We had a peaceful night outside the Anchor Inn in Wyre Piddly and woke up to a lovely sunny day with plenty of blue sky. We don’t have so far to go today. Yesterday was 17.5 miles and 4 locks. Today was 9..5 miles and only 2 locks.

First we had breakfast. A full English on board: sausages, black pudding, bacon, eggs and bread baps. Lovely – a good start. We seem to drink tea all day on the boat.

The river en route to Evesham was even narrower than yesterday and very winding. You can’t take your eyes off the river ahead because of this and also because the length of the boat makes her tend to go off line in the wind and she takes a long time to respond. You find yourself making lots of small correcting movements. Combined with the locks, it’s quite an active holiday.

As usual we saw lots of waterbirds: herons, swans, Canada geese, ducks…. and some amazing riverside houses. Gorgeous places. Encountered two ladies wild swimming at one point. We exchanged some banter. They weren’t wearing wetsuits even. Had to be cold but they were used to it apparently.

The two locks went smoothly enough and we moored up opposite the abbey ruins in Evesham at about 130. It took us just over 3 hours. We are surrounded by geese and swans here. I’ve taken to feeding them out of the galley hatch – just some stale bread – but they re very happy, honking away. We had a bit of lunch – malt loaf and tea – and then walked across the Abbey Bridge into Evesham for a look around. The town itself felt quite empty and run down, quite depressed. Not as I remembered it from my last visit about 30 years ago. Then, it was genteel, today it felt as run down as Dover with lots of closed shops, charity shops and many Romanian accents. Not very attractive – we were surprised.

Walked around a bit trying to scout somewhere for dinner. Mostly we found takeaways and Bangladeshi restaurants.

But eventually we chose Casa, an Italian restaurant in the heart of town. We had a really amazing dinner with wine at a very reasonable price and the service was very good. Back to the boat for last drinks…