Narrowboat Star

And then there were doors

2012-01-15T20:55:00.003Z

A day of striving with my assortment of power tools has produced some not half bad cupboard doors if I say so myself. They're panelled using frames of 6mm ply glued to a backboard of 12mm ply and then finished with a mitred moulding inside. The only problem was that I needed more clamps than a clamp factory to hold each door together while the glue set.
The result looks classy - or will when paint has covered the occasional minor mishap. Maybe I'll build my galley after all...

Organised chaos

2012-01-14T21:35:00.002Z

Currently the floor of Harry looks like a sawdust factory. And it's also a health and safety officer's worst nightmare - trailing wires lying everywhere like a nest of vipers. Circular saw, jigsaw, router, chop saw, table saw. Let alone lights and vacuum cleaner making a feeble effort at dust extraction.
It's all in aid of the building of an under deck cupboard which will lie between the water tank and the head of the bed. In theory the cupboard ought not to be a tricky build. In practice of course it is. The sides curve both in and forwards, following the lines of the bow sides, the top slopes down either side and the floor slopes up. In other words, there's not a straight line or right angle anywhere. A typical bit of boat joinery in fact.
As a result I've had to build the front in five pieces - sides, base, top and centre panel. Miraculously it all fits in the space pretty well. There's an inner base floor above the water pipes and a centre divider to help hang the shelves.
So far it's taken about four days and generated around a ton of sawdust but tomorrow the doors will be finished and the job finished. Bar the painting - but's that something for the Painting Department to look forward to.

An up and down sort of week

2012-01-10T20:10:00.002Z

Strange business, this boat fitting. Sometimes things race along and the project seems to charge towards completion. The next week everything somehow grinds to a halt and despite your best efforts nothing really seems to happen. Or, worse, things go backwards.
This has been one of those weeks. Final ballasting of Harry is something I guess I should have tackled sooner but the first step was filling the 150 gallon water tank to see how much that made the bows came down, and for some reason I was nervous about this.
I don't know why; it all seemed to go well. The tank filled and the bows dropped about four inches. I went home happy for my tea. But the next morning I saw faint traces of water on the floor - yes the first union out of the tank was leaking. Just a drip a minute but a leak's a leak.
And it took a day - yes a day - for the water to slowly drain out of the tank via a hose, a bucket with an auto bilge pump and into the cut. Repairing the leak took ten minutes!
But at least I know that I need about half a ton of ballast - and it'll have to be iron or steel as I'm running short of space and these are the heaviest (short of church roof lead). I've got a source for railway fish plates I hope but he's a busy man and so I'm waiting until he has time to sort some out. Or knowing the way things are at the moment, to discover he hasn't got any after all.
I'm also waiting for some planed solid oak - ordered before Christmas but still not delivered. Are they waiting for the trees to grow?
The final hold-up is the galley (or the kitchen to landlubbers). That delay is down to me deciding whether I'm up to building my own or whether we should opt for trimming B&Q style units to fit and tarting the result up with a nice chunky wood worktop. My heart says DIY but my head says I could be letting myself in for some serious headaches.
Maybe when I finally get the oak and can build a second door for the bathroom cupboard I will get a clearer idea of my abilities - or limitations.

First piece of joinery

2011-12-18T15:12:00.003Z

With the aid of the aforementioned pocket hole jig, a router and his trusty compound mitre saw the skilled cabinet-maker produced his first cabinet for Harry - this little corner unit in the bathroom.
To be honest it's not 100 per cent - though I'm reasonably happy with it - but the low light photography means you won't really be able to spot the flaws. Apart from the cutting marks on the worktop which I'll skim off with the router.
The framed doors are the tricky part: I haven't yet devised a satisfactory way of producing an accurate slot in them to take the centre panel. These were done using a biscuit jointing router cutter in a couple of passes but lack of skill meant a wandering cutter and two feet of oak frame into the waste bin. That's why there's only one door at the moment!
Any top tips gratefully received...

My new toy

2011-12-18T15:06:00.003Z

The Pocket Hole Jig - another of those clever devices designed to help turn the person who can barely hammer a nail in straight into a skilled cabinet-maker!
This nifty little item is a jig that enables you to drill holes at a shallow angle into pieces of wood which you can then 'secret screw' them into other bits of wood using special screws. It's ideal for fixing cabinet sides to bulkheads, fixing frames and a dozen other things.
It's impossible to explain simply so have a look at this little video where an American with bad haircut and glasses explains exactly how it's used to the accompaniment of irritating background music.

It's been a long time!

2011-12-02T20:52:00.004Z

Maroon, grey and black - the colour scheme of choice
All grey - a previous scheme
The engine room plumbing almost complete
And the view through with the bulkhead removed

The blog has been in hibernation these past couple of months. And to be honest it might have stayed there if it hadn't been for our friends in Canada emailing "are you okay" because the blog had been so silent.
It does get depressing writing regular reports of progress so slow it would be quicker to watch paint dry, and constantly taking the same photo from one of the boat to t'other. But, with a suitably guilty conscience about our lack of news I'll bring things up to the present day.
After our summer of cruising we're now tied up at Streethay and working full-time on Harry. And progress seems to have speeded up. Well at least the engine is running! I decided early on to move all the fuel, oil and water tanks to the opposite end of the engine room. If I'd realised how much re-plumbing was going to be involved maybe I wouldn't have bothered. But it is worth it; the new layout is much more space efficient and I can actually clamber all round the massive JP3.
Having plumbed it up I put 10 litres of fuel in the tank, pumped it up to the day tank and after a few false starts - bleeding the air out the diesel pipes is bleeding tricky (sorry) it fired into glorious life and ran perfectly with only a couple of minor leaks.
The really big decision in the engine room was to cut away the steel bulkhead between that and the back cabin. Access through had been really cramped - the corner of the bench seat having been cut away to improve it to even that level. But with the bulkhead gone, it's superb - great access and a fine few of the engine from the rear steps.
We've also finally decided on the exterior colours after experimenting with every shade of grey. Master painter Starwoman first of all painted one side in the black, grey and white scheme of Star. But on the bigger boat it looked too gaudy. Then we went dark greyh/light grey but that was too dull so now we have black, dark grey and a maroon rear 'name'panel which we reckon looks cracking.
With the engine room more or less sorted (bar the hand controls) it's back to joinery work in the main boat. And an end to all those weeks of oil stained hands and grimy fingernails. Next job is to start fitting out the bathroom. Then install the Refleks stove and we'll almost be able to move aboard!!

British Waterways volunteers at work?

2011-08-05T22:13:00.002+01:00

They were out dredging the canal of old rubbish this afternoon and, boy, what a pile of junk they hauled out. Old bikes, bedsteads, even a motorbike. But these volunteers were not entirely altruistic - they were a couple of gangs of traveller lads collecting scrap metal by fishing for it with grappling hooks.
Good on them, I reckon. If they can earn themselves a few quid they deserve it - they're doing us boaters a favour. And it looked pretty hard, messy work at that.
Maybe BW could develop the idea - award a few canal clearance franchises to local travelling communities!

The longest day

2011-08-05T22:08:00.003+01:00

Started at 9 a.m. (that's early for us); tied up at 9.30 p.m. Apart from an hour long break for dinner this evening the poor old engine didn't stop running all day.
We weren't hurrying; just plodding along on another glorious sunny day but we wanted to beat the weekend hire boat rush at Fradley so after tieing up for tea we set off again and did a couple more hours to get through them.
Just as well, the towpaths round the junction were like Blackpool beach, full of parked boats with barbecuse going on the towpath, kids and dogs rushing about, dinghys in the water. Everybody enjoying their summer holiday evening.
Tomorrow morning we'll be back at Streethay to pick up daughter Olivia for a few more days' cruising.

