A river question.

Is nothing reliable these days? In my book, arrangements made should be arrangements kept. Not by the haulage company I T Distributors though! They should have delivered the sofa bed today as  planned. Having made arrangements to over stay a 24 hour mooring (thank you C&RT) to take delivery of the sofa, it now turns out that the paperwork for dispatching the sofa hadn't been completed in time. For goodness sake, they had collected the sofa from Sit and Sleep last Friday and taken it to the depot in Birmingham the very same day. Didnt like to push C&RT to allow us to stay any longer on the 24 hour mooring so we moved to the pontoon on the river by The Angel Pub. Assurances have been made by Darren at I T Distributions that it will be the first delivery of the day tomorrow. We will wait and see!

Nice bit of Topiary by the pub

The river pontoon.

So now for the title of my post. If you know Stourport then you will know there are two sets of staircase locks to descend to the river and a very awkward turn between the two. What I want to know is........ what is the etiquette on leaving the river to come up these locks. Who basically has right of way.

I had already started to descend the first lock of the staircase in the upper basin. As I entered the second lock I noticed a lady with windlass standing by the top lock of the river staircase locks. I had also clocked that the top lock of this staircase was full. She was fully aware that I was starting to descend. She then walked down to the river, must have had a word with the helmsman and was told  to proceed and empty the lock. In between these two staircase locks is a pound and with no way of having a straight run at the next lock, a very difficult maneuver had to be carried out. Its a bit of a dog leg so no way of getting into the lock without either nudging the lock entrance and swinging the back end round or doing a lot of toing and froing. I now had to get out of my lock and allow this boat to bypass me. Reversing into a basin through a small gap was the only answer. With the breeze just enough to make this difficult, I somehow managed to get out of his way and allow him into the lock. So who was in the right and who was in the wrong. Should they be allowed to ascend first because they were coming off the river (not in flood conditions I might add) or should they have waited on the river pontoon while I descended the staircase locks?

I'm having to reverse back to allow him into the lock

I walked back to take these photos to show you what I meant. This would have been from the other boats perspective.  Notice the angle of the hire boat as he managed to get into the lock.

And from where I was. I had already descended.

The river staircase. She could have had no doubt that I was in the other lock.

Tried a spot of river fishing for the first time. I have a new ledger rod and couldn't wait to try it out. Sat for two hours and not a bite to be had.  It was either the fact that I'm a bit of a novice to this sort of fishing or maybe the fish weren't around. All I know is I came away very despondent and hoping for better luck once in Droitwich.