kidderminster and taking the laptop into the ‘Three’ shop. The trip only took about an hour and we pulled in to where the Sainsbury’s store used to be. Although the car park was full, with all the workers and scaffolding about and signs telling us that a new store was being erected, we assumed it had closed temporarily.

So, after walking the pooch and partaking of a cuppa, we walked into town in search of ‘Three’, which we found without too much trouble. Unfortunately, being a mobile ‘phone shop and consequently a law unto themselves, a young man put both hands up to us, indicating that they didn’t open until ten. Wonderful!!

We then went in search of the local Tesco store and, after asking around of the natives, we were pointed in the right direction. By this time my legs were giving me gyp, so Sheila left me outside and did the shopping.

We had now passed 10 o/clock and walked back into town to ‘Three’. These shops do not have a resident technician but, even with that being the case you can’t fault the staff in their willingness to help. After outlining my problem the nice lady assistant immediately put telephone to her ear and called the techie people.

“Do you have your laptop with you?” He asked me
“Yes”
“Do you have your dongle?”
“Yes”
“O.K. Mr. Chamberlain, would you please set it up and insert the dongle?”

This I did and gave him permission to access the laptop remotely. Here we go again, I thought, nothing will come of this long chat. And, after about 30 minutes, during which he accessed the laptop and checked my Outlook settings, he left me on hold to consult with a colleague.

At the end of all this, and much like the previous techie, he told me he would be looking in to this problem further and would telephone me later in the day.
I had given him copies of most of the messages that had been returned, so he knew exactly what was happening here. He also had details of my email address with absolute-email and would no doubt be liaising with them at some point.

True to his word Santanu called me later and explained that, although he had yet to discover why my messages were being returned as undeliverable, he would be giving this his undivided attention and would call me again tomorrow afternoon at the same time, about 3.15pm.

One thing that did come out of this afternoon call, was that he thought their may be some conflict between absolute-email and ‘Three’ where the sending and receiving of emails via Outlook was concerned. So, we shall see what we shall see tomorrow, which now means we shall have to defer our planned cruise down the Severn to Worcester until Wednesday. No matter, we’ll find things to do in Stourport instead and besides, the weather looks set fair for the rest of this week, so we have plenty of time. Happy Days!!

Tuesday 12th July.

Now, getting back to yesterday, having completed our marathon shopping trip into Kidderminster, we returned to the boat and discovered, much to our surprise that, despite the scaffolding around the building, Sainsbury’s was actually still open.

Ah well, no matter, the shopping’s done so let’s get going. So, after passing through the nearby lock and the outskirts of town, what should we find but the Tesco store. Great, just great, not only could we have saved the walk to and from the ‘Three’ shop to Tesco and back, we could have shopped at Sainsbury’s. And, with Tesco right beside the canal, we could have saved lugging all that shopping back from town to the boat, even had Sainsbury’ been closed.

When we finally arrived at our current moorings, we were faced with a bridge lying at an oblique angle to the canal. This caused a blind corner whereby we were unable to see if another boat was coming the other way. We needn’t have worried though, because some plonker had moored his boat on the other side of the bridge and as near to the bridge as he possibly could.

We moored up about a boats length ahead of this plonker and settled in for the rest of the day. Later, when the owners of the boat returned, we were treated to continuous barking from their dog – there were two plonkers on the boat - and I eventually yelled at them to keep the dog quiet. Which they didn’t, coming as no surprise to any of us including the rest of the boaters moored here.

Later still out came the booze, complete with the shouting and hollereing, by which time it was too late to move on to Stourport, so we had to grin and bear it, until about 2.30 am, when they suddenly shut up. A few minutes later somebody walked by flashing a torch which, with the sudden cessation of noise I suspected belonged to the local plod. (Sheila confirmed this the following morning).This is one place we will not be mooring at again, assuming we ever return to this canal which is very doubtful, unless somebody decides to clear away the miles of tall weeds lining the towpath.

Today will be a definite move on to Stourport.

And so we come to the end of another blog, which I hope you enjoy reading.

Ta ta for now from:

Dave, Sheila and our ever adorable pooch, Rusty