Third time un-lucky

2011-08-04T21:02:00.005+01:00

The BW rescue team get into action

The offending items caught in the keb
Evacuating Brian from the trapped boat

Until five p.m. it had been just one of those averagely ordinary and rather forgettable days. We'd done eight locks down to Stone, queued at all of them and put up with weather that alternated between rain and humid heat every 15 minutes. Then we'd walked around Stone and not found anything bar a couple of paperbacks in the charity.
But at 5 p.m. the sun came out and we decided that we might as well move on rather than sitting around listening to the bloke behind running his engine and the people in the house across the cut do their power-tool diy in the back garden.
We'd barely gone 400 yards when the canal was blocked by a hire boat that had pulled its moorings. Not surprising; it was so badly moored - on a bend and with the pins sitting in marshy soil. We did our best to re-moor it and moved on.
A half mile further and a couple of little lads flagged us down at a bridge. Their fishing line and float had got caught in a tree on the off side. We stopped and Vicky pulled it free with the boathook.
A few hundred yards further and we came to Aston lock, filled it, went in, tried to open the gates to get out...and one wouldn't open fully. I tried to get through, we jammed and just about pulled free back into the lock.
I spent the next 20 minutes prodding and poking behind the gate to try and locate what was jamming it. No luck. So we called BW and within half an hour a couple of blokes turned up armed with the tool for the job - a keb. (A sort of long handled fork cum rake.) They prodded and scraped and found the culprits - two large bricks that had come away from the lock wall.
A few minutes later we were off and a few minutes after that we were moored and eating a late fry-up tea. Just a mile from the place we'd left two and a half hours earlier!

Voluntary lock-keeping ... and a stoning

2011-08-03T20:45:00.003+01:00

Walking back along the towpath from the railway station to our boat at Festival Marina we spied a single-handed working boat about to come up through the five Stoke locks. So we did a deal: he'd carry our bags on the boat and we'd help work him up through the locks.
The boat was the very smart looking Cowburn & Cowpar 'Skylark' helmed by an affable chap who was happy to chat boats and engines - his being powered by a hot bulb single cylinder Gardner. (Sounds a lot like a Bolinder without all the hiccoughing and hesitancy.)
As we neared the top lock he introduced himself; turns out he was Rupert Smedley, Boat Safety examiner and writer for Waterways World - a member of the 'opposition' when I was editing Canal Boat!
This afternoon we headed back down the same flight in Star and found ourselves behind a single mum with two young daughters. Single as in single-handed that is. So, being the gent, I helped her through the locks as well as locking our own boat through.
I think that's enough of Stoke locks for a while.
Then as we headed out of the town to the leafier suburb of Trentham we spotted some youngsters on the bridge above. It was all too obvious what was about to happen - and it did. We went under the bridge and a flurry of grit and pebbles came raining down. I looked up but the kids had scarpered. No point getting riled - these things happen on sunny afternoons when the kids are on holiday.
Moored tonight near the Wedgwood factory; tomorrow it's Stone and a spin round its multiplicity of charity shops. It's the last town before we're back at Streethay once more.

Stoke is so sad

2011-07-31T12:39:00.002+01:00

I always find Stoke a fascinating but sad and sorry place to boat through. Fascinating because there are so many remnants of its old industries - the bottle kilns, the wharves, the ruined brick warehouses. Sad because that's all they are - remnants.
People have told me of cruising through the town when steel furnaces spat fire along the canal and the kilns belched smoke. What a sight that must have been!
All that has gone, the warehouses are deserted ruins, the kilns silent museum pieces and for nearly a mile the canal runs through a wasteland; a bulldozed desert of nothingness.
I know things have to change but in Stoke they seem to have just changed for the worst; those lifeblood industries have gone but nothing much seems to have replaced them.
It's a story one sees across so much of the old industrial heart of England.

Granny gets her fix

2011-07-31T12:17:00.002+01:00

Narrowboat, foot, train and van. Those were our means of transport yesterday to bring us from Macclesfield to Bury St Edmunds so Vicky could get her fix of grannying before little Martha and her ma & pa go off on holidays.
We set off at 10 a.m., reached Stoke on Trent by 3pm where we left the boat in the Festival Park Marina (and a very helpful outfit they were too), walked to the station, got the train to Lichfield, walked to Streethay, picked up the Astravan and drove to Bury St Eds getting there 12 hours later at 10pm after a Macdonalds refuelling stop en route.
It was a busy and an incident filled day. First we found ourselves holding up a trio of little plastic cruisers so I pulled over and let them by, only to be caught up by another couple and a small narrowboat. Apparently we'd got tangled up in a cruising club outing to the Ashby Canal.
Well, the second lot had to stay behind us to the Harecastle Tunnel entrance where their narrowboat member decided he ought to try and overtake and bashed into the back of Star!
He was in a panic about missing the run through the tunnel - despite the fact that we were joining a line of boats all starting to filter through.
As we left the other end of the tunnel I, shall we say, explained the error of his ways to him - and to the club 'commodore' in the boat behind him!
We stopped for a sandwich and to let the cruising crews get well ahead and then carried on through Stoke to the marina. It being Saturday, a steady stream of newly hired craft were coming the other way, their steerers gradually mastering their new controls.
And then round a bend at some speed appeared one - completely on the wrong side of the water. There followed that couple of seconds when you think "I guess he'll just pull the tiller over and move across" followed by the dawning realisation "Oh no! He's not going to. And unless I do something he's going to T-bone us!"
I swung to the left and waved him furiously to pass on the 'wrong' side. Just as he decided to engage full reverse with plumes of water spraying everywhere. A couple of seconds of that and he's be all over the place. Fortunately he decided to obey my signal and go forwards instead.
As we passed he uttered an unforgettable question "What side are you supposed to pass on, mate?".
He'd actually come from the marina we were heading to and when we got there I saw another boat crew getting pretty comprehensive driving instructions. Clearly that particular boater had been asleep at the back of the class!

Down - and up again

2011-07-29T19:46:00.004+01:00

We must be mad. We spent two hours wrestling our way down the twelve Bosley locks, moored up below them on the aqueduct and then went off and walked up the 1150-ft high summit you can see in the distance called The Cloud.

We made it!
And so did Brian who was more impressed by the smells than the view

Still, it was worth it. Even on a hazy day the views are superb. There's a complete 360 degree panorama of Cheshire and Staffordshire. On a clear day you can see Wales, though probably not Lands End and John O'Groats that are marked on the big bronze compass plaque at the summit along with all the local landmarks.
The walk was actually not as bad as it looked (it looked terrifyingly steep!). We had to drop down from the aqueduct into the river valley below then climb some steep lanes before a very stiff trudge up through a meadow. The last bit was easy, though: the National Trust who own the site had even put in some concrete steps and a handrail up the steepest bit.
After an energy packed banana and honey sandwich each - plus a pile of dog biscuits for Brian - we were recovered enough for the descent. And three hours after leaving it we were back at the boat.
Tomorrow sadly we'll leave the hills behind, tunneling through the last of them via the Harecastle Tunnel that brings us to Stoke. A few more days and we'll be back at base.

Pushchair!!

2011-07-28T21:41:00.002+01:00

Vicky flagged down a passing pushchair today just like you or I would flag down a passing cab.
Apparently you can do this if you are a state-registered-granny and want to have a bit of an "ooh" and "aah" at a baby. Or in this case two babies as the eagle eyed granny had spotted it was a double buggy.
Mums appear quite happy - delighted even - to have grannies doing this sort of thing. I suppose it's because to grannies all babies are "lovely", "beautiful" etc etc. Which, of course, they are.

