Journey’s End

Friday morning: we knew it was going to turn into a hot day, so an early start was called for. By 7.30 a.m. we had breakfasted (rather meagrely, as we were running out of supplies by now), made good use of the facilities, and slipped our moorings. I walked round to the first of the narrow staircase locks to get the top lock open, as I knew Ernest would have a difficult manoeuvre, needing to navigate between all the moored boats then make a sharp 90 degree turn towards the lock – and it was windy. Last night the water level in the basin seemed a couple of inches too high and water had been overflowing the top lock gates, but the level had gone down a little overnight and I soon had the gates opened. Ernst came swinging round the corner – no collisions – and we were away. A little help at the bottom staircase from a boater waiting for his boat to be released from the dry dock. On the river by 8.00 a.m.

The River Severn was on ‘amber’, ie water levels slightly raised and flowing fast, but levels were dropping so we were fine. The Lock keeper told us this was rain which had fallen on the Welsh hills a couple of days ago. Yes, we remember that rain.

An uneventful stretch down to Hawford where we made a sharp turn left into Hawford Lock which leads into the Droitwich Canals. Very nice timing – a boat had just left the lock and the skipper opened the gates for us. His crew told us they had had to leave their boat in Droitwich marina for two weeks, as the Severn had been closed to navigation following the extreme rain – the same rain we had encountered in Llangollen. We could see from the deposited mud and debris that the river had indeed been very high.

So, up through 8 locks into the centre of Droitwich. The wide locks of the Droitwich barge canal were hard work after the narrow locks of the Staffs and Worcs and the Shroppie.

Ernest kindly did the heavy and tricky swing bridges in Vines Park, where he encountered a group of 4 police officers  looking for something (weapons? drugs?) in the dog waste and other bins – from a distance, I thought they were were an overmanned waste bin emptying team – it’s so hard to spot a police officer these days,  now they no longer wear those police hats that Dixon of Dock Green always wore.

We paused briefly near Waitrose so I could dash in and grab us a couple of wraps for lunch. Then just 5 more locks, including the 4” barge lock, and the final staircase, which seemed to take ages to get through, by the time you’ve opened the bottom gates, let the boat in, closed the bottom gates, filled the top lock, emptied the top lock into the bottom lock, opened the middle gates, let the boat into the top lock, closed the middle gates, filled the top lock (again), opened the top gates, let the boat out, closed the top gate – and all on a Waitrose wrap, and no coffee or tea since 9.00 a.m.

It was still windy, but Ernest executed a perfect manoeuvre into the marina, and an almost perfect manoeuvre into our mooring slot (just slightly kissing the next boat, which fortunately had no one on board). 2.00 p.m. – and then we worked oh so efficiently as a team to pack, clean, and prep the boat for leaving. As always, the land took some time to stop swaying and rocking, and the road traffic once we got driving seemed unnecessarily fast.

Having called off at Tesco on the way, we arrived home at 5.30 p.m. to find the garden even more rampant, the beans looking thirsty, and the buds off Ernest’s favourite rose devoured – we suspect our resident pheasant.

And to discover a flier for ‘pub and pizza night’ at the Colony Hall (our local community hall) – so that’s dinner sorted then.

Friday’s statistics: 19 Locks, 15.5 miles and 3 swing bridges in 6.4 engine hours.

Our journey this week from Marbury has been 85 Locks and 90 miles in 44.4 engine hours over 5 days.

Total journey, Droitwich to Llangollen and back: 194 Locks, 250 miles, 120.7 engine hours.

 

A Perfect Day

This was the sort of day that reminds you of why you do narrowboating at all.

A strange bright and shiny round thing rose in a cloudless blue sky, and remained shiny, and the sky remained blue. The countryside was green. The birds sang. Fluffy ducklings cheeped. The locks were easy. We had amiable encounters with other boaters. Help arrived just when needed, eg an extra body to open a heavy top gate, or a hunky Belgian who was able to wind some recalcitrant paddles (under instruction). We made such good time that we were able to stop for lunch – a naughty fry up of bacon and fridge leftovers.

At one point I was thinking, this is too good to be true, and remembered how I’d put a jinx on yesterday by thinking I’d have nothing to write about in the blog. That made me more careful at the lock I was working – I was very tired (from all the locks and the unfamiliar hot weather) – but I made sure to concentrate as I jumped across the gap between the bottom gates (a gap of about 3 feet, that’s all, when one gate is open, but with a long drop below). I didn’t stumble and fall.

Ernest was right (it would be unkind to add ‘as usual’) and we found a mooring down in the Stourport Basin, where there are only two visitor moorings. So that’s one less lock to do tomorrow. And we’re moored right by the useful ‘facilities’.

Dinner was an easy peasy cottage pie made from leftover Borlotti Bean Goulash and leftover mash. While it was cooking, I was able to have a refreshing shower then enjoy a cold G&T sitting in a comfy chair on the bank – not the most picturesque setting, and not the quietest either, what with traffic noise and young people roaring around on motor bikes – but the sun is still shining and we’re going to take an evening stroll in a moment around the basin, to have a look at the other boats and see what the river looks like.

