Stourport

Last week we spent a couple of nights at a hotel in Stourport. The weather forecast for the whole trip had been dreadful, so we'd been quite pleased to have seen the Droitwich Canal and Holt Lock on the Severn without being rained on. By Wednesday morning, the forcast had changed from heavy rain to sunny intervals.

We started the day with a visit to Stourport Basins. As we approached the staircase locks up from the river, a Viking Afloat hire boat was approaching -- the same one we'd seen yesterday. They didn't seem to have much idea about the operation of the locks, so we lent a hand with the bottom pair and watched them make quite a good entry into the top pair.


We walked down over the barge locks. The old Tontine Hotel is still being converted (it seems to have taken ages), and the newly dug out far basin still has flats on only one side. The other two sides are still building sites, but without much evidence of building. The basin itself is still closed to boats. The Upper Basin and Clock Basin were as full as ever, and we chatted to a liveaboard couple on Catflap, who'd just filled with diesel at the chandlers and spun the boat onto the water point.

We walked up the canal past York Road Lock, where there are nice moorings, trying to work out where we'd stopped on our hire boat ten years ago. Our boat had been based in the Basins, and we'd spent the final night on these moorings and eaten at the pub just up the path.