Brian's Blog

2011-07-28T21:27:00.002+01:00

Another day, another bl**dy hill! I don't mind a walk but why do they always have to pick hills? A towpath I like - plenty to sniff, the odd dog to growl at - but hills are just damned hard work. It's alright for them; they went off and bought fancy walking shoes but me, I'm on my poor old pads clambering over these rocks. Up they go and my little legs have to try and keep up.
It gets worse; if there are any of those silly big white woolly dogs around (y'know, the sort that make a kind of odd 'baa-ing' bark) then I'm back on the lead before I get a chance to have a play.
And when we get to the top of these hills, what happens? They both sit about scoffing sandwiches and going on and on about what they can see. Me I get a bowl of lukewarm water and a couple of dog biscuits. And today I even had to put up with a really irritating 4 year old who kept rushing up and shouting at me. She even tried to put a bag over my head. I had to put on my fierce growling face to get rid of her. It's the parents I blame.
To be honest with you, going down hill is often worse than going up. I'd tell them "you try going down a steep hill head first"!
But this walk had one thing going for it - the bloke who built the stiles had at least thought about dogs and that's a rarity. He'd left a nice hole in the stone wall for me to get through. And when I walked through they kept saying how clever I was. Do they think I'm stupid or something? They're the daft ones, keep finding all these steep hills.

Another summit conquered

2011-07-28T21:08:00.004+01:00

The Macca has three notable canalside 'summits' among the hills that line it. The first, Mow Cop, we cracked a few days ago; the second, White Nancy, we tackled today.
White Nancy is actually a curious bottle shaped building on top of the northern edge of the Saddle of Kerridge that overlooks Bollington just north of Macclesfield. It was put up by one of the local landowners to commemorate victory at Waterloo and was a summerhouse from which - presumably - he could survey his domain while sipping a glass or three. A glass which would have been heaved up the sharp, steep slope by his poor unfortunate servants. I bet they dreaded the annual Waterloo victory celebrations that must have gone on up there!
It's not a long walk but it is a damned steep one though most of it's up a damned fine stone footpath, first of slabs and later of gritstone pieces laid on edge into the soil.
From the summit the view is of course stunning - we could see planes landing at Manchester Airport in one direction and right across the dry stone wall grids of the Peakland hills in the other.
We took the long way back, along the Saddle to its southern tip then meandering down through the lanes and footways of the steep slope down to Kerridge and Bollington. A crazy zig-zagging footpath took us down between stone cottages clinging for dear life to the edge of the hillside and even, at one point, under what was once the upper floor of a now ruined cottage.
Finally down at the canalside we passed the two huge surviving silk mills now revived as offices and apartments. At their height no less than 18 mills worked in this tiny area alone.
Tomorrow it's the final peak - The Cloud.

Low and slow

2011-07-27T21:28:00.005+01:00

It's been a slow day - but not for the want of trying. Water levels in the always shallow Macca are about six inches below their usual level which means the bottom is rather too close to the top for deeper draughted boats like us.
It's worst at bridgeholes where the silt and muck collects in the narrows. We dragged our way across some slower than a reluctant child being dragged to the dentist. As you go through, mud and a slurry of rotted vegetation cling to the prop which often demands some lively reversing to throw it off again.
The original plan was to stop at Macclesfield to stock up the larder and stooge round the other shops but that soon changed. What a shame that the town that gave the canal its name does so little to encourage the passing boater to visit.
The moorings are shallow, unkempt and lack any sort of ring or barrier to hook a rope to on the eroded bankside. Worse, three average sized boats would fill them. Today none had bothered to make the effort and I don't blame them. Maybe Macclesfield feels it can do without the boaters' trade. Well it did without ours for sure!
With moorings few and far between along this section of the canal we decided to plod on to what will be our destination on the Macca this trip - the moorings at Higher Poynton run by our chums Iain and Luisa Bryceland, former owners of Braidbar Boats across the other side of the cut. They've done a lot of work since we were here two years ago with new jetties, much dredging and the removal of a huge concrete barrier wall.
Tomorrow we'll turn around and drift slowly back towards Streethay. Quite literally it's all downhill from here.

Moving on up

2011-07-26T21:00:00.003+01:00

Near the top of Bosley Locks with glorious views behind
Artistry in stone, a turn-over bridge swaps the towpath from one side to t'other
Mrs Cow and Junior take a last look at their boating neighbours
The intricate lattice-work timbers of Little Moreton Hall

It was time to say goodbye to our idyllic mooring spot today. Idyllic despite the 5 a.m. mooing of the local cows! Before we went we had one last walk down to Little Moreton Hall to gaze once more in wonder at the 15th century hall's Chinese puzzle of interlocking timber framing. Sadly it's shut on Mondays and Tuesdays so a full visit will have to wait until the return trip. But we did feed the virtually tame crows who queue up waiting for you to put pieces of bread out on the fence posts for them then virtually walk up to you to pick them up.
We headed first to Congleton for some much needed supplies. Much needed for Brian in particular as his dog food ran out this morning. But fear not Bri - just a few yards from the towpath was a pet superstore so Iams and biscuit treats are now fully back in stock.
The 12 Bosley locks were looming close now. The Macclesfield is 'typically Telford' in its design, even if the great man only schemed it out and then left the engineering to others. It's all scenery defying straight lines of cuttings and aqueducts and a single long flight of locks. The engineering is as much art as science: the turn-over bridges are works of art in their swoops and curves, aqueducts provide breathtaking views across the fells as they stride valleys and the locks built in huge blocks of stone are a marvel.
You meet all sorts at a lock (that's what makes working them interesting) and today we fell in with a delightfully eccentric walker with a voice like Alan Bennett, a bushy white beard and long straggling hair like Ben Gunn, a 2CV parked down at the lay-by and a van - not he explained a camper van but one he sleeps in all the same which he travels around the country in for holiday trips that often include canal walks. Today he was off to see 'Spring and Port Wine' at Newcastle under Lyme theatre, stopping for a spot of walking on the way. Locks done, he was away before we could offer him a cup of tea.
The day almost ended with us swapping our idyllic mooring for the mooring from hell. We'd passed - as you do - a few iffy moorings in pursuit of the perfect one with lovely views that's always round the next bend. Except it wasn't. We cruised on until, knackered, we pulled up just past a swingbridge. As I tied the first rope, a train thundered past the other side of the hedge. At the noise of the train kennels full of dogs across the canal began howling and barking.
But at that moment another towpath walking pair came past. "Just go round the corner," they advised. "There's an ideal mooring with lovely views."
And this time, there was!

A fair Cop?

2011-07-25T15:55:00.003+01:00

Have you ever noticed that stunning natural scenery is rarely matched by stunning man-made architecture? The glorious glens of Scotland are pocked by scruffy bungalows; the wildness of the Pennine hills dotted with farmers' scrap and so on.
The same is true of Mow Cop, the steep hill we have just returned from. It towers like a natural fortress above the fields below and from its summit is a breathtaking 360 degree panorama. North east lie the Pennines, north west in the distant haze you can just make out the tower blocks of the Wirral and Liverpool, swing west and the view goes away to Wales. In the middle distance, the distinct white giant Meccano construction that is Jodrell Bank observatory stands tall in the plain.
Mow Cop is famous for two things: the entertaining 'ruined castle' folly built on its top by a local landowner 250 years ago and the founding of the 'Primitive Methodists' by a local man preaching on the summit.
The folly is an amusement - a sort of Hollywood castle prop but built in real stone rather than polystyrene - and the Methodist connection is probably of interest to Methodists though not to us.
But when you take your eyes away from the scenery or your mind away from religion and look around closer to home you see that Mow Cop is a ghastly mess. Once a few stone cottages and a couple of mills occupied the summit. Today every inch is filled with the worst of 1970s and 1980s houses and bungalows. The sort of bungalows that have lawns trimmed with nail clippers and borders of evergreen shrubs. Some have even hidden themselves from the distant views behind high hedges - presumably to shield their lives from visiting tourists.
It's horrible and despite the best efforts of Mow Cop Residents Association to create a heritage trail round local landmarks like the various chapels and the grave of Hannah Dale, the 33 stone 11 year old girl who died there in 1892 the walk round the hill involves much more dross than floss.
Despite that, those staggering views certainly made the walk well worthwhile.

