Saturday 27^th April 2019

We took Harvey for a long walk to a retail park that included a B&Q’s, Halfords and a big Morrisons. We were looking for string lights for the front cratch and car shampoo but found neither, at the end of the day however, the walk was to tire the dog out.

We went to explore Evesham but we found the place uninteresting and uninspiring. The town had grown up around the great Abbey built in the 8^th century and reputedly the third largest in England. The Abbey became a victim of the dissolution in the 1540’s under the reign of Henry VIII, after which most of the buildings were demolished and the stone used elsewhere. Today all that remains is the Bell Tower, the churches of St Lawrence and All Saints and the Almonry. The outline of the Abbey itself Is marked out with rows of stones set in the grass of the Abbey Gardens. It was huge, the Bell Tower is a most impressive structure.

We walked through the Abbey Gardens and visited the museum in the Almonry, a 14^th century building once the home of the Almoner of the Abbey. An Almoner was a person involved with the welfare of the poor. The Almonry is impressive itself, with rambling rooms on many levels, low head room and wooden beams and large flooring slabs. The museum was absolutely fascinating with lots of artefacts.

After we went into the churches of St. Lawrence and All Saints but found both to be plain and stark.

   

        

                                 Evesham Abbey Bell Tower with St. Laurence Church on the left and All Saints on the right

 The Almonry

       

                       

                                                                           Medieval Gateway to the Abbey                                                    

                                                                                       Evesham Town Centre

The town centre consists of a mix of old Georgian and half-timbered houses, and modern buildings. However, the Riverside shopping complex summed the town up for us, over half of the units were closed.

We are moored beside the Workman Gardens, a small park with fixed table tennis tables and petanque alleys, all well used. The area is known as Northwick and Bengeworth, but is like a suburb of any small Russian town or Eastern European village. Evesham, and the Vale of Evesham, is well known for fruit and vegetable production and so attracts a lot of Eastern European labour. There are very many Eastern European, Russian, Lithuanian and Latvian food shops and restaurants and English, as a language, is very much a minority. In the gardens there are numerous men, single and in groups, drinking and chatting. While this could be seen to be intimidating, it is just their culture and not to be taken as threatening. How long does it take before any wave of immigration is integrated into the main-stream?

The wind all through last night and all day today has been gale force. Boats that were going to move haven’t and the single boat that we saw moving came down the river sideways and, turning the bend before Abbey Bridge, was blown into the bank.

We had a Chinese takeaway for dinner, very nice and a rare treat. While in the takeaway, we spoke with a local woman who was shocked to hear we were moored on the river, the locals regard it as an unsafe area, such are people’s conceptions, we have had no trouble whatsoever, and read newspaper cuttings of floods in the immediate area that were 18 feet above the normal level of the river. It must fascinatingly scary to witness the power of water when the river is in flood so badly.