Bidford To Evesham Paddle

Here’s a little write up from one of the Jacqui John Adventures on the Avon series of river trips. This time from Bidford to Evesham. Paddled on Sunday 2nd November by a keen trio of WKCC’ers; Claire Teagle, Jacqui John and Marcus Draper in fine and pleasant weather.

Meeting at the get-out, Rapheal’s Restaurant, Jacqui’s kayak was happily mounted on top of Claire’s for the ride to the put-in at Bidford. The main carpark was closed for the season, so this meant a bit of boat dragging, which I like to do, but the girls less so. Another positive, which made my Yorkshire roots tingle, was free parking. Ain’t much for nowt these days!!

Much has been said about the Ez-Launch at Bidford, and whilst having previously experienced river egress with it, I can say getting on the river is way better. A strong pull on the paddle and whoosh, you’re in. With a little imagination you could pretend to be Starbuck launching a Viper from the Battlestar Galactica.

So, we’re on the water with a 9 mile, 4 lock adventure ahead of us. Unsurprisingly, this bit of the Avon is rather much like the rest of the Avon. Jacqui takes on the first lock, Claire deals with the quad-paddle second lock, tricky, and I handled the last two, popping my lock gate cherry. A new friend was made at the lock in Evesham, the evicted from the condemned triangle house due to flooding, now living in a barge with wife, who we didn’t see, former lock-keeper regenerated as the lock-warden. He was quite baffled as to why we didn’t use the canoe portage. “We like locks”, I said.

Thank you to Jacqui for here flawless organisational skills and Claire for her lovely Brownies.