Sorry, no dramas.

16 locks and 16.5miles in 8.8 engine hours.

Just when it was all going so well

 

The day began well. We had an early start, not lingering for the bacon sandwiches after all, but leaving Norbury Junction at 7.30 a.m. By 10.00 a.m. we were at Wheaton Aston, filling up with diesel, emptying the loo and filling up with water. Then, fortified by coffee and snickers, it was onwards and downwards (well, after going UP the Wheaton Aston lock) towards Autherley Junction – actually, not downwards at all, as there’s a long level pound between Wheaton and the Junction, alternating between high embankments and deep narrow cuttings which are dense and dark and green with overhanging trees. We saw three kingfishers in quick succession. Lunch was taken on the go. I was just beginning to think that there would be nothing to write about in the blog tonight, and I would have to conjure up a ‘filler’ in the shape of a Church review (BCP evensong at St Michael’s Marbury, which had been bumped out of an earlier blog by the dramatic events (queue jumping) at Marbury Locks), when we encountered problems at Compton Lock.

A boat was waiting to go down, and there was a boat coming up. Then someone came running towards us from the lock to say that the lock wasn’t filling, the bottom gates were leaking too badly, the lock had partly filled but had then reached a point where the water coming in was balanced by the water leaking out. A crowd soon gathered to make suggestions. The lock was emptied again, and the bottom gates reopened and then re-closed – we all thought they had closed better this time, were a tighter fit, so we started filling the lock again. All seemed to go ok until about 12 inches from the top, when again, the water stopped rising. We managed to wedge the top gate open a little, first with a windlass and then with a length of wood (the handy ‘wooden windlass’ that I’d been kindly given by a boater on the outward journey), and together with the efforts of a lot of people pushing the gate and a bit of shoving from the boat itself (NOT good practice, but sometimes desperate measures are called for) we managed to get the lock filled and the gate open, so that boat was out. As it left, we could hear the skipper on the phone to CRT, reporting the problem. ‘They’ll be here within an hour,’ he promised us.

The boat in front of us was of course now able to go down. And through and off they went, leaving Ernest and I suddenly without the previous crowd of able-bodied persons – just an elderly (ish) woman with a bicycle who had sat on a bench watching the whole performance and who then immediately got on her bike and disappeared, perhaps anxious that she might be roped in to help us, and three even older fishermen, at least one of them on crutches, who also suddenly packed up their gear and went home for tea. Ernest and I decided we would see if we could repeat what had been done earlier, and we almost had the lock full – perhaps 6 inches from the top (with our windlass wedging the top gate partly open) when a CRT man appeared in his white van, and told us to stop, and to close the top paddles. He was probably right to do so – apparently the pound above the lock had dropped by about 2 inches, with all the water that had been let through.

Kevin, as we learned he was called, was not happy. What a day for such a problem to happen! Most of the local CRT men, he told us, were on crowd control duty or something at the big Black Sabbath event in the middle of Birmingham (you’ll have to google it if you want to know more, I can’t be bothered). He’d been left in sole charge of 40 miles of canal. And he needed to get away by 4.00 p.m. to go and collect his daughter from the airport. And you know what traffic is like near the airport… Kevin spent five minutes or so looking at the bottom gates, opening and shutting them, and drawing his breath in through his teeth in that way that plumbers have just before they tell you how much they will charge to repair your leaking pipe. If only he had a longer pole. If only all the other men weren’t at the Black Sabbath event. If only he didn’t have to pick up his daughter. He would just have to leave it to the On Call team, who would be on duty from 4.00 p.m. (it was by now about 3.15p.m.). He put a call through to his handlers. And at the same time Ernest was on the phone to CRT, emphasising that we were on a tight schedule because of the time we had been marooned up the Llangollen. A man appeared from another boat moored a little way above the lock. He confirmed that he had come up through the lock about an hour earlier, and it had worked perfectly fine. So it sounded as if something had perhaps got caught below the bottom gates and was preventing them shutting properly.

I retreated to the boat to make a cup of tea (always a good plan), while Kevin departed to collect his daughter, and the man from the other moored boat waited with Ernest and listened patiently to his tales of woe.
We were eventually saved by the wonderful ‘Baz’ from CRT, presumably from the On Call team. He brought with him a really long rake, and spent only a little time looking at the gates and the water before actually doing something – ie raking about at the bottom of the lock near the bottom gates, then opening some top paddles and sort of whooshing the water through to clear whatever obstruction might be there. He thought there was a 50/50 chance of success, but hooray! And thank you to Baz! By 4.30 p.m. we were able to fill the lock and go through it.

Could we make up lost time? Well, it wasn’t raining, so we fortified ourselves again with tea and cake, and pressed on. The lock keeper at the Bratch had gone home, but we decided to work these locks ourselves, having read the detailed instructions carefully, twice: this is a ‘set of locks’ not a staircase, and the method is to open blue paddles and blue gates before red paddles and red gates (‘blue before red or you’re dead’), allowing the side ponds to sort the water levels out. It’s a very clever piece of canal engineering.

