Day Twenty One - Worcester to Stoke Works

We had a good last day together and one amazing coincidence. Lyn and I spent the morning walking around Worcester and having coffee. Bill and Henk went to the Commandery which was Charles II’s headquarters during the civil war. This is now a museum documenting the six different periods of the building. This included a hospital, civil war headquarters and a printery.
The weather was very overcast and threatened rain all day. We had two brief light showers so we were lucky. We left Worcester just after eleven forty-five and motored through very pretty countryside with lots of cows and twenty locks arriving at Stoke Works at five forty-five.
Lyn and I have discovered Tesco pre-prepared meals. We had a very tasty steak pie and salad for lunch and pre-made lasagne and pasta bake with salad for dinner. They are great value and easy to serve on a boat.
We only passed one boat coming our way. The lock was full and as we were coming up the locks I let them come into the lock and empty it and then let our boat come into the empty lock. It is considered very bad boat manners to empty or fill a lock if the oncoming boat can take advantage of the current state of the lock. And this is where the amazing coincidence came in. As the water drained out of the lock and their boat slowly lowered the conversation went like this:
Man: Thanks for letting us use the lock. (sounding English)
Me: That’s OK. It was all ready for you to enter.
Old Lady (his mother):You sound Australian. Where are you from?
Me: Brisbane.
Man: Me too. Where from?
Me: The Gap.
Man: Me too.
Me: What street?
Man: Just off Payne Road.
Me: Wow! That’s amazing. We live at the end of Payne Rd.
So we exchanged names and I got Steve and Colleen’s name and address and I’ll drop the address of our blogsite to them when we get back to Australia. As a parody of “Casablanca” “Of all the locks and all the boats and all the different canals in England we met at Lock 11 of the Offerton Locks.” So the photo of the gentleman on this page is Steve from The Gap! His elderly mother lives as Salisbury, England and Steve and Colleen came over to take his mother on a canal boat.
We are now only one lock away from the marina at Stoke Prior where we have to return the boat at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Another Black Prince hire boat has moored in front of us and has a quite a lean to it. We think it seriously needs a pump out!
Photos: Henk in the lock outside the Commandery, Worcester; Lyn at the front of our boat, “Gillian” going into a lock; Stoke Works; Steve from The Gap.