We left Lock House at 6.45am for our journey to Stourport for our Helmsmans course. The first part of our journey was slightly fraught as the lady with the nice voice temporarily deserted us and Lawrence reverted to yelling at me instead of her. However with some desperate button pushing she suddenly returned to us and tensions were relieved.
We arrived at the Stourport Basin in good time (which translates as I had time for a couple of fags) to meet Rod Fox our instructor for the day and to be given a tour of his boat on which we were undertaking our instruction. We were soon underway and Lawrence's first task was negotiate out of the Stourport Basin
Which involved navigating 3 really tight corners - any mistake meant the ignomy bashing into moored boats, many with their owners on board. I was so proud of him, he handled it like a pro. We then proceeded up through a lock onto the Staff &Worcs canal where we spent the morning teaching me to steer (much harder than it looks - a momentary lapse of concentration and we were heading towards the bank; physically also - my shoulders are still aching. So Geoff, I have new respect for your and Lawrence's last year). Winding (turning the boat around) and reversing (the hardest of them all as the boat has no steering going backward).
We had a 20 min lunch break, Rod was a hard taskmaster, and then it was back down through the lock with me steering - only one teeny bump, was very chuffed. I quailed at negotiating the basin, so it was back to Lawrence who once again handled it like a pro.
we then had to negotiate a double set of staircase locks down onto the River Severn where I had more steering and winding experience and we both had to take the boat through this huge lock
Then back up the Severn with some man overboard practice. Rod was disappointed that neither Lawrence nor I were prepared to throw ourselves off the back of the boat, so we had to save a bucket and buoy instead. We won lots of brownie points as I didn't run over bucket man and managed to steer close enough so Lawrence could hook him and heave him on board and administer CPR!
We returned back up thru the double staircase locks and back to the mooring and got these
Got back to Lock House at 9.30pm absolutely knackered, so yesterday we decided not to leave Mercia marina and wait here for Tim and mike to join us on Sunday. Justin and linden at Aqua Narrowboats were fantastic -friendly and really helpful. Linden took us on our handover cruise. And we learnt a whole lot more from him. Linden is a master reverser and happily passed on some tips to us.
Report on our first night on board later.
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