plans

Thinking ahead a bit - I plan to leave Tortoise at Heyford (handy for the train) in a few days, to head back to my other life (well, a bit of work, but also a wedding and a music festival, actually two, one pedal powered one), then I'll sort out a week off to do the Thames.

What I'd like to do, though, is go up to Lechlade first - idle speculation has always been that Tortoise (several names ago) may have lived up that way, let's see if she picks up any familiar smells... I'll need to work out time carefully, and also suss out mooring possibilities if I need to break up the Thames trip a little. The Nicholson guides are particularly lacking in mooring information, not only for how long on canals, but also where I need to pay on the Thames. If necessary I'll have to stump up for a week while I do some work (for a change), but it would be very useful to know in advance. Any suggestions/recommendations (even friendly marinas) welcome.

Once I've done the run to Brentford, she can sit there for a few days while the washing machine gets a good thrashing with cushion covers and the like, and then the run back to Iver. Hmm. The Hanwell locks and all that muck...

Possible dates, should anyone be interested; 15-21st Sept (work dependent) and possibly 27th-2nd Oct (ditto). Anyone would think I didn't want this trip to be over...

30th - Napton to Cropredy

An early start to get somewhere by a time it turns out is actually tomorrow, but such is life...

I did think an early start would at least give me a bit of piece & quiet on the napton flight, but I was a couple of locks behind a boat, and another close behind me... it's a feature of single handedness that the closer a boat is the slower I am, as I have to stop, tie up the boat, close the gates behind me as I leave the lock instead of doing it once in the next one - which of course I'd have been able to set whilst leaving the boat in the previous one, giving me a quick transfer... I shouldn't let the pressure of a boat waiting behind me get to me, but it does. My problem.

Otherwise, all the idiots with boats were out today, and mostly on the north section of the South Oxford. Not even hire boats, they were too busy trying to wind to go back to the Bridge pub (well, the Folly was shit, but I felt guilty saying that whilst using their wifi they'd kindly mentioned). I'm wary of turn each post into a rant about other boaters, but I have to occasionally. All those bendy bits of canal mean lots of blind bridges - some of us drop speed and sound our horn, and some of us, apparently charge through at full speed on the wrong side of the canal, and look surprised to see a little red boat desparately trying to reverse to avoid a collision. In fact one such incident happened just north of Stoke a while back on a blind bridge - as they passed me after exactly that happening, the woman standing in the cratch said accusingly 'you didn't sound your horn early enough'. I apologised that I hadn't heard theirs at all - 'well we didn't sound it'. Ah. It's like roads - the rules of the road, and indeed canal, are rules of co-operation, to give predictable behaviour. Breaking them isn't 'sticking it to the man' in anyway, it';s just causing hassle for others, and inevitably yourself. One guy who passed me was at such a speed I rocked around on his wash, which was breaking against the soft canal sides in a way that would have got a cornish surfer's attention.

Other bizzare behaviour was a boat that tried to slalom between me and the boat in front, or perhaps it was a deliberate attempt to ram me. Favourite one today was whilst tootling past all the moored boats in bendy old Fenny Stratford, when another boat's prow appears beside me. I look around, to see a boat behind, or rather alongside. I ask him what he's doing' I'm passing you, you're too slow' he shouts. Ah, that would be too slow passing moored boats on a tight S bend, then? And passing another boat - without any indication, let alone permission, is perfectly acceptable behaviour at this point? Tempted to name & shame, Narrowmind World style, but life's too short. I'm sure people have complained about me under their breath at some point, probably for being too slow at locks...

Oh well. Now in Cropredy, having done the using mistake of going through the lock, hoping to find a mooring the other side... well, I did, actually, but only having gone past, winding, coming back to grab it, and then turning the boat by hand so it's pointing the right way...

Right. Will try to find a nice picture (or four, as it turns out) from today to cheer up this post...



A lovely boat spotted last night & this morning, proud new posession of the family - wooden top, lovely front room/cloths/conservatory type thing towards the front. I hope they really enjoy it.



Another Tortoise in Fenny Stratford marina, also spotted when I passed two years ago - I failed to photograph it at all last time, this is the best I got this one.



A poor photo of a lovely workshop/house (the latter built from an old workshop or boathouse?) at the top of the Claydon locks. Really appealing, good garden with it too.



