Westward Ho!

Westward Ho

At long last the weather has picked up a bit and we have had a few days of rain-free cruising. What a difference. I even had my jacket off yesterday and was cruising with only three layers on, so summer is definitely here at last.

Last weekend we had our first overnight guests stay. An old school pal of mine, Vic and his first mate Liz, live a few miles from the canal, and were keen to be our guinea pigs for the weekend. I am not sure who enjoyed the experience more, them or us. We met them in Middlewich and trundled down that part of the Shropshire Union before joining the main line and turning right on the Llangollen. Having two pairs of extra hands meant we made good progress, though this is not an area that is as heavily locked as that from Kidsgrove to Wheelock  - “Heartbreak Hill” – the 26 locks that we did on Thursday and Friday. Pat slept well on those nights.

Traffic jam at the Swanley flight on the Llangollen

Anyway we completed nearly 20 miles over the weekend, at a fairly leisurely pace. I knew the Llangollen would be busy, but on Sunday morning we experienced our first traffic jam when we got in line behind four boats all waiting to go up the Swanley flight. My pal Jan from narrowboat Jandai told me to watch out for the bywash on entering the locks on the Llangollen and she was not joking. It took me three locks to get the hang of it, and a couple of bumps, but I’m cool with it now. Not much phases me now. I am feeling a lot more confident with my boat handling in general, which is just as well as I am finding this is a very busy waterway.

The Cat's Whiskers first overnight guests, Vic & Liz

We moored up Sunday lunchtime in bright Shropshire sunshine in Wrenbury and had lunch in “The Dusty Miller” -  another Jan recommendation, that a pub  that Vic and Liz also knew well, and they treated us to a very substantial roast. They then packed up their stuff and walked down to the railway station for a train and bus ride home, but we will see them again on the way back, I am sure. Vic is now talking about getting a small boat, so it looks like he has got the bug as well.  Wrenbury is not much more than a village, and it is the first place we have found ourselves with no phone signal , no internet signal and no TV signal.

Pat stops the rush-hour traffic at Wrenbury. A bike, a tractor and two dogs

The day after we crept further towards the Welsh Border on to Whitchurch in Shropshire where we are having two days off from cruising to enjoy the sunshine and take it easy for a bit. Huge queues on the staircase flight at Grindley (three hours hanging around) but so what – we have nothing else to do. We are currently moored in a little cut that originally went into Whitchurch, but which now ends a mile from the town centre. Whitchurch is an attractive little town, with a lot of good pubs. Still having a few problems with our washing machine so doing our towels and bedlinen at local launderettes as we move around so this afternoon in between polishing the boat, we visited said establishment and also Tesco.

Pat's getting the hang of the tiller

Going to have another day here tomorrow and set off for Ellesmere on Thursday. Want to try to get to Llangollen  by Sunday. Surprisingly we are informed that it’s quiet there over weekends. And next Tuesday the Olympic flame comes that way and is going over the Ponteysylite Aquaduct the wonder of the Waterways, hand-hauled on a heritage boat, so we might hang around to watch it go over,  before we head back and to Chester.

Poodling Through The Potteries

Hello again dear friends. My weekly blog finds us now deep in Staffordshire and we now are heading North-west after travelling due west for most of last week.

The weather has been cold, depressing, wet and windy, with very short windows of sun, though last weekend wasn’t too bad. I don’t mind the cold and wet (I spent long enough experiencing those sort of conditions on a motorbike for years) but the wind is a different matter altogether. We were literally slammed across the cut and on to the opposite bank last Friday when we hit a freak hailstorm near Stone and there was nothing much I could do about it. I guess anything 60ft long that meets a gust sideways on is going to move on its own accord, even if it weighs four tons.

We are now zooming along at an average of 2mph and travelled some 65 miles since we left Trent Lock just over a week ago. I think if we can do around 30-50 miles a week, that will give us a couple of rest days in the week and we will be in Llangollen in around two weeks, at about the same time as the bank holiday which is our aim. We need to be fairly near a railway station over that weekend as we want to spend a day at Crick in Northants at the annual boat show on the holiday Tuesday, so I guess we will have to get a cab to Ruabon or Wrexham.  Then we head south and will take a leisurely cruise south  to the Thames where we hope to be in mid-August.