A room with a view

2011-07-24T21:37:00.003+01:00

Riding over the Trent&Mersey

We sitting tonight in one of our most delightful ever moorings. It's a typically British summer evening; a warm sun is setting slowly over a pastoral setting, in the foreground the oak trees of a large country estate cast long shadows across the meadow; as you look into the middle distance the green fields, hedges and trees of the Cheshire plain take your view further and further west toward the hazy grey outlines of distant hills that could be as far away as North Wales. A tractor chops grass for hay, swallows swoop down to the river for flies and behind us the steep hillside of Mow Cop rises high to a monumental ruin on its summit.
It's hard to think of anywhere nicer to be; sitting on the tug deck, sipping a beer.
We are, for those who don't know their canal geography, up on the Macclesfield Canal. We swerved right off the top of Heartbreak Hill onto the canal at the switchback Hardings Wood junction where the Macclesfield twists back, runs parallel with the T&M and then climbs over it on the Red Bull* aqueduct.
It's a beautiful canal with fine views and proud, aristocratic stone bridges that are a far cry from the functional brick ones so familiar to the canal user. Tomorrow the summit of Mow Cop beckons - put your walking boots on, Brian!

PS Speaking of Red Bull, a perfect internet signal meant I could watch a great Lewis Hamilton drive, trouncing the Red Bulls and the sulky Spaniard as well!

An uphill task

2011-07-24T21:17:00.002+01:00

Volunteer lockie Rob at work
Canalside suburbia at Rode Heath
A sunny Sunday brought cyclists, walkers and joggers out to join the boaters on a busy Trent & Mersey. I'm sure good fun was had by all though the joggers never look like they're enjoying it and the locks are damned hard work for us windlass wielders.
Suburbia has got the canal firmly by the throat for much of its hard climb toward Stoke. Canalside hamlets have become dormitory villages of look-alike 1980s 'executive' homes complete with the Hyundai 4x4 and Golf TDi on the drive. Will they ever gain the slightly shambolic charm of the old canal terraces they sit alongside? I doubt it. Certainly they lack the history - the old terraces were built to serve the canal, the modern houses look on it with a mixture of bemusement and annoyance.
At Rode Heath back in the 1980s the canal society managed to stop the demolition of a historic mill: local MP managed to overturn the decision. So in its place we now have a row of mock-Tudor homes shielding themselves from the canal's gaze with high hedges. A great improvement!
As we neared the end of the climb a pair of eager beavers in bright yellow jackets suddenly biked into view. They are BW 'volunteer lock operators' and whirled away getting us and those around us through the locks at high speed. Chris and Rob were good guys but this isn't just a bit of sunny Sunday volunteering - they are here every day.
Reason is that both are out of work - have never had a job in fact. "There are no jobs at all in Stoke," lamented Chris. I was telling his tale to another watcher a couple of locks later: "I know" he said "I've been out of work since March." After 27 years in environmental health work he was eased out in favour of a cheaper, younger replacement. He too is filling his time with volunteering.
Is this Cameron's 'big society'? A nation of job seekers filling in time opening locks or serving in charity shops before they're forced into some menial, minimum wage employment and join the ranks of Mcdonalds workers or call centre operators. On a boat you travel through ravaged towns like Stoke, where acre upon acre is razed flat, or Middlewich where the old salt industries are visibly rotting into the ground and you worry and wonder where the jobs; where the re-kindling of a flame of life will ever come from.
An uphill task indeed.

We turned right

2011-07-23T21:36:00.002+01:00

Faced with the choice between turning left at Middlewich for the thrills of the Anderton boat lift or right for the heavy lockwheeling up the 31 locks of Heartbreak Hill, guess what - we turned right.
We decided that with other things coming up in our schedule it could only be a brief trip down the lift and onto the River Weaver. Also weighing on our minds was the fact that Star's engine has played up a bit this trip and we didn't want to find ourselves stuck down on a river with few facilities if something serious should happen.
And, to cap it all, we decided that some things are best left for tomorrow. After all we have got narrowboat Harry coming along back at base. We need to do some exploring in that.
So we set off southwards towards the climb up out of Cheshire on the Trent & Mersey. We've been down this way before but it's still a stretch of canal whose pleasures are easy to overlook. Once out of the remains of the great salt industry that gave the 'wiches' their names it becomes a deep, gently winding canal through affable scenery and the locks - at least to begin with - are just a pleasant interlude on cruising.
But then they speed up! We stopped for water at Wheelock whose moorings are a sort of base camp for those about to attack the climb, or those recovering from the descent. Since the moorings were full we pressed on for a lock or two. And ended up doing another ten.
Wde're now moored at Hassall Green with the nearby M6 a steady background hum. The "17th century haunted" Romping Donkey seemed a potential refreshment halt but when we got there we discovered only boarded up windows and doors. Yet another country pub bites the dust.
Tomorrow 16 more locks beckon plus, internet willing, a break for the German GP.

Holiday horror

2011-07-23T09:53:00.002+01:00

We passed an Andersen hire boat from Middlewich sporting a large Norwegian flag yesterday afternoon. Like all the Andersen fleet it was named after a Fjord and I had a chuckle about Norwegians choosing a suitably Norwegian named boat for their canal holiday.
An hour or two later it came up behind us at a lock outside Middlewich and as I began talking to them they immediately spoke about the bombing and shootings in Oslo - their home city. It was the first we'd heard of it.
Even then they were shaken and shocked, thought the full extent of the horror was as yet unknown. Apparently their family and friends were all okay but we can only imagine their feelings as the full story developed through the following hours.
What a terrible, terrible way to end a holiday. Our thoughts are with them.

Interesting boats spotted

2011-07-22T20:41:00.003+01:00

Daringly different these two and both of them spotted on the Chester branch of the Shroppie.
Emily Anne, a modern steam engined narrowboat with its own, purpose built steam power plant and Turnothworld, an elegant replica Bridgewater Packet built by Roger Fuller.

Turn left or turn right?

2011-07-22T20:27:00.003+01:00

BW employees at work on the Middlewich branch - and from an old working boat too. Nice

We could have done with some BW workers here pruning the dangerously overhanging willows outside Chester - instead Vicky hacked away with her shears!

We've reached Middlewich after a lazy day's cruise along the eponymous - nice word that - Branch of the Shroppie, leaving behind (thank gawd) those big, heavy locks on the Chester section of the canal.
We did the final three of them today and then swung left off the Shroppie onto the Branch, expecting it to be nose-to-tail with hireboats but finally that, going our way at least, we pretty much had the canal to ourselves.
It was a beautiful, warm sunny day; the sort that makes a pale Brit reach for the sun tan lotion. Then - just as we came into a lock (when else) the temperature suddenly dropped about ten degrees and seconds later it was sheeting with rain. A couple of minutes after leaving the lock, the sun re-appeared (of course).
We've now moored just in the edge of Middlewich which makes a tidy suburban contrast to the town's rather down-at-heel centre. The centre boasts one memorable feature though - an excellent fish&chip shop which provided tonight's dinner.
Tomorrow I have a treat in store for Vicky - a visit to Lidl, her first for several weeks now. She's been getting withdrawal symptoms.
After that we come to a canal tee-junction where the Shroppie meets the Trent & Mersey. And it's time to decide is it left for the Anderton Lift or right for Heartbreak Hill and all points south. Hmm, no contest I think.

Coming back to life

2011-07-20T21:00:00.004+01:00

Newcomers to narrow boating might find it hard to believe that canal cruising boats haven't always been 57ft long steel tubes. In the 1960s many were timber-built, not hastily cabin topped old timber working boats either but slimmed down versions of the oak and mahogany cruisers popular on the Broads.
And the most famous builder was Taylors of Chester whose boatyard we are now moored outside. Taylors is probably one of the oldest surviving complete canalside boatyards in the country and dates back to 1845. Its large canopied roof, supported on iron girders and columns resembles a Victorian railway station and under its shelter the Taylor family built their handsome launches.
But as interest in wooden boats waned so the yard slipped into decline and the big dry dock next door was taken part into British Waterways hands.
Fortunately things should be about to take a turn for the better for the Grade II listed site. Earlier this year it got new owners who have taken on a long lease for the yard and the dry dock from British Waterways and who will be working witb BW to get the whole site back into shape.
The new owners are Pete and Yvette Askey, better known to boaters in the London area as JP Marine. They have moved their narrowboat repair, maintenance, BSC and surveying business up to Chester.
I met them today in my continuing quest for oil for Star's lubricant-thirsty engine and, by a fortunate chance, Pete was just off to drive over to the nearest chandlery for supplies so he brought me back a couple of cans.
As I have discovered there's a serious shortage of boatyards in the area - virtually nothing at all in the ten miles leading into Chester and less than nothing from here to Ellesmere Port. And to judge by the number of moored craft the demand is surely there. So good luck to Pete and Yvette.

