Here Comes The Sun

Beatles fans Steven and Carolyn Easdale travel 10,000 miles to enjoy the shrine to their heroes and warmer weather that their Australian home

- Beatles Fans Steven And Carolyn Easdale

To most English people, the idea of a winter escape to the industrial heartland of the Black Country area, instead of southern Europe may sound a little strange. But that is exactly what my husband Steve and I do every June to August. “June to August?” I hear you ask. Well that is when our home on the southern coast of Victoria, Australia, is at its coldest and we ‘follow the sun’ to the Midlands. By English standards, our home in Ocean Grove is not that cold, we never have snow and the only things that ice over are vegetables in the freezer. But when the cold wind howls in off Bass Straight, next stop Antartica 5,000km away, we begin to think of sunny days in Worcestershire where our 60ft narrowboat Emmaus is moored at the Droitwich Spa marina. Okay, so England is not exactly sunny every day between June and August. In 2019, we were saturated through to our skin twice in one day as we cruised through Stone in the Staffordshire Potteries. (And we were wearing waterproofs!)

Luckily, we were joined by a friend from Melbourne for dinner, who had a car and had managed to find us a canalside pub that was wonderfully warm and served a good Prosecco!