fatmanblue

The Aldi in Whitchurch is very new and very close to the canal. Getting to it is trickier though. We walked from the Arm along Chemistry.

I've found that the 'best' canals can be off the 'rings'... Lancaster Caldon Gloucester and Sharpness

The PRM 150 is a good gearbox but do make sure it is properly cooled. If your skin tank is undersized you may need make alternative arrangements.

Just about to say the same, 8kw is a lot for a boat. A Squirrel stove is 4.5 and easily enough, even when running a back boiler. Looks nice, very reasonable price though.

The Severn Valley Railway is brilliant, but Stourport is a much more interesting overnight stop than Kidderminster in my opinion. Worcester to Stourport is not a long day in normal river conditions - I've often done Upton to Stourport with no trouble. If it were me I'd probably moor above the York St lock in Stourport, start early in the morning (your kids can stay in bed) and then moor below Falling Sands lock (about an hour's cruise) and walk to the station (about 2km). Or carry on through Falling Sands and Caldwell locks and moor in the middle to town, depending on how well you are doing for time. I have done the Severn Valley Railway on a through ticket from Droitwich, but that may not be possible in the current climate.

in the early 1980s, the Original Boat Co. in Evesham ran a 'fleet' (I cannot be sure of the size) of electric hire boats and , thanks to the foresight and progressive thinking of the late David Hutchings, there was a 'network' of charging points around the Avon Ring. UANT at time offered a 50% reduction on licence fees for electric boats. This is a vague memory, as I was born in 1973 so was quite young at the time. In hindsight, the Avon Ring was possibly rather less suitable for electric boats than other rings, due to the possibility of strongly adverse river currents (as anyone who has experienced the Severn or the Avon on a bad day will attest). On the face of it, narrowboats are more suitable for electric propulsion than most other vehicles, as weight is almost immaterial. However, as others have alluded to, the individual nature of narrowboats counts against them as regards cost and reliability. You can buy a Ford Fiesta (relatively) cheaply because they make 22,000 of them a week, all largely the same.

As above, go for the 150 if you can, but note that it needs a proper cooling circuit. I did spend a long time thinking about replacing with a 120 or another Technodrive, but am very glad I went for the 150. I replaced a Technodrive TMC60 on my Vetus M4.17 with a PRM 150 last year, and it is much, much nicer to use (and all the problems with loosening coupling bolts have gone away). It was a a tricky job on my boat as I had to lower the bilge divider/bulkhead (the PRM is deeper than the Technodrive), but still not too bad. My boat is fresh water cooled so that made the cooling circuit easy to arrange (gearbox goes before the manifold heat exchanger).

Saul Junction.... Always a favourite place. Earlier this year.

If you are thinking of doing the Avon Ring again after 42 years, I would suggest doing it clockwise. The locks on the Avon are much easier to deal with going downhill. Not that going uphill is any problem, it just requires diligent ropework.

I think Pershore lock was originally a diamond shape, although not as extreme as Wyre. When the navigation was restored, Pershore lock had to be deepened to give clearance under the bridges as Pershore watergate was removed. The new 'deepened' section was rectangular in shape, hence the staging on the left and the pole on the right to ensure that boats didn't get stuck on the sides as the level dropped. No doubt all of this is detailed in David Burlingham's book on the Lower Avon 'To Maintain and Improve' - I just can't lay my hands on my copy just now. I would guess that the 'rectangularisation' took place before the 1990s. The Avon Ring must have been quite an adventure in 1977 - the Lower Stratford wasn't in great shape then and the Upper Avon may have been a bit raw. Pershore is not the only lock on the route to have seen major changes - at Harvington the original 'new' lock was abandoned in 1981 and rebuilt on a different alignment (the original is now a dry dock).

Fourth picture - and the one just posted, is of Abbey Mill Tewkesbury. This is further down the Avon (on the 'Mill Avon') than the Avon lock area max's son posted above. I'm confident the lock is Pershore - it's not Wyre (and it's not Evesham which is the only other one I can think of on the Avon with any 'diamondness' to it). And yes, third picture is just to the right (east) of the Abbey Mill.

I think the lock picture is Pershore. From memory it was rebuilt at some point to be less 'diamond-shaped'. The lie of the land and the moored boats look right and the lock is deep. Wyre is shallow and much more of a diamond. Last picture, as a pp has noted, looks like the end of the Mill Avon in Tewkesbury. I 'did' the Avon Ring in 1981 - too young to remember most of it though!