We arranged to meet an old CAMRA buddy and his wife in Stoke on Sunday where we were planning to moor. Paul and Carolyn are big Stoke City fans and we passed the Britannia Stadium as the fans were coming out at 4.45pm at the last game of this season, but finding a mooring in the city was impossible and a lot of the towpath was, quite frankly, very uninviting, so we pushed on to Festival Park to the north of the city, and had a quiet pastoral mooring there, close to the marina and the essentials, such as B&Q and Halfords! Had a good drink with them both that evening. Good to catch up after a long time.

Earlier in the day, we popped into the Wedgwood Visitor Centre, which is minutes from the canal to the south of the city. Pat was keen to visit as she has three generations of her family who worked at Wedgwood in the late 18th and early nineteenth century. It’s a good tour and I am glad we decided to do it. Paul told us though, that Wedgwood has financial problems with their pension fund so watch this space.

Pat and Josiah Wedgwood. "Hey Jo, know any of my relations?"

Our meanderings also took us through Rugeley, which Pat insists shouldn’t be pronounced with an “oo” in it, as there is no “ou”. She was further non-plussed when she asked for some butter in a grocers and was offered “batter”. Should have asked for “boooter”. We live and learn.

The boat is behaving itself and I have been busy putting additional war wounds on her, mainly, I am glad to say in and around the water line which I am not too bothered about. The locks are quite narrow on this stretch and some of the approaches are at oblique angles, so a few scrapes are to be expected. We had a day in Stone on Saturday. It has always been one of my favourite canal towns and, for a change, we had a warm, sunny day there. After the previous day’s activities, Pat wanted a rest and we took the opportunity of giving the boat its first proper clean outside. I waxed one side and will do the other when we are moored the other way round. It was also a chance to return to The Swan. What a great pub this is, and I could have stayed all evening. Great beers in excellent condition and a very convivial atmosphere.

Pat fills up in Stone

As we left Stone, and were passing the old “Joules” brewery building, I started looking out for a local boatbuilder I had heard of. Evidently this gentleman is masquerading as my stunt double and goes by the name “Roger Fuller”. Damn cheek. As we passed his place I whipped my camera out to find the batteries had gone flat but the picture here is of the boat moored there, with said gentlemen looking suitably snug. If you are reading this Roger, hello.

What a change. A sunny morning chugging through Stone

Roger Fuller, Boatbuilder (No Relation)

I finally got Pat on the tiller at the weekend and she steered the boat very well for a mile or so. I would not be at all surprised if, after a while, she became very good at it, then we can share the locking duties.

This morning we experienced the Harecastle Tunnel, which took us around 40 minutes to get through. I think its a mile and a quarter long. I’ve been through a number of tunnels as a passenger, but never steered through a long tunnel such as Harecastle so I was a little nervous and all was well, and we are now moored in Kidsgrove. It is literally lashing it down outside and we have had more hail today to contend with. But we are cosy. Pat has lit the stove so it’s nice and warm. Tonight we are trying out a Balti house, that everyone raves about in these parts called Rozeys. Cheap as chips and bring your own alcohol, but evidently the food is superb. We are not great Indian food lovers but it seems rude not to give it a go.

The southern entrance to Harecastle Tunnel. Nobody here but us, though a boat had just gone in.

One of the best things I did was to bring my fold-up Brompton bike with us. It has been invaluable both to get essentials from the supermarkets, my daily paper and to relieve pressure on my left foot, which is still playing me up. Anyway, I am seeing a Physio on Thursday, here  in Kidsgrove. Then we have to pleasures of “Heartbreak Hill”, a succession of locks as we descend towards Middlewitch and Nantwich, where we hope to meet up with old pal Vic for a few days. The forecast for the next few days is rain, rain and more rain, interspersed with... more rain! Want to see my webbed feet?

Toodaloo

Away......At Last!

It’s taken us three weeks of waiting, but we are now deeply cocooned within the canal system and enjoying every minute of it. The boat is behaving itself, apart from a little leak under the kitchen sink, that I will look at tomorroww, and we have make fairly good progress. We are currently moored in Alrewas, pronounced “Olrewus” in Staffs. I think we have travelled around 25 miles. See picture of our mooring. And I can report that the sun is shining, the birds are singing and I have the side doors wide open. Earlier though it was quite windy and I a few issues with the wind catching the boat sideways on, but a good day’s cruising up from Burton.

