Why there’s so much more to Worcester than sauce

Motor cruisers and narrowboats head up and down the river, the latter entering and leaving the inland waterway network at Worcester, Droitwich, Stourport on Severn and Tewkesbury. The Severn was once busy with trade, with sailing barges known as Severn trows venturing upriver to Welshpool, carrying grain. Today, most of the low river traffic is related to leisure. Occasionally England’s largest hotel ship, the edward elgar, moors outside the cathedral with the call of pilgrims in the air. The crew dismantle the wheelhouse to allow the 22-passenger vessel to pass under an arch of Worcester Bridge on its six-night cruise down the Severn. In the 1980s Worcester had “river-shuffle” boat tours with jazz music, dancing and a bar, but now, sadly, there is only one 12-seater tour boat, although a a new one, quite fancy.

In the 19th century Diglis Lock, there is a new fish pass, allowing migratory fish to bypass the weir. The goal is to restore the population of a rare species, the twaite shad. Visit on certain days and you can look through an underwater window as fish of various kinds, and the occasional otters, swim briskly around the concrete structure.

A five-minute walk from the cathedral along the river is the command, a rambling building that became the royalist headquarters during the final battle of the English Civil War, which took place on 3 September 1651. The history of the niche is understandably not to everyone’s cup of tea. The morning I visited, two children were crying, convinced they didn’t want to be there. There is ample information on Parliamentarians and Royalists and battle movements on the day, including the towing of a floating pontoon bridge nine miles up the river. There are accessories to try and a heavy 5m pike to lift. Later, sitting in the beautiful gardens of the canalside cafe, the nippers were happy over cakes and fizzy drinks, laughing at photos of themselves dressed as roundheads and gentlemen.