Cruising the Severn

• Travelling

On Friday we travelled from Worcester down to Gloucester on the Severn. We made the same trip last year, but this time I recorded some 360 degree videos. They are quite long, so you may not want to watch them over mobile data! 

Use your finger or mouse to rotate the view and enjoy the scenery as we pass.

First video is some views on the Severn itself. Click on the links below the videos to see the next ones.

Click here to see the next video:

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Off on a big trip – and the mystery of the grey discs

• Travelling

We have finally set off on our trip to Sharpness and then onwards (hopefully) to Bristol. This was the trip we had hoped to make last year, but had to put it off because of the Pandemic.
Having left Droitwich Spa Marina, we are now moored up for tonight at a favourite spot of hours – one of the very few moorings available on the Droitwich Barge Canal.

A lovely spot, on a VERY hot day.

Onwards to Worcester tomorrow and then Gloucester on Friday. Saaturday and Sunday are due to be very wet, which may well result in the River Severn going into flood, so we want to get onto the Gloucester and Sharpness canal before then.

The small, grey discs each about 12.5mm in diameter.

Meanwhile, we have been very puzzled recently by a spate of finding small grey discs around the boat. This has been going on for months and we were begiing to suspect a “grey disc pixie” was winding us up.

The grey disc culprit

This is a picture of a folding footstool that (amongst other things) I use to rest my feet on when at the helm. It turns out several discs are missing from the stool, and in fact you can see one out of place in the photo. Finally, mystery solved and we were not losing our minds – yet.

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A stern look

• Boatwork

We have recently had some work done on the seating at the back of the boat. This is the way it originally looked:

Original stern seats

If you look carefully, you will notice that there are two separate seats, one either side. However, the new seat looks like this:

New stern seat

My original request was for this setup when the boat was being built, but somehow it never quite happened. Now we can sit facing forwards while cruising, instead of sitting sideways. That said, you have to be a little careful. If something catches the rudder and pushes it sideways, the tiller can knock you off the seat and into the water. Fortunately this should only happen when going backwards and we always stand forwards of the tiller when going astern, so we can reach the controls.

We noticed quite a few England flags on boats in the marina this weekend, so we decided to put in action some plans that we have had in mind for our own flags. We had to combine our respective loyalties somehow and have come up with this:

Welsh flag

IRFU flag

View of the stern

Honour is satisfied!

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