I was glad I’d seen it work with the lock keeper and volunteers when we came up – and had learned from the mistakes made by the volunteers then. It’s very simple really, if you follow the instructions to the letter, and much simpler when there’s only one boat going through.

After that it was just a question of finding a good mooring for the night, but that took some time, as we rejected sites near industrial estates or under pylons and power lines, and ended up going through 3 more locks before finally mooring at 8.15 p.m. and rewarding ourselves with a G&T/beer before tucking in to sausages, mash and beans.

14 locks and 25 miles in 10.4 engine hours.

The only other thing to report is that Ernest put his foot through the back deck, which we knew was rotten and has been repaired once and now needs replacing. No damage done to the foot, thankfully.

A shortage of dry socks

Nothing much to report, really, as we return to a more normal routine. The canal is as quiet and peaceful as it should be.

Rain before 7.00, but not fine by 11.00. We togged up anyway – waterproof trousers and jackets and hats – and set off to climb the remaining 11 locks of the 15-Lock Audlem flight. We quickly set into a rhythm of working: after opening the top paddles of one lock, I would walk ahead to open the bottom paddles and gates of the next lock, leaving Ernest to open his top gate, drop the paddles, exit, then close the gate. After doing this once, he decided it would be a good idea to secure the boat with the rear rope when he left it to close the gate, just in case it decided to drift away…

Apparently, I sometimes caused extra problems by opening the bottom paddles of the next lock just as he was trying to close his gate, and the extra flow made his work harder.

It’s at times like this when it would be really good to have an extra pair of hands, or better still, two extra crew. One always going ahead to set the next lock, one always available to finish off the lower lock, one working wherever needed. But in the evenings and overnight, our boat really only has room for two. So the extra crew would have to arrange their own accommodation. Or camp on the roof.

We have in the past had extras (family and friends) ‘camping’ out with us (not on the roof) for short periods – and very welcome they were too (I know they read this blog, and I don’t want them to feel unwanted and unloved). But after a long day in the rain with much lock working, my inner introvert kicks in and demands to be ALONE. So I’d better just get on with working the locks all by myself.

A short respite after the Audlem flight, but then the five locks at Adderley. By this time, heavy persistent rain had tested and found wanting the waterproof coat (yes, the new one) and hat as well as the shoes. I left Ernest under his umbrella and retreated indoors to finish making bread, change some of my clothing, and make coffee, not necessarily in that order.

We moored for lunch in Market Drayton – I confess to bacon sandwiches with freshly made bread rolls – then pressed on, as the rain had stopped and the clouds had lifted. For a short while there was the promise of sun and warmth, but the promise was unfulfilled.

Five more locks at Tyrley – tricky ones with fast run offs, and an especially shallow pound between the bottom two locks where you are likely either to run aground on the towpath side or get pushed sideways by the run off and find yourself stuck against the steep rocky cliff on the other side (the two boats ahead of us kindly demonstrated the dangers for us).

Ernest must be tired because he got grumpy with the skipper of a boat coming down: a young couple, the girl went ahead to set the next lock down (the one Ernest had just left, crossing with a boat going down, so that lock was now empty) – Ernest told the girl not to open the top paddles, as there was a boat coming up. The girl communicated with her skipper on her walker-talkie (I am ambivalent about the value of these walkie-talkies – they seem to take the fun out of narrowboating, since much of the fun results from communication breakdowns) and the skipper obviously told her to open the paddles anyway, so she did. And Ernest was cross because that meant they had ‘stolen’ the lock from the boat coming up. I think the skipper might have been worried about crossing the shallow pound and didn’t want to exit his lock until he could see the next lock down set for him with gates open. But Ernest might be right – this skipper was just rude and inconsiderate.

No further incidents. A long stretch without Locks was somehow both relaxing and tedious. A bit of sunshine would have improved matters. We moored for the night at Norbury Junction ‘where the Newport branch used to lock down from the main line’, but which is now a busy boatyard with cafe, shop, pub and permanent moorings as well as CRT facilities.

We don’t usually moor in such a busy place. Almost metropolitan. Quiet at the moment, but we know it will be full of life in the morning. If we linger for long enough, we might be tempted by the bacon sandwiches in the cafe.

To round off the day, the local fire brigade entertained us with exercises in the cut: it looked as if the youngest recruits were being subjected to some initiation ritual – donning wetsuits and bright yellow helmets, climbing down into the water, walking across the canal and then along it for a few yards, then being dragged, floating, back across the canal and being hauled out by their mates. Everyone seemed to be enjoying it.

Good old Borlotti Bean Goulash and cheese dumplings for dinner.

21 locks and 17 miles in 9.2 engine hours.

The Great Escape

We both slept badly and woke early. Well before 7.00 a.m., there was considerable activity up near the lock. A boat came by, heading for the lock – a boat we had seen moored about a mile further back. This must be the boat who had been told by CRT that they would go through the lock first.