Our mooring at Alrewas, TCW is on the right

The First Mate in action

We spend much of Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday by  Horniglow Basin in Burton-On-Trent. My CAMRA buddies will not be surprised to learn that I insisted on stopping there. Burton in the home of British brewing and the Bass Museum, which closed when it was taken over a dozen years ago by Molson/Coors,  re-opened as the National Brewery Centre a couple of years back and was only a short walk away from our mooring. It was a good tour and well worth the £8 entry fee.

But before we left Trent Lock we had some more visitors. Susie and Rob were up from Southampton.  They are the customers after next, who are having their boat built by Kingfisher. I met them the weekend I moved onto TCW, and we had a very pleasant couple of hours this time, as they explained the cutting edge boat they are planning. Another prospective member of the Kingfisher Owners Club methinks.

While we were hanging around we booked our winter round-the-world tickets at TrailFinders in Nottingham. Our adventures take us first to Thailand at the beginning of November, and then on to Brisbane, Melbourne and then a week in Tasmania, before we move on to New Zealand and spend Christmas with our daughter Erica and her family. We have a number of pals and family scattered around Australia and NZ and it’s been 10 years since we saw them all. At the beginning of February we are meeting Pat’s sister Mo and her husband Garry in Maui in Hawaii for a week or so and then we are flying to Los Angles and driving across country through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, flying back mid March. Kingfisher are looking after TCW while we are away and I am pleased about that, even though it means a journey north from the Kennet and Avon where we will be in September.

Another reason to visit Burton was that I was hopeful of a private consultation with a Physio to look at my left foot. It’s been aching on and off for over 6 weeks now and my pal Geraldine in Finchley has recommended me a couple of practitioners on our route westwards that could give me some guidance as to its cause and treatment. Unfortunately the first time the local lady could see me was this Thursday, and we need to be pressing on a bit, so I have made another appointment with another physio who specialises in this sort of injury a few mile north of Stoke On Trent and I have made that for next Thursday, so we have plenty of time to get there.

Our neighbour at Burton was a white goat who sat on a little rocky platform and bleated at boats as they went past.

Our neighbour at Burton-On-Trent

We have booked a temporary mooring at a marina in Newbury in Berks for the first two weeks in September, so if you haven’t been able to join us by then, we would love to see you for a visit.

The importance of being patient

Not being the most patient of people, I have had to re-invent myself over the last week or so. We are moored back at Kingfisher Narrowboats, at Trent Lock, at the same point we were two weeks ago, going nowhere.

And by the looks of things, that is not going to change one iota, over the next few days. For in common with the rest of the country, it has not really stopped raining here for the last week and when we had a small respite yesterday, the river, which is about 50 metres from where we are moored, kept rising. The flood gates in either direction are both closed for navigation until further notice and the only water users benefiting from this situation are the kayakers who are shooting the weir, very spectacularly most evenings. I was told by one of the bystanders that the guy I was photographing was in a “Dagger Super Ego”, which seemed strangely suitable for the sort of stunts he was pulling.



The pound at Trent Lock. All the mooring rings are under sevderal inches of
water on the left of the picture. The river thunders along the other side of the bridge.



A "Dagger Super Ego" shoots the weir at Trent Lock

There was a small window of opportunity the Saturday before last, when it stopped for a few hours and word got round that the flood lock at Cranfleet would be opening for a limited time, so a small flotilla of mainly hire boats and us battled our way against a very fast flowing Trent back up to the junction with the Erewash and the Soar from Beeston where we had been moored for two days. I was very glad of all 43 of my horses under the flooring, and at times it seemed as though we were hardly moving, and we weren’t. Turning into the Erewash against the flow of the raging river was a bit hairy. I took it very wide and tried to get the current to line us up, before giving it everything she had to propel her in, and I got her into the pound no problem. Once in, there was nowhere to tie up to. All the rings in the pound were under water. And they still are.

Since then we have just been mooching about. While we were in Nottingham Jan painted our back doors and I am very pleased with them. See pic.



The back doors are now finished. Don't they look good?



Mick has done our 50-hour service and John has now hopefully sorted out a small leak we were having from the side doors. We now have as many useless TV channels as I will ever want to watch, now we have a booster fitted, and I purchased a digital signal finder from Argos in Long Eaton which gives a signal when the aerial is facing the strongest transmitter. I just love gadgets, and this one seems to work.

We caught a train into Lincoln on Wednesday and spent a day in the rain shopping. Never been there before and would like to go back sometime and see it in the sunshine.