Back in Chester!

2011-07-19T21:34:00.002+01:00

After a day in Ellesmere Port we're now back moored in Chester - and rather pleased to be here. The boat museum is interesting but the rest of Ellesmere, once a thriving port, is now a sad and sorry place.
I think we'd rate the museum at about seven out of ten. It sprawls across the old dock site, reclaimed from dereliction by volunteers - though sadly not before Telford's magnificent looking warehouses that were its centrepiece were burnt to the ground by vandals.
There's plenty of good stuff to see and some real nuggets of gold tucked away. I loved the old colour film of repairing a wooden narrowboat at Peter Keays yard in the '60s. And the black&white documentary of the building of a huge new lock on the Manchester Ship Canal was beautifully shot by director Lindsay Anderson, later known for sixties and seventies hit movies like 'If'. The monumental soundtrack could have been for Star Wars. "From here the products of British skills and industry were exported all over the world" closed the voiceover as a freighter sailed off into the sunset. Ah those were the days!
But the museum does disappoint in some ways. The knowledgeable canal-ist will already know so much of the basic facts and history. I'd like to have seen more: a photo-gallery on individual canals, say; more on canal restoration; more on the traders and builders. And I'd like to have been able to watch some of the boat restoration that's happening at the Museum. There are plenty of semi-derelict boats to see but the work that is going on to repair and restore others is all happening out of sight.

After the museum we took a short stroll through the broken glass strewn underpass beneath the M53 to see the town itself. What a desperate place: you can't help but feel sorry for people who have to open their front door onto it every day; for kids who grow up there. It's desolate, dreary and dirty. Even a large piece of Soviet-style monumental sculpture work at the head of the main street and another giant glass installation further down can change that. (What is the purpose of this ludicrous public art? The money would be better spent on cans of paint and litter clearance to smarten the place up.)
It is salutary to see where the underclass spend their money: I counted 18 fast food outlets in a mile of main street. Plus four cheque changing/loan arranging/pawn shops, five solicitors, two 'party shops', a couple of tattoo studios, ditto nail bars and pedicure shops, a Polish deli, the inevitable Wetherspoons with its doorway of smoking lunchtime boozers (ironically called The Thomas Telford) and - my favourite - a shop selling pushchairs and hair extensions.
But it's too easy to sneer or lecture: if you live in a place like this and do a grim job (if you have one at all) and some hair extensions will cheer you then why not.

Missing the cheeseboard at the Savoy

2011-07-18T21:16:00.002+01:00

That's what one guide says it would be like to turn round at Chester and not do the final eight miles of the Shroppie up to Ellesmere Port.
Hmmm. I just hope the Savoy's cheeseboard is a lot more appetising than those miles - often weedy, sometimes lined by a trail of generally scruffy moored craft and towards the end flanked by pylons, motorways or oil depots - or all three.
It was more the Everest factor - "because it's there" that make us tackle the run to the end of the canal. That and the National Waterways Museum in the old canal warehouses. We've visited before but it's always worth another look and tomorrow we'll do just that.
In fact we'll go in by boat, moor in the lower basin, the last stage before exiting onto the Mersey and become not just visitors but temporary exhibits as well!

The staircase at the edge of the universe

2011-07-18T20:30:00.004+01:00

No, not the title of a previously unknown Richard Adams book but rather the thought that comes to mind when you take in the vertiginous view from the top of the Northgate Staircase. You gaze out right across to the hills beyond the far side of the Dee estuary and it's rather like being on top of a watery ski slope waiting to plunge 34 feet down through the three locks into the arms of the Shroppie below.
The locks are massive and massively impressive too; carved out of the solid rock just like the canal channel before them which runs through a high gorge flanked on one side by Chester city wall and bridged by handsome stone arches.Above the deep canal gorge is Chester's own Bridge of Sighs, foreground, which now goes nowhere sadly
It's a dramatic way to take one's leave of a fascinating city which is rightly thronged by tourists from all over the world - including three Australian ladies who were so admiring of my lock-wheeling techniques they snapped away with their digital cameras as I wrestled with the huge, heavy locks. Don't worry kids; Vicky was keeping a chaperone's eye on me!
We did the full Chester experience when the rain finally decided to stop at lunchtime today: the Roman experience; the city wall experience; the cathedral experience and even - unusually for us - the shopping experience among the unique and beautiful two level black and white fronted shops.
I wanted a new pair of outdoor shoes and having searched around, the best choice and by far the most helpful and knowledgeable assistance came at Cotswold Outdoor so we ended up buying not one but three pairs between us!

Rain, rain, rain and then more rain

2011-07-17T09:45:00.002+01:00

That's the forecast for Chester today so I don't think we'll be doing too much sightseeing. At least the 3G signal seems good enough to watch MotoGP on livestreaming BBC. And Vicky is finding brass to polish.

PS It was a quiet night BTW; the drunks all took different route home from the Frog & Bladdered down the road.

PPS We must be near Liverpool - in Tesco yesterday afternoon I spotted my first girl shopping with her hair in rollers ready for Saturday night partying!

Tied up in Chester

2011-07-16T20:05:00.003+01:00

The weather forecaster spoke of heavy rain and strong winds all day but fortunately by 11 a.m. the rain had stopped, the sun was starting to appear so we set off toward Chester. It's not far - just a handful of miles - but five of those wide, slow, heavy locks barred the route as well.
We pottered on and pretty soon I saw a familiar looking boat coming the other way - it was our mate Jeff from Streethay Wharf, heading towards the pub mooring we'd just left. A pity that after two months away we were just a day apart: we could have been supping pints and exchanging anecdotes.
Star's engine has developed something of a thirst for oil and I was running low on stocks so I decided to call in at the new Tattenhall Marina which promised a chandlery. What a daft design it is! To get to the visitor jetty for fuel, pump-outs and 'stuff' means reversing into a couple of narrow pontoon moorings. Try doing that in a strong wind that howls across the open marina! I did and after getting blown broadside toward a massive stanchion I changed my mind and drove off. Oil could wait.
Beyond Tattenhall (remarkably empty but let's be kind and say most boaters were off cruising) came a solid line of, oh, 200 moored craft on farmer's field moorings. The canny farmer had even set up hard standing for DIY project boats. What an enterprise - a lot more profitable than Welsh sheep I'd wager.
Soon came the succession of five locks; fortunately we teamed up with another boat as all five were against us so needed filling and all five were fiendishly heavy too.
After the usual scruffy back street entry into Chester we found ourselves going past smarter flats and bars to the recommended moorings where we slotted in among a cluster of craft.
It certainly doesn't rival Manchester, Liverpool or Birmingham as a desirable canalside destination: opposite Mecca bingo and just down from the Frog and Nightingale. I'll report tomorrow on just how quiet our night was!

Lleaving the Llangollen

2011-07-15T21:12:00.003+01:00

We're going down and they're going up as we cross in the middle of Bunbury staircase

We finally left the Llangollen today after a thoroughly enjoyable trip. It might be busy with hire boats but it is a lovely canal, packed with things to see and do and the scenery is marvellous, especially the closer you get to Wales.
But today we dropped down the four Hurleston locks, swung left and headed up the Shroppie en route to Chester. And were immediately in for a shock. The locks on this northern end of the Shroppie are wide and super-heavy. Not nice at all - especially once it started to rain.
The first ones were a brain teaser too; a two lock staircase so in the middle you can find yourself with one boat going up and another going down in the same lock! Weird.
But after struggling through four of these hefty locks we finally moored up by The Shady Oak pub at Tiverton, overlooking the monumental remains of Beeston Castle up on a rocky hill. The pub meal was spot on: straightforward stuff (cottage pie and fish & chips) but beautifully cooked and very tasty. Plus a couple of yummy home-made puds as well. All at a decent price. It's not rocket science but why can so few pubs manage it?