Apparently, this boat had been caught out by the canal collapse and closure, when just above Marbury Lock. CRT said to them, not to worry, they needn’t stay near the lock, they could reverse back up the canal, and CRT had been visiting regularly to bring fresh water and take away their rubbish. I don’t know about their loo! So that boat had waited the week and a half in the same place, whereas other boats had used the time to go back up the Llangollen a bit, or like us, had left their boats and gone home. But the ‘no. 1 boat’ were continuous cruisers and didn’t have a home to go too. So, what would be fair in the circumstances?

Opinions differed!

By the time Ernest had finished brushing his teeth and had rushed up to the lock to see what was what, there was a full slanging match going on between various skippers and the skipper of the ‘no. 1 boat’. I’m sad to say that the skipper of the boat with the ‘Boaters Christians Fellowship’ sticker (which happened to be the boat that we discovered had manoeuvred itself into pole position by the lock last night) did not cover himself with glory and did nothing to commend the Christian faith to others. To call the man on the ‘no. 1 boat’ selfish and a liar, but then to say, ‘but I forgive you’ – well, I wonder, what sort of God does that ‘Christian’ believe in? Presumably a God who is constantly angry with us, but nevertheless says ‘I forgive you’ in a way that makes none of us feel or behave any better.

I only heard all this second hand from Ernest. I’m pleased to say that Ernest was brave enough to call various people out on their unreasonable and unpleasant behaviour and language.

Meanwhile, the really Good News was that the CRT lock keeper had appeared, and the lock was unlocked. The bad news was that we were initially told only perhaps 6 boats would go through. More would be allowed through at the end of the afternoon. Since by this time we were 13th in the queue (because of the various bits of queue jumping), we were beginning to resign ourselves to being delayed until tomorrow.

But, alleluia – an amazing team of windlass winders and gate pushers sprang into action. Whether CRT wanted it or not, it was taking less than five minutes to get each  boat through the lock. I’d already started pulling our boat forwards, as movement ahead began – actually, the lovely man on the boat in front, Mick I think his name was, tied my front rope to his stern, and pulled us both slowly along. But then we needed to pass a holiday hire boat that was empty and still moored and not moving. I ran to get Ernest – he had loned his windlass to a holiday hire company man who was working the bottom gates with extreme energy (presumably hoping to get his two boats, nearly at the end of the queue, through if at all possible) – Ernest ran back to our boat, threw me another windlass, and I ran back to the lock to start helping too. Unbelievably, it looked as if we would go through. The lock keeper was in radio contact with his boss down at the stoppage site, and I was sure that the message would soon come ‘no more boats’ – but Mick went through, and then it was us – no stopping us now.

Twenty minutes later (8.50 a.m.) we came to the stoppage site – and followed instructions, ie go slowly, cut our engine when we came to the bit where they’d put tarpaulin across the collapsed bank and down into the canal (to protect it from further collapse) and let the flow carry us through – a couple of boat lengths – then we were away again.

We later learned that CRT had, wisely in my view, bowed under the pressure and let the whole queue through.

Now if only they had said at the beginning that they would do that, it would have avoided a lot of aggro and unpleasantness, and maybe fewer people would be having guilty feelings tonight (I hope some of them are feeling guilty).

Drama over, the rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Slow progress to begin with, as there were several lift bridges and locks to deal with, and when you’ve got a whole convoy of boats close behind each other, it’s bound to be slow. But gradually, one by one, boats dropped out of the convoy, including the Boaters Christian Fellowship boat which only went about half a mile beyond the stoppage until it came to a winding hole, where it turned round and WENT BACK UP THROUGH THE STOPPAGE AND THROUGH THE LOCK! So why oh why hadn’t it done what other boats did when the canal was first closed, which was to accept help from CRT in reversing back through the Grindley Locks where it could then have turned round and gone on its merry way up the Llangollen.

Oh well…

We cruised on, taking lunch and drinks on the move. The heavy clouds that had threatened rain cleared away, and the sun reappeared. It grew hot and humid. We pressed on, down the Hurleston Locks and, hooray, we had escaped the Llangollen (or the Golli as the in crowd call it). Smooth passage past Nantwich (where more escapees we’re making good use of the sanitary facilities) and on towards Audlem. Began to encounter holiday hire boats again, some more confident and proficient than others. Onwards and upwards for us, past the charming community garden/allotment at Audlem bottom lock, pausing briefly at Audlem sanitary station and water point, which is right by the Shroppie Fly pub, where too many people were enjoying their cool pints of beer

and finally to our overnight mooring above Audlem Lock 12. Refreshing showers for both of us, clean clothes, and Charlie Bingham pies for dinner.