Last Friday morning Fred and Lisa visited from Scotland. They take possession of the next bespoke Kingfisher build in September, and for a week or so we have been breasted up beside the shell. I always get the boat’s name spelt wrongly but I think it is Chyandour. It was really good to have a chat with them over a cuppa and to hear of their boating adventures and plans for the future.

Our boat has developed a bit of tilt to starboard and yesterday John extracted about 100 kilos of bricks from under our bed and put a few in the bow thrusters tubes to bring the nose down a bit. It feels a lot better now. He also put on the top box cover, almost the same shade of blue as the boat, which looks very smart, and where all our spare wood that was cluttering up the cratch now lives.

Very quickly a daily routine is emerging, based around the little fold-up Brompton bike I adore. Being now, our only form of transport, Pat sets off first by foot, and I follow 15 minutes later by bike and we meet at the Co-Op in New Sawley, about a mile or so up the tow path. There is a good bakery there, a newsagents, a launderette, fish and chip shop and a chemist. What more do you need? I carry back the heavy stuff and she brings back the lighter shopping.

So we are very comfortable here but are now keen to get going. All we need to do is get a mile down the river, through Sawley locks and then we will be in the relatively sheltered environment of the Trent & Mersey Canal, but at the moment that looks unlikely for a while yet, and as I write this more rain is lashing down.

Drought.... what drought?

Thursday 19 April 12.30pm

I was inevitable I guess. Just as soon as Pat and I decide we would set out together the weather would change and it hasn’t stopped raining since we left Trent Lock on our mini cruise to Nottingham and back two days ago. Not sure what is going on in other areas of the country, but here in Notts it is has been torrential, with just the odd half hour gap, before it starts again. The roof sounds like there are 1000 woodpeckers up there tapping away. But has it got us down? Has it .....!

We are nice and cosy in a great mooring in the centre of Nottingham, a city we have got to know pretty well over the last year. What more could we want, a John Lewis and Waitrose about a mile away, god knows how many decent pubs, selling decent beer, a Sainsbury superstore just 100 metres away, and a bus stop opposite. It’s a five-minute hop into the city centre and I have my bus pass warmed up and ready to use.

Directly opposite us is our neighbour, a female swan on her nest. She hasn’t moved since we got here yesterday lunchtime, and there is no sign of her mate... Hang on, I’m a liar, he has just turned up and they have swapped over egg sitting duties. The view from the side windows of the boat is rather like turning on “Spring Watch” as we observe mother nature up close and personal. Hang on. They are starting to re-line their nest. I'll get my camera.

Our neighbours across the cut

Talking about TV brings me to the only issue I am having with the boat, and that is getting any sort of decent TV reception. I knew it was going to be marginal, especially out in the sticks, but here we are in a city centre. I know where the nearest transmitter is (I have downloaded an app and a compass to my phone) and I have turned our 12ft high aerial to face it, re-tuned the telly and still nothing. Luckily I spent a good part of the winter copying and accessing a huge library of TV and films, so last night we had a bit of “Ello Ello”, followed by the first episode of “One Foot In The Grave” and then a bit of “Downton”, a series I never watched.  We can download via my “Mi Fi” dongle, so if there are odd TV programmes we want to watch, we can via  i player, though a couple of times it had to refresh. Quite frankly, though, there is such a load of rubbish on TV, I am really not missing it. It just frustrates me that I cannot get it to work.

That apart all is well. We have a leak via the side hatches, which will need to be resolved where the rain has found its way in, but that is it. I had some engine issues over the weekend, when our pals Penny and Bob joined us for a day, where we were belching out black smoke and there was little acceleration. Mick discovered it was due to a luggage-label that the engine manufacturers had attached to the block, that was flapping and had got stuck to the air filter. So that was cut off and now The Cat’s Whiskers purrs very nicely thank you. Jan, the sign writer also managed to put our licence numbers on before we set off.

Jan adds our license number on TCW

It’s the First Mates birthday today and we decided to pop out last night for a bite to eat at one of the excellent pubs on this stretch of the cut for a steak each. I had a beer called Sunburst. I think it brewed at Banks. It was superb.

I am not minding meandering down the canal system in the rain. I can crouch under a large golfing umbrella, but I do not like cruising on rivers much. The rain is OK, but the wind really blows you about, and while I am a lot more confident on the helm, it is a bugger to moor, when it is hitting you side on.