Finally also from Claydon locks - a very sweet plea to show some respect, basically. Of course most boaters think they know better, but... step away from the computer, Simon, and go to the pub. NOW.

18 miles, 2½ flg and 18 locks

29th - Long Itchington to Napton

How did it get to the end of the month? Eeeek...

last night was lovely - tales by the fire, roast squirrel (no, I didn't try it), veg cooked over the fire, and a bit of music. I made my excuses at midnight, but others were up to 4...

In the morning again luck was on my side - was just heading out this morning when a boat came up the lock below me, so went up the flight with them, although I did feel I was working us both through at a couple of points. Those modernish side locks, built alongside old single ones, are entertaining - I tend to jump out with a rope & windlass on the way in & run up the steps, only to have to get the rope past the person waiting at the gate, even though I keep trying o suggest (without sounding ungrateful) that they could do the other side and I'll do this one...

At the top I moored and went back down the locks by bike to see Alison & gang again - after a bit everyone (4 adults and seven children) walked up to visit Tortoise, which was fun if chaotic - it turns out magnetic poetry may the best thing to happen to canal boats since, oh, the tiller. Or something. Eleanor turns out to be a natural trumpet player, player, too, and Alice lay back on the roof and grinned.

On the way up we spotted Whitefield, a ultra-modern boat as featured in a magazine a month or two back. Just as hideous as it looked in the magazine, to be honest, but each to their own. Five tellies, satnav and a joystick to steer the thing - and what happens when the fly by wire goes wrong and they call RCR...?

Then headed down to Napton, and back on to the Oxford, back in the land of narrow locks and winding canals... ;-) Did the Calcutt locks with Keith & Tim on 'Floss', who were convinced they'd seen me somewhere - we worked out where, they also have a home mooring at Iver. ;-) Didn't manage to hand over a card with the blog on, but I'll find them at Iver when I'm 'home'... ;-)

Radford to Long Itchington

A short hop today, but suitably event-filled...

Colum & Cathi came over to the boat last night, and indeed brought dinner, eaten out on the front deck as dusk fell over the A425. Actually, we were looking out the other way, but call it poetic licence.

Colum then came back out this morning for a quick trip & and a lock - and stayed for three. He's only moving house today, after all... ;-) With us for those locks, and then the rest, was Steve on Canal Mania - being 40' we were able to squueze in a hire boat too for most of them. At the top I was able to sort out an electrical problem on canal mania - a permanently o/c circuit breaker - so feel I earned the assistance through the locks, although I did lose Kate Boats the work.. That and a beer together afterwards beat the scounts losing my second-best (actually pretty grotty) windlass... ;-)

Pretty soon I was in Long Itchington, so moored up to locate Happyhome - no space to moor up close, although Dave & co on Eva next door invited me to moor alongside them. I was a little wary of being bounced off by errant boats on the way in & out of the locks, so stayed where I was. Anyway, off shortly for fire, food and good company for the evening. I'd say good music too, but I'm taking my mandolin... ;-)

27th - Hatton to Radford

I was in the first lock, ready to go down on my own at about 9am when another boat came along.

Not only another boat, but a boat containing the Battersea Scouts, who very efficiently worked us down all 23 locks (including the ones by the Cape of Good Hope). Excellent teamwork, it sounds as if they do a boat trip every year or so, and a complete lifesaver. I'll still have the Stockton locks and others tomorrow, but I struck gold today. I then moored up in an attempt to help with a local plumbing problem, but we did manage beer & chips in the Cape pub before doing so. ;-)

I also got to pull a dog out of the canal - a couple were shouting & panicking, he leaning into the water, she hanging on to his legs... I leant in, grabbed the dog by the scruff of his neck, and pulled him out. I was more worried the people were drunk and likely to fall in themselves, but I think they just lost it a bit...

A Sign on the flight; it's like one of those ones they personalise at Lands End:



A couple more stops - Kate Boats for diesel (back up to 90p/l, and the 43l needed took just about all the cash I had on me as they weren't taking cards, then more excitingly by Bridge 43 to visit the Action 21 recycling warehouse, a marvellous place every town should have. They're next door to the council tip, and basically give people the option of despositing reuseable stuff there instead. I found what I was looking for - a pair of smallish decent speakers for a fiver, and a few books and a bag to put it all in for a pound on top of that... they also do bikes, furniture, bathroom fittings - I'd recommend anyone local, or passing, so see what they have (and take anything relevnat to them).