16 Locks, 3 lift bridges and 16 miles in 9.6 engine hours.

PS For an alternative perspective on the day’s events, and a view of Babushka’s and Ernest’s rear end, please see another boater’s blog: http://vivatek.co.uk

 

 

Boat poles at dawn

After another quiet and relaxing day (more sudoku, a bit of deck scrubbing, a long walk back along the towpath to a different, cheaper, pub for lunch, a long walk back to the boat, a lovely lengthy afternoon sleep, and best of all – BCP evensong at St Michael’s Marbury), towards evening, tensions among the queueing boaters began to rise. We returned from church to find that one boat had moved right up to the lock gates, effectively defining themselves as now no. 1 in the queue. This had annoyed another boater, who then decided to bring his boat forward and make himself no.2 by mooring alongside one of the holiday hire boats (empty of course – the holidaymakers have long ago gone home – but of course the hire company would like to have their boat back ASAP). This now left quite a gap before the next boats, and the risk that some of the boats at the end of the queue (nos. 19-21) would decide to queue jump and fill the gap. We alerted the next few boats, and they all decided they would move forward, and we did too, so we are now a couple of hundred yards nearer the lock, but are still about no. 11 in the queue. There are rumours that 1 or more boats further back in the queue are claiming that CRT have told them they can go through first, whatever.

I predict chaos and further raised tempers in the morning. All CRT have said is that passage through the damaged section will be allowed between 8 and 9, and between 4 and 5. But boats have to go down the lock first. Will they open the lock BEFORE 8? We are doubtful (being no. 11) that we will get through the lock in the morning. There’s a chance we’ll get through in the afternoon. But we may even have to wait until Tuesday…

Everyone is saying is that the sensible thing would have been for CRT to have sent its workers and volunteers TODAY, and cleared the whole backlog of waiting boats through the lock and through the damaged section, so that tomorrow the contractors could have continued the repairs without interruption. But CRT seems to have different ideas.

Please pray for peace and common sense and courtesy and kindness at Marbury Lock tomorrow.

 

Moving On

 

Babushka is on the move again, metaphorically speaking, ie we are not actually moving at the moment.

We received a message on Thursday from one of the boaters we’d met at Grindley Locks, saying that CRT (Canal and River Trust) would be permitting boats to pass through the damaged section of the canal each day for an hour early morning and late afternoon, starting on Monday 24 June. Thus allowing the contractors to continue with repairs during the day. This was confirmed by the website. Aware that many boats would be seeking a passage, we knew we had to head up there as quickly as possible to get in the queue.

An early start on Friday, having packed the minimum needed for what we hope will only be a week (we must be back at Whiteway by next Sunday, 30 June, as the following day the fitters arrive to begin work on new doors and windows, not to mention totally redoing the fascias and gutters, but that’s another story…).

Called off at Tesco for fresh food, and drove up to Grindley – just over two hours. I left Ernest there and drove the car back to the marina at Droitwich, then walked in to the station to catch the train. It was a very brisk walk, brisker than my usual pace, as I needed to collect my prepaid ticket from the machine and then catch the 14.23 to Hereford. I didn’t have to resort to running, thankfully (I’m not sure I can in fact run these days).

The train was on time and there were plenty of seats. A very pleasant journey through Worcester, Malvern and Ledbury to Hereford – all the places we’d visited so often when we were house hunting last year. At Hereford there was time to buy a late lunch and a much needed coffee – I’d had no caffeine since the early morning cup of tea before leaving home! The coffee and the sandwich raised my spirits. And I could stop panicking now – I had managed to drive to Droitwich and I hadn’t missed my train.

The platform at Hereford station was full of young people – students, who looked as if they’d just come from doing A levels. I guess if you live in Leominster or Ludlow, you travel into Hereford for sixth form/college. The carriage was quite lively, until they gradually disembarked at the various stops. I shared a table with two handsome young lads who spent their time practising their German and Spanish – impeccable accents. They should do well.

I was reading Good Omens, a book that’s been on our bookshelves for many years- a well thumbed copy that’s been read by everyone in the family except me. I’m reading it now partly because a young friend has recently written and posted an excellent ‘fan fiction’ short story centred on the characters of Crowley and Aziraphale and I wanted to familiarise myself with the ‘back story’, and partly because I’d heard that a group of right wing Christians in America have petitioned Netflix not to broadcast the recent TV version of Good Omens, and I wanted to understand what all the fuss is about. The beautiful irony of this is of course that the TV version is produced by Amazon Prime, not Netflix…

Anyway, I am thoroughly enjoying the book, as I knew I would, being a long-term Pratchett fan. I don’t know why the American Christians are so worried by it. The book is full of good theology: theodicy, eschatology, soteriology, ecclesiology – and probably many more ologies once I get further into it.

I loved this sentence, with reference to the ‘Arrangement’ between the demon and the angel: ‘It meant that Crowley had been allowed to develop Manchester, while Aziraphale had a free hand in the whole of Shropshire.’ I read this as my train trundled on gently through the idyllic Shropshire countryside (now much drier than a week or so ago).

I didn’t even have time for a nap, before the train pulled into Whitchurch station (Whitchurch, Shropshire, not Hampshire or Devon or the many other counties that have their own Whitchurch). I was glad that we’d paid a brief visit to the town the previous week, as that meant I had a vague idea of the geography, enough to help me find my way into the town centre. I’d just missed the bus (the last one of the day) that would have dropped me off at Grindley Brook, so another long walk followed. At least the little man in my step counter would be waving his hands cheerily (10,000+ steps).