Boats mean business

2011-07-15T21:07:00.002+01:00

I read somewhere recently that boats bring £34 million worth of business to Wales. I can well believe it having seen the amount of hireboaters going up and down the Llangollen.
But it's in little towns like Ellesmere you can really see how boaters bring money to canalside towns. Walk around the streets (and there aren't many of them) and every other person seems to be a boater. Those who don't have Aussie or American accents have boaters' tans, hats (or beer guts!).
You pass and re-pass a lot of the same boats on a canal trip along the Llangollen and you can spot them moored up in places like Ellesmere - or parked up outside canalside pubs.
I'd like to visit Ellesmere in mid-winter - it must be like Sleepy Hollow with no boaters around.

A night to remember

2011-07-13T21:20:00.002+01:00

Our to-ing and fro-ing on the Llangollen did give us a chance to track down Beth Llewellin, wife of late and much lamented motoring journalist genius, Phil.
They, as we knew, lived in Welsh Frankton, just up the hill from the Frankton locks. But with no internet and no address how would we find her in the sprawling hamlet?
Fortunately Vicky had a clue - she remembered (god knows how) from a drunken press party evening that Phil had told her they'd just installed a cattle grid across the driveway to stop sheep wandering in.
So this pair of sheep wandered the lanes until, on the point of giving up, we spotted a house with a cattle grid and a Mini Cooper in the drive beyond it.
The woman who opened the door was momentarily bemused by the two tramp like creatures and their small dog who stood there but then eagerly invited us in and while we drank and exchanged motoring anecdotes, Brian lay contentedly on the fitted carpet recalling the luxury of life in a proper home.
The following night we went back again for a super meal (thanks Beth) and listened to her tell of some of the fabulous cars, ridiculous drives in every corner of the world and fascinating people she and Phil had met. Nearly a thousand people attended his funeral in Oswestry, such was the appreciation of this talented and gregarious writer.
If you don't know his work then I'd urge you to read his book 'The Road to Muckle Flugga' .
Wherever you are, cheers Phil!!

Back on air

2011-07-13T21:12:00.002+01:00

Apologies to regular readers - I hope there are some of you - we've been off-line for a few days for a variety of reasons.
First of all the inverter went bang. Literally. A loud bang and a big flash and it inverted no more. That was when we were nearing the top of the Monty and meant no laptop use to conserve what little computer battery there was for emergency emailing.
Blackwater Marina in Ellesmere didn't have an inverter but Maestermyn back down the Llangollen direction did have a suitable one. It was the wrong way but not too far. However stocks of Fruit & Fibre, beer and bread - three manly diet staples - were out so we had to go to Ellesmere Tesco first, then back again to Maestermyn.
The inverter fitted and power restored we then cruised into a broadband black hole, and have only now left it down on the mile-long Prees Branch of the Llangollen. This is one of those dead end branches which you just have to go down anyway, because it's there. It does have a marina at the end though and the marina has an excellent launderette - strictly for moorers unless someone has left the door unlocked. Which they had.

Crumbling to dust?

2011-07-09T20:34:00.009+01:00

The sandstone memorial to Waterway Recovery Group founder, Graham Palmer, beside the lock named after him on the Montgomery Canal is slowly crumbling away.
But is the canal that he and his team did so much to bring back from the dead also turning to dust?
Thirty odd years ago the saving and restoration of the Monty was a cause celebre in the fledgling restoration movement. The 'Big Dig' at Welshpool saw volunteers clear out the canal bed and show how good a reborn canal could be. Through the seventies and eighties work was done all along the line.

Only seven miles are open from the Llangollen to Maesbury Marsh but further inland there are 11 navigable miles, with rebuilt locks and bridges and even on the stretches between clearance work and bankside piling can be seen all around.
But the pace seems to have slowed. Even locals admit that any completion date has drifted far into the distance. We took a walk down the eight mile gap between where we're moored at Maesbury and Arddleen where the land locked 11 miles begins to see the current state of affairs.
Beyond the present terminus a further half mile lies waiting, finished and in water. It's been like that since 2007. Another 600 yards is being worked on by Shropshire Canal Society volunteers but that won't be ready until 2012.
The first big goal is Llanymynech three more miles on where the canal is in water and briefly navigable. Apart from one country by- road bridge to conquer it's not hard going - the route is there; the canal bed clear. But at present progress rate volunteers could take 25 years to get there!
And the tragedy of that is that beyond Llanymynech so much expensive work has been done. Work which is already being reclaimed back by nature. The beautiful Carreghofa Locks, below, rebuilt in 1982, are so rotted they already look in need of replacement, in places the bankside piling is rusting, in others vegetation has taken hold.

The canal is entirely in water to Arddleen, though chopped by two flattened bridges taking the busy A483 across it (above). They will be a serious challenge.

We finally reached the so-called navigable 11 miles to find - at least in the first mile - just the same weed clogged, empty waterway that we had been walking along before. This is the winding hole!
Nowhere on the route are there any billboards, explanatory story boards about the restoration or any sign that anything is happening. Something is surely going wrong: so much money has been spent to resurrect a glorious canal that will bring tourism and wealth deep into mid Wales but it risks being money wasted unless the project can be kick-started again.
Walk the route and you see a canal which is a realistic restoration project - far more achievable than some of the pie in the sky, headline grabbing tales of inclined planes and boat lifts elsewhere. Surely it can be done?

Designed by a blind architect?

2011-07-09T20:20:00.003+01:00

British architecture hit rock bottom in the sixties and early seventies. (Remember the tower blocks?) but rarely have I see a nastier, more inconsiderate and just damned well ugly piece of design than the indoor market in Oswestry.
This brick blockhouse replaced an earlier market building and sits in the market square flanked by the splendid Victorian Guildhall and the sturdy black and white Eagle pub. Who could possibly have designed something so ugly and so out of keeping with its surroundings?
Inside is a pitiful market scattered around a dreary, institutional interior.
Best option? Demolish the lot and start again.

We've sprung a leak!

2011-07-08T21:30:00.002+01:00

It wouldn't be a Star cruise without a breakdown. This time we're leaking. Fortunately it's not a leak from outside - that would be a problem - but a leak from the engine cooling system.
I spotted it the night before last as we were due to head toward the Montgomery Canal - the coolant header tank was empty. But it was dark, it was raining and we were moored outside the pub. I decided that after a pint and some dinner things might seem less fraught. And they did: it was either overheating for some unknown cause - possible but probably fixable; a leaking pipe - fixable; or a blown head gasket - not so fixable but least likely since the engine was running fine.
I decided to sleep on it.
The next morning what was revealed was a copper pipe from the engine to the skin cooler which had chafed through and was drip dripping away. Snag was that in all my spares copper pipes and brass fittings were conspicuous by their absence. So we decided to potter on down the Montgomery, checking the coolant and topping up as needed and fix it when we got to the other end.
This morning I got a bus into nearby Oswestry (free, courtesy of my old codger pass) picked up some bits, headed back and spent the afternoon sorting it out. Now we're up and running and leak free.