Speakers were connected up to a smallish 12v amp I 'happened' to have (I did, honest), and decent quality music out on the back deck... I do need to keep an ear on the volume, but it does sound great, and the back end of Leamington Spa didn't really feel as if it offered peace & quiet anyway.

On the way out to moor up close enough for local friends to visit (hopefully having sorted their plumbing), I spotted a ghastly looking pub (the Fusilier) and a 60s row of shops... these are mostly responsible for me having a mental picture of Leamington Spa being some sort of bland new town, as that's all I saw when I cycled through, and didn't investigate further. The impression also came from the number of punk/thash bands that seemed to come from the town a few years ago...

'Sarni' thoughts

It occured to me to look up the reduced size/scale boat I saw passing through the IWA - Sarni - on the Jim Shead boat listing, taken from BW registrations, and there it is - 18' long, 4' beam, 8hp engine - but curiously of all, buolders are listed as being Adelaide Dock, I assume the one in Southall, now reverted back to a BW maintainance yard, was pricvately run. This gives her a little kinship with Tortoise, as the overplating done on her for Jim & Mary when they first bought her was the last job down at Adelaide Dock before they closed. I'm still intrigued though - a boat of 4' beam would be big enough to sleep in, but how stable would she be? Embarrassingly my post of a few days ago was at the top of a google search, but I did unearth this page - so generally used as a butty (boat towed by another). Interestingly the boat she was alongside - Random - isn't the one listed as on that page, but anything's possible.

Anyway, my obviously underused imagination wanders back to the idea of a pedal powered boat with accommodation - a self-propelled tent, basically. It would probably be a very long way from a scale canal boat (after all, someone once said canal boats have all the streamlining of a brick in the water) , but the scientist in me wonders how the pedal/prop drive would compare to oars on a canoe - the canoe of course would present a lot less motion resistance. It probably wouldn't take much to add an electric/solar drive as an alternative... other idle thoughts would be how it would stand up to sharing locks - or indeed the wash from speeding hire boats ;-) (or could it be made light enough to carry round)...

random further reading:

http://www.swallowboats.co.uk/content/view/94/104/
http://www.geocities.com/flotillian/boat_selection.html
http://www.nauticraft.com/
http://microship.com/
http://www.expedition360.com/reference/pedal_boat.htm
http://www.designwizardry.com/pedalboatrace/index2004.shtml

Time to put daft ideas on hold, but perhaps only until I work out my carbon footprint for this year's trip...

26th - Catherine de Barnes to Hatton

Did the few miles to Knowle in the morning, to collect various friends, most of two familes - Kristina, with daughters Megan & Hannah, and also Andrew (birthday boy), Elly, & offspring Florence & Ralph.



Child lifejackets were pressed into service, and of course the first bit of the journey was the Knowle flight - strange to see wide locks again, especially these with their strange paddle gear and wide pounds - presumably part of the attempted 1930s modernisation. After that everyone on board again for a mile or two for a fairly disorganised (on my part) picnic lunch on the bloat; some walked back to collect car for more birthday activities.



The rest of us continued on to the Navigation at Lapworth for a pint (ok, not the girls) at the Navigation. After the rest left on a train home, I continued on to the top of the Hatton flight - no more guests to rope in thsi time, this one's down to me... ;-)

25th - Gas St to Catherine de Barnes

Poor Brigid - more locks, this time downhill and close together. We crept our way around the back of central Birmingham, including of course around the back of Aston University. On the Snow Hill flight, there's a huge cavernous railway bridge, which of course meant getting the trumpet out - I do hope 11am on a bank holiday Monday wasn't too antisocial. A couple of faces appeared at windows in the building adjacent - which turned out to be flats - with a wave and upturned thumb, so I guess I got away with it. It sounded great, though, like playing in a huge great hall, I wish I could think of more to play than a bit of Purcell and the opening bit of 'Papa's got a brand new pigbag'.



After finally conquering the camp hill flight we went for a walk to find the old Almshouses where I lived for a year as a student -amazing grouped bedsits around a central courtyard by a roundabout at the top of the hill from Digbeth. Lovely to see them still there, as in used as residential places for youths; still in the spirit of Almhouses, really.



