Back On The Cheap Side. 9th April

Stourport to Stourport

Rain! Just what we don’t want.

The river had levelled itself out and was now having a little blip in an upwards direction.

We’d only booked in for two days on the moorings. The fee came with electric included so last night when we got back the washing machine was in full use and the central heating was clicked onto electric mode.

We could have booked ourselves in for a few more nights waiting for the river, but why do that at £12 a night when the 24hr mooring with hook up was still empty across the way. We are from Yorkshire after all! So once breakfast was done and dusted Mick pushed us off and reversed out from our mooring and returned Oleanna to where we’d been last week. I stayed below as my back is playing up and hopping on and off the boat here isn’t helping (it may have caused it) as the step up onto the bow or stern is getting on for two foot.

Mick settled Oleanna back in and plugged her up. A Lockie walked by and stopped for a chat. He was quite fine about us staying on a 24hr mooring waiting for the river to go down. There is a hire boat here as well that had been planning on doing the river back to Worcester, presumably the company will pick it up once the river goes down.

Still with use of the car Twingo for another day Mick took the opportunity to take 20 litres of old engine oil to the local recycling centre and popped into Tesco to do a small shop for today. I just stayed on board trying to do as little as possible to help my back mend. This does mean that poor Mick has to pick up dropped things and do most of the jobs around the boat, including hoovering out the stove. As the day progressed so did the rain. So it’s looking like my back needs to mend so that we can go the long way round and do those 90 odd locks.

If all had gone according to plan, we’d have made our way from Droitwich up to Stoke Wharf by boat to moor for this evening as we were heading to the theatre in Bromsgrove, which is only a couple of miles away. Instead we drove the half hour, through the rain, to the Artrix Arts Centre.

Here we were to see Scary Bikers the new John Godber play and catch up with John and Jane who make up the cast, along with Nikki and Sarah the Stage Managers on the show.

The story of Don a retired miner and former teacher Carol who meet after loosing their partners to cancer. They have this in common along with cycling and become good companions. Carol has a bucket list and one of the things on it is a cycling holiday across Europe to Florence, she buys a tandem and they set off cycling from York to Hull to catch the ferry. This all sounds strenuous and it is, except they miss out crossing the Alps and catch the train. Set in 2016 when the European Referendum was happening they find themselves waking up in Europe the day England decides to leave. They voted differently to each other and this leads to heated debates between them over the future. A gentle tale told on a tandem with a Godber political monologue. It is an amusing play worth seeing if you are lucky enough to be near to the last few venues on the tour.

It was good to see them all and have a brief catch up, hopefully Nikki and Sarah will join us later in the year on the Avon, if we ever get there!

0 locks, 250ft back,  1 owing back, 1 stove cleaned out and relit, 1 conned cat! 20 litres oil, 1 photo mission, 24hrs mooring for another couple of days, 4 units left, 2 comps, 45 minutes each half, 1 tandem, £350 million, 40 minute talkback, 2 playwrites, 2 stage managers for 8 more shows!