And how thrilled I was to see Ernest walking towards me on the towpath, about 10 minutes from the end: (1) he could carry my rucksack for the final stretch and (2) he’d thoughtfully brought along the watermate key so that we could both make good use of the ‘facilities’ at the lockside services.

While I’d been driving, walking and taking the train, he had taken the boat single-handedly down the 6 Grindley Locks (3 in the staircase, where the lock keeper basically does the work, followed by the three single locks – where he had some help from the crew of a boat that followed him down). This only took him an hour, so he was able to spend the rest of the day relaxing. We moored last night just below the locks, a very quiet spot.

We both woke early on Saturday morning, anxious to press on and secure our place in the queue at Marbury. Last chance to use the ‘facilities’ at Grindley. Ernest popped to the shop and bought a Guardian and an i. What a treat! We left the mooring at 8.30 a.m. and cruised very slowly (no point at all in going fast) down through three more locks, and joined the queue of boats waiting at Marbury, where the lock has a big sign on it saying ‘CANAL CLOSED’ and beyond it the towpath is also closed with a fence and another big sign. We are number 11 in the queue. No one really knows what will happen on Monday morning: will we all go through the lock in time to be able to make our way through the damaged section? Might CRT open the lock early, or even tomorrow afternoon, to allow some boats to go through and moor below the lock? How many more boats will appear? There are already half a dozen boats behind us, including one that has apparently been told it is to go through before anyone else, as it’s been waiting here since the canal closed. How will everyone else react if that happens?

We’ve spent the day in an exceedingly relaxed manner. I can’t remember the last time we had a day where we did so little. We have been chatting to the other boat crews, have greeted many dogs, have walked up to the village and visited the church (beautiful and interesting), and also the pub (good beer and excellent fish finger bap with chips). We’ve read the paper. I have read the whole of the Guardian, and have even completed a killer sudoku- my first ever success! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, we have another quiet, waiting day tomorrow, we might even go to the pub again. Chicken something for dinner – I think I’ll call it chicken tagine, cobbled together from whatever I could find in the fridge, the cupboard, and the spices and herbs collection.

Yesterday: 6 Locks and half a mile in one hour. Today: 3 Locks and 3.5 miles in just under 2 hours.

No Through Road

Our journey has come to a sudden and dramatic halt. The extreme weather (heavy rainfall) of the last week has caused part of the canal bank near Wrenbury to collapse. The canal is closed, and we are stuck above Grindley Brook Locks. Repair work will commence on Monday, but we won’t know until next Friday, 21 June, whether they will then be able to allow traffic through, or whether the stoppage will continue for two or three weeks or longer.

We’ve decided that Ernest will go by train tomorrow to Droitwich to collect the car and come back here to pick me and the luggage up, including food of course. We’ll leave the boat here for a week and then review the situation.

Best case scenario is that the canal will reopen next Friday and we can then bring the boat back to Droitwich – we’ll just about manage it in a week with long days and no problems. We have to be back home by 30 June as we’re having some new doors fitted on the house, work starting 1 July. Worst case scenario is that reopening will be delayed several weeks, and because of our complicated summer, we’ll have to find somewhere to leave the boat, preferably with electric hook up to keep the batteries charged up, until September, and do the return journey then.

Life is so unpredictable!

At least I can see how the garden is getting on…

Just for the record, 4 lift bridges and 9.5 miles today in 4 engine hours.

 

What we need is a good leader

I was aware of the tendency or temptation to be grumpy today. Maybe it was the weather, the unrelenting rain. Apparently there has been 155mm of rain (2+ times the average for the whole month of June) in Shropshire over the last couple of days, and I believe most of it has fallen along the short stretch of canal between Ellesmere and Rhoswiel. It’s time for a bit of co-operation here, and if we all got together and pushed really hard, I’m sure we could manoeuvre the Gulf Stream back into its proper place, thus enabling the return of some seasonal high pressure.

The two tee-shirts I washed (in the shower) a couple of days ago are still wet, despite being hung in various places – in the bathroom, in the front end, over a radiator – in an attempt to get them to dry.

So this morning, on went the waterproof trousers and the new waterproof jacket, and we headed back down the canal, speeded up by the flow. Apart from some slow stretches past crowded moored boats near Chirk, we made good progress, until we arrived at the two New Marton Locks. The first of the Locks is just below a bridge, where there is also a water point. The boat in front of us (that had been going rather slowly anyway) suddenly went into reverse, swung sideways across the canal, someone grabbed the pole and started pushing the boat away from the bank, ropes were thrown, and it was hauled into the towpath side to moor. ‘There’s a queue for the lock,’ shouted the crew, ‘we must wait!’ There did seem to be a lot of boats ahead of us, between us and the bridge, and it was not at all clear how many were queueing for the lock and how many were moored up at the water point. Ernest steered us over to the towpath and I jumped off, with a windlass, saying ‘I’ll just go and see if I can speed things up a bit.’

When I was a student at university, during finals weeks, several of us used to cheer ourselves up by doing dramatised readings of Winnie the Pooh stories. Life was simple and innocent in those days. I was always given the role of Rabbit, as my friends said I was most like that character, ie bossy, quick to organise others etc. I’ve never felt that was an entirely accurate description of my personality, but I have to admit there are times when my inner Rabbit springs forth, released from constraint. And this morning at the New Marton Locks was one of those times. Sometimes, someone has to take charge.