We then headed on down the leafy (and mucky - had to clear the prop twice today of stuff that really shouldn't have been in a canal in the first place) arm of the Grand Union that escapes out of Birmingham. Sadly dropped off Brigid at Olton station so she could get back to London and the 'w' thing, but such things are due even to me soon enough... ;-(

Anyway, have managed to catch up on the last days blog posts, although I'll be going back to add more pictures in future - if you saw the minimalist versions, there's more now...

24th Dudley to Birmingham Gas St

We breakfasted at the cafe by the Dudley Tunnel excursion boats, although we were very taken with the privately owned tunnel tug 'Sharpness' that was also moored there. We then spent a great few hours at the Black Country Museum in the morning, although afgter a couple of bad experiences we did avoid the costumed roleplayers. We did like the chainmaker, who after doing his formal speil for just us came over for a chat and turned out to be a moonlighting industrial history lecturer - excellent. Also excellent was the old tram - the fussing nimbies of Ealing who have objected wholesale to a tram route as they're worried they won't get their 4x4s past are missing out, although admittedly they wouldn't have got lovely old wooden framed ones, which of course are very boat-like... we also admired various old bits of ironmonghery around the site, boilers & suchlike - it's actually pretty moving, what was built with relatively little technology.

We then headed down to Gas St - a pathetic three locks, and lots of bumbling around under the M5, old canal bridges dwarfed:



We moored in Gas St basin itself, although there seemed to be plenty of other moorings along that stretch of canal, and also just before the junction down to Worcester. Being in the basin was of course in Homage to Cliff Richard in 'Take me High', although he did seem to rebuild a working boat into a bachelor pad with a mezzanine floor in a week (and invent fast food) in that film too. These things take longer, and I've yet to work out how to get the mezzanine floor in successfully.



Both of us were at university in Birmingham, I hadn't been back for a decade or so, so it was a pretty illuminating walk round that evening, working our way up to Aston University itself (some bits new, some bits decidedly old) and back down to Digbeth, both of us trying to find the old FoE building on Meriden St - we think we found it, but no longer the FoE. ;-( Selfridges & all that very dramatic, of course, but a big moment to consumerism, yet with the church in the middle, as ever. We then wound our way back to the basin via the Mailbox shopping centre, had a reasonable successful 'oriental tapas' meal and crashed.



My sleep was disturbed at around 3am by someone on the back deck - I looked out of the window to see him going round to the front deck. Thankfully my first 'p*ss off' from inside the boat sent him off, by the time I was out of the front doors he was on his way, a solitary pissed bloke who I assume was after a bike to aid his trip home. They were locked up, and anyway the upper one was the leek car boot sale one that wouldn't lock unfolded. A bit of a negative experience, but one of a random pissed guy trying his luck (at albeit theft) rather than anything nastier. City centres are strange places to have a boat in, though.

23rd Brewood to Dudley

Woke early, left early - a beautiful morning, mist on the canal surface and low morning light. A kingfisher sitting on a tiller arm looked so incredible as to be unbelievable, and the picture is in my mind rather than the camera. We found ourselves creeping through the the IWA festival moorings before nine - way too early to join Bones and posse in the beer tent - another time, though.

Was very taken with the minature canal boat 'Sarni' - not least as idle daydreams about a direct pedal drive boat as a scale model had suggested something similar, although it'll never happen (and look even sillier than tortoise already does in locks)...



Poor Brigid - first time on a canal boat, and first morning we're faced with the 21 lock Wolverhampton flight. She rose to the challenge magnificently, at first I was in & out of the boat single handed, but we slowly worked out ways of efficient working between us. Four hours later we stopped at the top for a trip to find food (reasonably successful) and recycling bins (less so - found paper & mixed glass bins almost randomly in the street, but not cans, and no-one knew where we might find one (or even why). I often intend to write letters that never get sent, but one to BW encouraging them to ask each local council to provide recylcing bins at each facility point. It can't be rocket science, hardly any more work for BW, but at the moment there are hardly any. Oops, editorial comment - I'll be having opinions next.

Then on through the fairly dull (to me, exciting to Brigid) black country scenery (mainly empty industrial sites) to the recommended mooring at the Black Country Museum. It seems a shame to have to try to moor behind locked gates, but since no-one moors anywhere else, it's pretty sensible. There Phil & Neil came to visit on the way home from the IWA festival. I'd warned Phil that if his boat was a floating cottage mine was more of a floating shed, but he was quietly amused... ;-)