We bought a 2 week licence to cruise down the Avon. It’s a 42 mile stretch of wiggledy windy rural loveliness, lined with trees and vistas of farmland. And some villages with houses that wouldn’t be out of place gracing the Thame at Marlow or Windsor. Unfortunately for us, the opportunity for wild mooring is virtually non existent with all the official mooring is restricted to 48 hours. And back during the first fortnight of July, the amount of rainfall was making us wonder what had happened to summer. This mean we were at risk of being hit by red warnings for strong flow and high water levels. Needless to say at Stratford, the wildlife was proving noisier than the tourists- or was it just that they started earlier in the day.
So we untied the ropes and set off. Holy Trinity Church has one of the stunning skylines in Stratford although when the sky is blue, the reflection on the river is equally as impressive.
Being a river with quite a flow means there is a need for some strong bridges. Sometimes it’s not always clear which archway has been cleared for navigation, the willow tree certainly hadn’t been trimmed so Eric was left guessing which arch to head for
Most of the locks on the Avon are nice wide doubles, but Robert Aickman’s new lock holds 3 narrowboats. Robert Aickman was instrumental in maintaining and preserving the canal network in particular reopening the South Stratford canal and the Avon Navigation. Protocol says you always leave your exit gates open when leaving the lock which makes the locks easier to work.
Most of the available mooring on the Avon is on the locking channels that bypass the weirs. At the Offenham mooring we were treated to several low flying military planes passing by.
We are always intrigued by this structure at Offenham, but it transpires it is simply a monument built by Eric Prichard who was involved with building the locks and weirs.
We were pleased to see blue sky when we woke, but the flow on the river was still very lively. The warning boards, below the lock, weren’t clear, and our impression is that they could be positioned more visibly and better maintained. Above the lock all looked calm, but as we exited, we realised we were now nudging into red but having set off we put on our life jackets and carried on.
We were confident the boat could handle the flow, it was lively but not scary. But I made the mistake of distracting Eric at the wrong moment. We were on a bend and the current had other ideas about which line we should take. Eric was a moment too late to correct his course. It’s debatable which of us came off worse, us or the overhanging tree. The tree broke a branch and we are now sporting a go faster stripe down the length of the boat.
Lessons learnt, we survived, I guess we could relate the error to skidding on an icy road and we were lucky just to sustain a scratch in the paintwork. Of course 5 minutes downstream the river straightened and you’d never have known how fast the current was. The moral here is NEVER underestimate the power of water. We’re not sure ice on the road was the cause of this car’s demise.
After our scary moment the rest of journey was a real pleasure. And we have to say we love river cruising
Nice mooring at Workman Gardens in Evesham.
