It had much more of the feel of a river rather than a canal and the best thing was we had it all to ourselves. It was a real treat to all our finely tuned bear senses.
The relaxed feel of the day started to fade when 2 things happened that caused us all some anxiety, especially skipper Eddie who was responsible for us all and for our boat.
Our first anxious moment came when we saw the lock at the junction with the River Severn. This signified the end of the Droitwich canal, which was sad in itself, but what caused us consternation was the water level at the lock. It was very high and water was flowing over the lock gates and almost over the sides of the lock.
Memories of being flood bound on the River Avon a few years ago came flooding back. The thing about rivers is that they are only navigable by boat when not in flood. As water levels rise, the current becomes too strong for a relatively small narrow boat engine to contend with. The Severn was the only stretch of river, rather than canal, on this trip, but we couldn't complete the Stourport ring without navigating the stretch between Worcester and Stourport.
Although, at this stage we hadn't seen the Severn, the high canal level looked ominous. The most important job for the advance party, put shore to open the lock, was to check the colour coded water level gauge to see if it was safe to proceed onto the Severn. We'd have liked the level to be green, but it was in the amber zone which meant 'proceed with caution'. It was better than seeing it red, which would have stopped us in our tracks, but there were certainly no grounds for relaxing yet.
At this point, those of us ashore heard a cry of alarm from on board Maria. We ran back up the towpath to see what had happened. It was serious! No-one had fallen in, but ... the bear flag had got caught in a tree and parted company with the boat.
It was time to do a quick reverse and try and retrieve it. As Maria inched backwards, guided by Eddie, Fred's Mum gamely inched along the outside edge of the boat and managed to reach up ad retrieve the precious flag. We'd have lost our identity without it so were very grateful for Fred's Mum's minder length arms and gave her 3 cheers.
It was then time to deal with the lock and hopefully after that the river. Find out how we got on next time.
Lots of love, George, Yorkie, Eddie and the crew of Maria xxx
2 comments:
Anxious times but Captain Eddie took it all in his stride and saw us safely through! We felt in safe paws say Suffolk Branch
Pooh Bear says this story reminds him of when he was rescued, and has been telling his friends how he was once stuck in a tree on the towpath.
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