What I found on arrival at the top lock was a boat in the lock coming up and a boat waiting to go down. The lock appeared to be full, but the top gate hadn’t been opened. The skipper on the boat going down said there seemed to be a problem with the bottom gates, they were leaking so much that the top gate couldn’t be opened. They’d checked the bottom paddles etc… Several people seemed to be milling around looking at the water levels, but no one was actually DOING anything.

There was one tall, thin man leaning rather feebly against the top gate. ‘It just won’t open,’ he said, ‘even though it looks full.’ ‘Let’s give it another try,’ I said, and leaned with all my weight against the gate, and lo and behold it ‘popped’ and with me pushing and him pulling it opened. So that boat came out. Good, I thought, now we can get things moving. Little did I know…

The boat waiting next to go down was, I admit, a long boat, 67 feet apparently, so it did have to be careful in the locks. But did it have to go quite so slowly? I rather lost the will to live as it inched its way into the lock, literally inch by inch. Eventually I was able to help the skipper’s mate close the top gate (no one else from all the other waiting boats appeared to assist us) and we went to the bottom gates. ‘You will open your paddle slowly, won’t you?’ She said. ‘Just a bit at a time. Don’t open it more than halfway.’ I slowly opened my paddle halfway, and watched the water trickle out. About five minutes later, she began, slowly, to open her paddle. Probably ten minutes later, the lock was empty, we opened the gates, and off they went, oh so slowly. By then, there was a boat waiting to come up, so I remained standing at the bottom gates while that boat came in. Another woman appeared, saying ‘I’ve just come to see what’s going on, but I didn’t bring my windlass, so I won’t be much help.’ ‘Just stay there,’ I said, ‘and close that gate when this boat is in.’ I think possibly at that point, the crew from the up boat appeared, with windlass thankfully, and together we closed the bottom gates and filled the lock. The woman without a windlass spent the next five minutes on her mobile phone to her own crew, trying to get through to them and tell them to come down with a windlass and help. They never did, and she soon disappeared. We got the up boat up, and I managed to persuade some of the people still milling around that we would get the top gate open much more quickly if they also helped. Then the next down boat came in. It wasn’t entirely clear who was the crew of this boat – it turned out the crew of the boat behind was trying to help them, as this was the very first lock, EVER, that they had been through. We had to explain, from the very beginning, in the simplest of terms, about gates, paddles, windlasses, water levels. By now there was quite a crowd at the lock (the queue above and below the lock was getting longer), but I was beginning to get them into some sort of order: ‘now, you open that paddle, you stay over there and open that gate when I tell you to, now you – you can either get back on your boat now, or you could walk to the next lock, which is only round the corner.’ ‘You mean there’s another lock!’ Someone at some point kindly said I could get on the boat going down, but I pointed out it wasn’t my boat, my boat was about sixth in the queue…

This all went on for some time. Ernest, meanwhile, was having his own problems with the ‘queue’, complicated by those who were also trying to take on water – while not losing their place in the queue – and by further boats coming down and trying to jump to the front of the queue.

The boat immediately in front of him turned out to be crewed by six Swedish people, also complete novices as far as locks go. Apparently they have many canals in Sweden, but no narrowboats, only wide barges and big boats. But they had seen ‘Timothy and Prunella’ on the TV and thought narrowboating looked fun. They were a bit disappointed with the weather and had had to buy extra clothing in Llangollen, but were enjoying the Canal. (Obviously, most of them spoke excellent English. I said I was sure I could understand them when they spoke Swedish to each other, as I’ve watched many episodes of Wallender, but they said they were speaking in dialect, so no I wouldn’t be able to understand them.) Just at that point, the next boat coming up turned out to be crewed by a couple from the Netherlands, so we had quite an international gathering at the lock. Fortunately the Dutch couple had been coming over for years (15 years) to hire narrowboats, so they did know what they were doing. Mrs Dutchperson made a good smooth entry steering her boat into the lock.

Finally, it was the turn of Babushka, and we were through the lock, and could move onto the next lock, where of course there was a queue of 3-4 boats, and we went through the whole process again, only slightly more quickly, as at least some of the crew had by now grasped the basic principles.

It took us two hours to get through these two locks. Coffee time had come and gone without coffee so no wonder I was a bit grumpy.

We stopped soon after for lunch, then did three more uneventful and lock-free hours in the afternoon, mostly in fine drizzle. As we moored, the clouds cleared, and something called the sun appeared. Our mood began to lift.
Nutty lemongrass chicken for dinner, accompanied by a refreshing Hungarian Pinot Grigio.
2 locks and 17 miles in 7.3 engine hours.

Photo to follow when we have a better internet connection (we are moored in the middle of nowhere).