Lleaving Llangollen

2011-07-06T21:21:00.002+01:00

There comes a moment when you realise that it's time to go. That however much you like a place, you're supposed to be traveling. And that if you don't go now, well you might not go at all.
Things start to become a habit. Things like a morning coffee in the excellent Llangollen Wharf cafe watching the granny-bus visitors and foreign tourists hustle and bustle to get aboard a horse-drawn boat ride.
And we were getting sucked into the Eisteddfod experience too. After watching the delightful parade yesterday we were entertained by sword dancers from Newcastle (the Geordie Newcastle that is) and then by a wonderful choir of Ukranian folk singers in the main street today.
They might come from all over the world to sing and dance in the Eisteddfod but it's still an intimate, small town experience that wouldn't be the same in a big city. We'll definitely be back and maybe stay longer next time.
But today we were off. We left at lunchtime, cruised in sunshine despite the forecast and moored up shortly after the rain started. We're outside the Jack Mytton Inn somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the English/Welsh border country. And what a curious place it is too: a bar that sells a fine range of draught beers but only seats about ten people and a cavernous restaurant that seats about a hundred in surroundings that would have been just about fashionable in the 1980s. Food good in parts but atmosphere sorely lacking despite the friendly service. Sorry Jack!
Tomorrow it's onto the Montgomery.

PS It wouldn't be a Star-cruise without me falling in or damaging myself. Today I slipped jumping off the counter when mooring, barked a shin on the concrete edge and dunked a leg in the water!

Rush hour in Llangollen

2011-07-06T21:15:00.002+01:00

Believe it or not this starts at 5.30 a.m. On the canal at any rate. That's the time we were slammed against the concrete canalside by a hire boat charging away from town.
And then came another just before six, and two more. By seven I'd given up the idea of dozing off again and got up to make a cup of tea. Not all of them were speeders, to be fair, but enough were to get me out of bed on the wrong foot. Where were they rushing to at that time?
We were moored on the canalside outside of the 48-hour limit zone, and neatly tied up to rings with fenders and a spring line as well but we still got heaved about.
But no point getting too grumpy is there: they were on holiday, trying to pack in as much as possible into two weeks' break from work. It's just us lucky few who can afford to meander.

Llangollen's Eisteddfodd begins

2011-07-05T18:13:00.004+01:00

The 2011 Eistedfodd parade leaders
The young Japanese contingent passing to a united chorus of 'aah, sweet' from all the grannys in the crowd
The remarkable Breton dancers
Best dressed: the Ukrainian competitors
Irish dancing in the main road
Guest of honour Terry Waite
The African dance-leader was exhausting just to watch

Even if - like us - you're not overwhelmed by the prospect of folk singing, dancing and operatic arias you couldn't have helped thoroughly enjoying the opening parade through the town. Teams of dancers and singers in national costume from countries as diverse as Ukraine and India, as far apart as Canada and Australia, parade noisily and thrillingly along the streets.
Most colourful were the Ukrainians, noisest were the African drummers but the most curious - and the best - were the austerely dressed Breton dancers.

A pie to remember

2011-07-04T21:29:00.005+01:00

Brian waits hopefully but the pie is disappearing fast*

'Renowned for our home made steak pies' says the Telford Inn at Trevor by the Aqueduct. And after sampling them we can confirm that they are indeed some of the best we've had. Massive portions of proper pie with crunchy pastry topping (none of that flaky pastry hat stuff you often get), filled with succulent, quality steak and really tasty gravy.
And of course you can't have a pie without a pudding...two portions of steamed treacle pudding please.
To walk the lunch off we walked back via the Offa's Dyke Path, which was an offaly long way. Ouch!
*And yes, Brian fans, he did get some pie.

World heritage s*ite?

2011-07-04T21:10:00.002+01:00

This is the sight that greets visitors by car to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct - Monday lunchtime on a sunny July day and the carpark waste bin clearly hasn't been emptied since before the weekend.
Somehow it's typical of the place: the BW run visitor centre has been closed down - apparently they want one run by volunteers but none seem to have appeared so far. All that remains are some information boards and a small shop run belonging to the hire fleet based there - and operated by someone whose customer facing skills seemed sorely lacking when we visited.
It seems a golden opportunity wasted. A World Heritage site which was teeming with visitors when we walked there today ought to be the jewel in the crown for the waterways. It's a public relations goldmine where the canals can be explained, promoted and visitors won over to the cause. But there was not even a leaflet.
As one local walker we met said: "There was all sorts going on when they were trying to get it to be a World Heritage site but since then nothing."
It's a crying shame: visiting the aqueduct on foot only confirms what a superhuman achievement it was. The soaring stone columns are pieced together out of blocks about 4ft x 2ft x 2ft, all cut so accurately there's scarcely a scrape of mortar between them. Imagine the sheer effort of hoisting them; the huge amount of wooden scaffolding, the sheer numbers of people working on the job. It beggars belief.

On the history train

2011-07-03T20:30:00.004+01:00

I like a good steam railway and Llangollen has a good steam railway so we just had to go on it today. It's a stunning little line, running eight picturesque miles along beside the River Dee to the present terminus at the little riverside village of Carrog.
It's another of those Beeching sacrifices. Back in the 1960s maybe it seemed sensible to shut it but today you can see what a terrific tourist trail a proper Dee valley line would have become.
We were pulled by what I'd call a proper loco, not one of those little tank engine but a big ex GWR 4-6-0 locomotive and we lolled in the comfort of a compartment whose soft, springy seats are so much nicer than the firm, cramped Inter-City ones of today.Vicky thinks wistfully about the Sunday lunch she missed at Carrog

The only mistake we made was at Carrog where we stopped for a rather forgettable snack at the station buffet, only to walk down the road into the pretty little village and discover a big, bustling pub serving a huge range of tempting food. Damn!

Carbohydrate neutral exercising

2011-07-03T20:25:00.002+01:00

Watching my tenth large backside and thighs plod up the footpath, why, I asked Starwoman, are so many walkers somewhat, well, stoutly built? All that exercise should surely be good for their figures.
Simple, she replied. They go for a long walk, work up an appetite and so they call at the pub where they demolish several pints and a large portion of pie and chips.
It's what we call carbohydrate neutral exercising. Burn off some carbs and then replace them.

On the history trail

2011-07-03T19:58:00.004+01:00

Telford's weir was stop one on our Llangollen History Trail, a six mile scenic walk taking in the 12th century castle ruins high on the hill overlooking the town and due to take up to six hours according to the leaflet.
The towpath walk to the weir was the easy bit; after that it was almost entirely uphill. Steeply uphill. Next came Llantysilio Church, charmingly set within an evocative graveyard of Joneses and Evanses.
But what of the church itself? It would have been easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a fat person to enter Llantysilio Church. The door would open little more than a crack - presumably to prevent anyone disappearing with the "rare medieval oak eagle lectern". Fortunately Starwoman and me have not been at the chips too often and slipped inside to view a simple but atmospheric interior.
From here we followed the signs up Velvet Hill which "gets its name from the soft texture of the sheep cropped grass and moss". Of which there was none to be seen. Nor any more waymarkers. Just ferns. When the path split, we were lost, as were two other walkers and only the arrival of a third walker, relying on an OS map rather than a guide, put us straight and back on route to Valle Crucis Abbey.
Once it was the second richest abbey in Wales after Tintern. Today the ruins are smothered in a huge camping and caravan site. A great way to treat our heritage, eh. And the signs ran out again.
We followed our noses uphill and, as we climbed steeply out of the trees and ferns a superb view of surrounding hills came into view. But we were more than two hours in and Dinas Bran castle still looked depressingly distant. And much higher. Brian, uninspired by the prospect of exploring a 12th century ruin, was walking to rule now - even after being fortified by dog biscuits and water. Still, we plodded on, and finally, there was the fingerpost pointing to a path zig-zagging up a steep, steep slope to our goal.
But, boy, was that last mile slow! I don't think I'm ready for Everest base camp yet - this one was struggle enough. But the views were staggering. Way to the east we could see the Newbridge railway viaduct and the road bridge across the valley - both of them far beyond the Pontcysyllte aqueduct - though that was hidden in the trees. And out to the west were the high hill tops of Snowdonia.
Brian decides his body double will tackle the next hill walk

We headed down the short route back to town. And Brian, curiously, was a dog instantly revitalised pulling hard at the end of his extending lead.

