A New C&RT Logo and Emergency Babysitting.

Thursday 5th July in Stourport.
Thursday morning found us still moored in Kidderminster where we received an emergency request for baby sitting this afternoon and evening, so we walked up to the railway station and M took the train back to Oxted via Reading. R walked back to MM and started off again, heading for Stourport.
The first lock is Kidderminster lock and the bottom gates were leaking very badly, in fact so badly that the full lock emptied in less than half an hour (and that is not the worst that we have seen). A terrible waste of precious water, especially given the current near-drought conditions.

Recently the Canal & River Trust has spent a great deal of money (which it doesn't have) on a "rebranding" exercise, changing the old logo, which featured a swan and canal bridge, to a new logo that is a circle with a weak reference to water - it is supposed to represent "well being".

The old logo is on the left and the new one on the right.
Needless to say, we were not impressed with the C&RT expenditure priorities nor with the logo itself, so R wrote to both the C&RT and Canal Boat Magazine to express our annoyance at expenditure on, what looks like, a pure vanity project. R also looked at the leaking lock gate photo and decided that the new C&RT logo was missing something: a stream of water pouring through the hole in the middle of the logo to symbolise all the poorly maintained locks on the system. It will be interesting to receive C&RT's response in due course.

The trip down to Stourport went without any problems and R moored MM in the centre of town in a shady spot.

 

As it was still morning, R decided to take the bus back to Kidderminster (there is a bus every 15 minutes) and then catch a train back to Stone to pick up the car, which was still at Aston Marina. R then drove back to Stourport so that he could drive back home the following morning.
As soon as he got back, he took MM down through the last lock into Stourport basin. This lock is next to "Blossoms", a cafe that we have been into several times, but unfortunately by the time R got back it was closed.

R had booked MM into the marina in the basin as he has to go back home tomorrow morning. Getting MM in was a very tight fit between a row of boats, but the local residents, Peter, Pam and Pauline, were very helpful in getting her safely into her berth.

Tomorrow, R will drive back home but we expect to be back on Monday, ready to go on to the (non tidal) River Severn on our way down to Worcester and beyond.
Today: 4 miles, 4 locks and 6.3 hours (including power).
Trip: 72 miles, 50 locks and 43.5 hours.