Don’t Look Down

 

Most of our clothes, coats and shoes had dried sufficiently overnight to be of use again this morning. It was still raining, but less heavily than yesterday. You could almost dismiss it as a drizzle. The biggest drops were from the trees above. Good, we need some respite. The cratch cover has definitely been overloaded and ceased to be waterproof. Will it recover, or is it done for? The ‘front end’ is decidedly damp, and mucky from muddy footprints. Not currently a place for sitting comfortably and watching the countryside slide slowly by.

I still harbour this fantasy, this dream: of relaxing in one of our camping chairs, on the back deck or on the bank, in the warm sunshine, with a cold G&T and a book…

Not today.

The problem with this unseasonal rain is the amount of clothing you have to wear in order to stay warm and dry. It makes going to the loo a real faff, what with the waterproof overtrousers and then the ‘under’ trousers, plus five layers up top: tee-shirt, shirt, cardigan, fleece, nolongerwaterproof coat…

Onwards and upwards. I have realised my foolishness yesterday in supposing that because there is a strong flow, we must be climbing. Of course the canal bed is flat, horizontal, lacking incline, from Llangollen to the locks at New Marton. It just FEELS as if we are pushing uphill.

Today we pressed on in the early rain/drizzle, past all the moored boats along Chirk Bank, along the Chirk Aqueduct – dramatic in its own right and not simply a pale shadow of Pontcysyllte – then through the Chirk Tunnel (459 yards); fortunately we were able to go straight into the tunnel and were more than halfway along before a boat appeared at the other end and it was they who had to stop and reverse and wait to let us through. A little further and we began to be aware of our height above the valley, and to appreciate the work of the navvies 200+ years ago, shifting soil and rocks to create the embankment and the canal bed. A sharp left-hand bed, where the railway that has accompanied the canal for some miles suddenly sweeps off to the north, but the canal continues past Froncysyllte with attractive cottages and gardens up on the left bank, then a lift bridge and another sharp bend, then all at once there it is, The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Telford’s amazing piece of civil engineering. Truly breathtaking (I agree with the Nicholson’s).

No boat coming the other way, so we could go straight on. I quickly leapt off the boat onto the towpath with my iPad, ready to take photos. I took loads of pictures: running ahead to be able to get a shot of the boat coming towards me, then a shot of the sewage farm below, then back on to the boat to get some views along the unprotected non-towpath side, where there’s just 12” of metal above the water level, then some views down to the River Dee below, its brown waters raging and foaming with all the rain. Ernest concentrated on steering, though really the boat was going nowhere except straight on, occasionally cautioning me to be careful when leaning over the offside.

It was only later when I really THOUGHT about it and realised I could indeed have overbalanced and toppled over the side and into the valley below, and that would have been the end of this blog, and everything…

But I didn’t.

Another sharp left-hand bend under a narrow bridge and into the final stretch towards Llangollen, which is winding, narrow and at times very shallow. I had noticed the warning in the guidebook that boats drawing more than 21 inches should not proceed beyond Trevor (that’s a place not a person). But I hadn’t said anything to Ernest. He’d looked up in our boat manual and discovered Babushka draws 24 inches, but had decided not to say anything to me, because he knew I would only worry and never stop talking about it (‘nagging’ is the word he carefully avoided). He only mentioned it later over lunch. Well, we got up to Llangollen anyway, though at times it did feel as if we were scraping along the bottom. More worrying was negotiating the narrow stretches past boats coming the other way. There are a couple of places where it’s recommended that one member of the crew walks ahead along the towpath to stop oncoming boats coming through, and this is what we did.

And I wouldn’t have missed this bit of Canal for the world: the Welsh hills rising on both sides, emerging from the rain and mist, with water pouring off them in new waterfalls; the steep valleys, tree covered, dotted with half-hidden cottages; birdsong again, so welcome after yesterday’s silence when the birds seemed as miserable as the cattle and sodden sheep; everywhere green and growing.

Llangollen itself was less busy than we expected, and we easily found a mooring in the basin at the far end. If it had been warm and sunny, we might have decided to stay for the night and spend the afternoon walking up to the Horseshoe Falls, which is the source of the canal. But instead we headed down into the town, across the bridge (stopping to gaze at the muddy roaring waters of the flooded Dee) and found a cafe for lunch, then an outdoor shop where I was able to buy a new waterproof jacket, half price in the sale (I expect there’s always a ‘sale’ in the outdoor shops here, just as there is in Keswick). And on the way back to the boat we bought two Welsh Oggies (pasties to the Cornish), so that’s tomorrow’s lunch sorted.

It didn’t rain after lunch so I haven’t worn the new coat yet. But at least I know it’s there.

Going with the flow, our return journey to Pontcysyllte was slightly quicker and without incident. We followed another boat on to the Aqueduct and this time I steered while Ernest ran ahead taking more photos. And I made sure I DIDN’T LOOK DOWN. I did once and my legs began to wobble, so after that I just kept looking straight ahead.

Thank you Thomas Telford, I believe and trust in you and your wonderful works.

Moored up for the night just beyond Froncysyllte. Borlotti Bean Goulash and cheese dumplings for dinner.

2 lift bridges (actually, the same bridge twice) and 14 miles in 6.2 engine hours.