A Bit of a Disaster!

Sunday 26th June, 2016 at Birstall.
The day dawned cloudy but later turned out very pleasant.

We had earmarked this morning to visit the new Richard III Museum. On the way there, the Cathedral bells started ringing for morning service, so we joined the congregation for the first part of the service. As the original Quire is now the site of King Richard's tomb, the new choir stalls are at the west end of the Cathedral, so we were very close to them and enjoyed their excellent singing.

The Cathedral was formerly the Parish Church of St Martin's and is, therefore, relatively small. St Martin was the Roman centurion who gave half his cloak to a beggar and who was reputedly an ancestor of the founder of the Chateau de Bagnac near R's old house in Peyrat de Bellac.

Between the Cathedral and the new Museum is a very evocative statue of King Richard holding his crown and a sword.

At the foot of the statue, someone had place a single white rose.

The Richard III Museum was excellent. The ground floor told the history of Richard and of the Battle of Bosworth. The second floor told the story of the search for his remains and the process of analysing his bones and proving that the bones were indeed his.
We were particularly taken with this portrait of King Richard.

It was made with thousands of tiny images taken by local people at the time of his re-interrment.

The final section of the museum has been built over the place where King Richard had originally been buried just a foot or so below the floor of the Quire of Greyfriars - below what became the Leicester Social Services car park. A glass floor allowed you to see the excavated grave as the archeologists had left it with a few tiles of the original floor that had survived to one side.
Both the Cathedral and the new Museum were very impressive and extremely well done. We were so glad we had finally made our pilgrimage to pay our respects to King Richard.  Everything exceeded our expectations; a marvellous experience.
After lunch, we set off again in the company of "Vagabond".

We had intended to stop off at the National Space Museum but, as we approached Belgrave Lock next to the museum, MM ran over something under the water and her rudder was pushed up out of its mounting and something got caught around the propellor. Dudley and Rosemary on "Vagabond" helped us to pull MM into the lock where R removed a mountain bike tyre from the propellor. R and Dudley then turned their attention to the rudder, which would only swing one way.

Eventually R managed to get the rudder to turn both ways but it required a great deal of brute force every time. Very gingerly we continued - much comforted by the fact that "Vagabond" was right behind us if we got into trouble.
Eventually we arrived at the mooring at Birstall, where we tied up next to "Vagabond" for the night. We were so tired that we didn't even take a picture of our mooring!
Today: 4 miles, 4 locks and 3.0 hours.
Trip: 136 miles, 87 locks and 105.1 hours.