Locks at Tardebigge on the Birmingham and Worcester canal

The thirty locks in the Tardebigge Flight make it the largest flight of locks in Britain, and raise the Worcester & Birmingham Canal up 220 feet through some delightful rolling countryside just southeast of Bromsgrove.

And on the same day we visited the Edward Elgar Museum near Worcester.

Very well laid out, this small museum displays Elgar relics and has an excellent audio guide which plays, on demand, a helpful commentary (unnervingly the voice of Brian Aldridge from the Archers) or selected pieces of Elgar.

Across the garden is Elgar's birthplace, a simple cottage with a lot of character.

For some reason I was delighted to find that he cycled around the area intensively and marked his routes on a map in red.