I have been a bit snappy with Pat at a couple of the locks we have negotiated. She is still finding her feet, and  doing OK. All the boaters I have met have adopted a sign language to communicate with, so we will start working on ours, but I guess in a week or two, we will not even think about what has to be done. By then we will have our own system that will just roll out as I moor.

Today the forecast is for more heavy showers. At the moment the plan is to stay here for another 24 hours and make a dash back to Trent Lock tomorrow morning. By then we should have done our 50 hours. Mick can do the service and checks and then, rain or shine, we will head west into the sunset.

Launches, lunches and Man Overboard

What a great day. The boat was officially launched – I got to advertise the fact live to millions of BBC listeners and my bestest pal John, managed to fall in the canal (and he was sober).

The sun shone and a steady trickle of friends and family arrived throughout the morning, ahead of our 1pm naming ceremony. Mick represented the boatyard and by mid-day, nearly everybody was assembled around the radio, ready for me to fall on my arse, live to millions of listeners on the Graham Norton Radio show. Graham was very gracious, but I didn’t let him lead the conversation and managed to get across all the things that I thought were important, apart from, saying what the boat’s name was, which Graham reminded me of at the end of the interview.

With that out of the way I then said a few choice words and we opened the vintage bottle of Moet that my sister Carol had brought with her, donated by Mark and Lucy down in Brighton. We cut the ribbon, everybody cheered, and we crossed over to the over side of the canal to The Steamboat for a very comprehensive lunch, but not before everybody was given a “Cat’s Whiskers” T-shirt.  

Pat cuts the ribbon while I struggle with the Champers. The Spitfire waits in reserve

With Mick, one half of the team who worked their magic on TCW

John and Lorraine were the last two to leave and as Pat had not been out under an engine on TCW, we thought we would go on a quick cruise up the Erewash.  I untied her and John pushed off the bow, but forgot to let go. It was like watching in slow motion as I realised he had gone past the point of no return. I gave the bow thrusters a blast, but it was too late and he went in. So, in the space of a week, both his dog and John have been in the cut. So watch out Lorraine. I just wish I’d had a camera handy.

He was shivering so we put him in the shower, I found him some clothes to wear, and we got on with it. Just a short cruise up to the first winding hole and back.

Two of our other friends are staying over in the area tonight and Bob and Penny are joining us in the morning and we hope to cruise down to Shardlow and back.

We have had TV reception all week but at the moment I am getting nothing at all, so I think we might have a connection problem somewhere in the co-axial. I’ll get Mick to take a look on Monday.

Toodaloo folks

Pat’s back... Hurray

After 10 days of a bachelor existence I thought I had the boat more or less sorted out. That was until Pat returned on Wednesday. After picking her up from Heathrow and doing some chores in and around Welwyn Garden City we got back to Trent Lock around 7.30pm that evening and she proceeded to rip the place apart, despite just getting off a 24-hour flight. That’s my gal!

Yesterday (Thursday) was much of the same and basically everything has moved somewhere else. I never realised we had so much storage space under our bed, so we have been able to utilise that for larger stuff, that I was struggling with. The result is more room and the boat feels more homely. I finally worked out how to turn the immersion on (Mick at the boatyard said he had told me twice how to do it) so we now have lashings of hot water. Despite some cold nights the central heating is off and will remain off. Our friends on Jandai, Kingfisher’s last bespoke build, told me that a 13kg gas bottle lasts them around 10 weeks. Mine lasted barely 7 days, so we have been discovering the joys of lighting and running our multi-fuel stove and feeding it copious amounts of wood (that I had been storing for a year) topped up with coal. We keep setting off our smoke alarm, but I guess that’s par for the course.

Eileen from "Free Spirit" and TCW share Long Eaton Lock

With just a day to go now until the big launch, when our friends and family come up we are taking her back into the dock this morning. The boys still have a few small jobs to finish off. John has some shelves to add, a shoe rack to put in one of the wardrobes and I need to touch up the scrapes I have had over the last two weeks. All the boaters using the dock at the moment have laughed at my paranoid behaviour in this department but once we have got this weekend out of the way, I will go with the flow, and not let them bother me so much.

Will blog again on Sunday with the launch pictures. Don’t forget to tune in to Radio 2 at midday on Saturday to hear Roger on Graham Norton’s Saturday show, live from Trent Lock.

Toodaloo