The end of the beginning

2011-07-03T19:52:00.002+01:00

The Llangollen canal basin isn't quite the end of the canal; the last two miles are only navigable either by one of the horse-drawn trip boats or on foot.
The real end - or to be more accurate, the real beginning - is an anonymous looking stone shed from beneath which gurgles the canal's feed from the River Dee. The shed houses a pump which now pushes thousands of gallons of water daily down the canal to a huge reservoir at Hurleston down at the far end.
Beyond the pump house is another of Telford's master strokes, a semi-circular weir which he built to corral the waters of the Dee and separate enough to feed his fledgling canal. Too much, according to local millers, whose river powered mills struggled with the sudden drop in water supplies.

Bringing and buying

2011-07-02T12:45:00.002+01:00

Llangollen was heaving with visitors this morning, and a curious mixture they were too of serious hill walkers, ice-cream eating day trippers and skinny, flip-flop clad youths who'd look more in Newquay. The shops are the same: you can buy everything from tea towels and candy floss tourist tat to 'natural foods' to boots and rucksacks.
Vicky was disappointed though: there's no Llidl in Llangollen!
We dumped off a bookshelf load of previously enjoyed paperbacks at a local charity shop and re-stocked with a couple more. Then I re-stocked my innards with a substantial Welsh lamb oggie (lamb mince, leek and potato in flaky pastry) courtesy of James Bailey, purveyors of the finest heavy duty cholesterol. Their large jam doughnuts are the size of footballs! But after putting away my oggie I had to admit defeat and save my vanilla and cream slice in the fridge for another time.
That time will probably be this afternoon when we return from a six mile walk to Horseshoe Falls, source of the canal, and up to the ruins of Dinas Bran castle high on a 1000ft hill overlooking the town.

Brian the Sun Dog's new throne

2011-07-02T12:40:00.002+01:00

Our Brian is keener on sunbathing than a St Tropez starlet. Usually he grills himself gently on the tug deck but this morning the sun was shining through the engine room hatch so....

Walking the watery plank

2011-07-01T21:55:00.002+01:00

An impossibly narrow shimmery pencil line of water stretches out across the sky. Even the presence of a few tourists on the towpath cannot stop me catching my breath and giving a gulp of anticiption before setting off across the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.
It's ludicrously narrow - inches wider than the boat and on the non-towpath side the water laps a foot below the top of the iron trough we're travelling along and were I to take a small step sideways from the helm, there isn't the merest thread of a guardrail to separate me from the 126 feet drop to the Dee Valley below.
Along the 1000 ft aqueduct I gaze down at a football pitch below, a sewage works on the other, the wide, rushing River Dee and off to either side at the wonderful, distant views.
What an engineering masterpiece this is. We're travelling on a structure build over 200 years ago, in sections of cast iron trough joined together with seals that still don't leak and build under Thomas Telford's direction in just ten years by manual labour alone under the gaze of people who said it could never be done.
An unforgettable experience!

Rydym wedi cyrraedd

2011-07-01T21:24:00.003+01:00

"We have arrived". That's what the Welsh title means - according to Google at any rate. And we have arriverd: we're sitting in the Llangollen canal basin right at the end of the canal.
It wasn't a long journey to get here today - but it was a memorable one. In 12 miles we had two locks, some extremely narrow sections, oh, and a couple of aqueducts.
The first of these, at Chirk, would be considered world class - a rugged stone structure whose impressive appearance is only backed up by the railway viaduct behind it. Unfortunately Chirk is, to use a topical metaphor, the Andy Murray of aqueducts and just down the road is the Rafael Nadal in the shape of the unique and mind blowing Pontcysyllte. But that is another story.For now a quick run down on the journey pre and post Ponte.
We started deep in Welsh/English border countryside. Ironically I'd realised the previous evening that we were just a mile away from Welsh Frankton, the home village of Phil Llewellyn, a late and much lamented motoring journalist chum. How entertaining it might have been to wander up to his door and be invited in by a beaming, ever jovial Phil. Then to stagger back, many whiskys later! Ah well, enough of that.
The first two locks for 20 miles (and the last on the canal) were s0on despatched and we headed on along a canal that mixes open stretches with nadgery twists and turns where bridges are usually hidden - and hire boats too. It's shallow in places but never impossible, though woe can betide you if you venture too near the edges.
The canal beats a rather secretive path around the edges of a high, steep valley and it's only when you glimpse the Looming Chirk aqueduct through the trees that you realise the scale of the achievement in getting a waterway here at all.
The aqueduct is a sturdy structure and despite its height above the valley one can potter across without a moment's anxiety. And 'potter' is the word for progress is slow across its shallow, silted channel.
The we were through the 450 yard Chirk tunnel - one-way and narrow like all the Llangollen tunnels with walls that threatened to bash the cabin sides. Another tunnel, another miles, a liftbridge and then we were at the Ponte.
Over that and we were in the mayhem of a hireboat logjam; three of them waiting to cross the aqueduct and the small arm we'd thought of mooring in choked with more. Steak pie at the Trevor Inn will have to wait until the way back. So we turned left and took the narrow, shallow channel to Llangollen.
I've been in narrow and I've been in shallow but rarely one so narrow and so shallow that at times we could barely move forwards and Vicky walked ahead to warn any oncoming craft to wait for us to come through.
The last half mile into the town is rightly famous - a concrete channel barely wide enough to be a storm drain runs between cottages and looks down on the town below before reaching the wharf and, finally, the mooring basin.

Parking for a pie

2011-06-30T21:43:00.003+01:00

I'm a sucker for a pork pie. Michael Pearson's entertaining guide to the Welsh Waterways speaks highly of Vermuelen's pork pies baked fresh each day at their Ellesmere premises so the lunch menu was taken care of!
The Ellesmere Arm, unlike that in unfortunate Whitchuch, runs right to the heart of the town. And there's a new Tesco in the canal basin, facing the evocative but sadly decayed Shropshire Canal Company warehouse and a preserved loading crane . So naturally it was choked with boats but there's always room for a little'un like Star and we crept all the way to the end where there was indeed just enough room to moor.
A five minute walk took me to the pie shop and lunch was a substantial pie (they sell them by weight incidentally) with superb crusty pastry, rich with meat and tasty jelly. The jam doughnuts I bought for 'afters' were, I have to admit not in the same league sadly.
Ellesmere is a charming, slightly sleepy small town. It hasn't the same sizeable houses and large churches as can be found in Whitchurch and perhaps the small, manageable nature of its buildings is the reason why they are better preserved than the other's.
It does't take long to wander round the amiable streets but when you venture a little further and discover the Mere a whole new side of the place is revealed. This huge lake, surrounded by trees and beautifully kept gardens and lawns has the feel of a genteel Thames-side park with its steam day launch, tea room and small visitor centre. It was alive with visitors - no wonder the town has so many restaurants, tea rooms and, of course, such a superb pie shop.
At five p.m., just as the increasing numbers of hire boaters were arriving to tie up for a night at one of the local pubs or restaurants we fired up and headed off for another late evening session. On a sunny evening, it's quite the best time to be afloat; you can have the canal almost to yourself. Tonight we're tied up somewhere in the middle of nowhere, a mile or two after the junction with the Montgomery Canal. And just 14 miles from Llangollen.

All 'ell at Ellesmere

2011-06-30T21:31:00.003+01:00

The Ellesmere Tunnel looks innocent enough in the Nicholsons Guide, a mere 87 yards underneath a main road. But the entrance to it is on a 90 degree corner so it's completely blind and - as you discover only when you get there - it's strictly one-way!
And, of course, there was a boat coming. I'd dropped Vicky off to take a peek into the tunnel as soon as I saw the problem but, too late, the boat was almost out. I tried to reverse but was already turning in so the boat came back on the left (or wrong) side of the canal. And there, despite my efforts, it stayed - stuck.
Eventually the other boat came past me on his wrong side but by now three other boats had formed up behind me on the correct side so the exit gap was narrowing. And another boat was on its way through the tunnel. As they tried to get out between us all, they got stuck! So now two of us - one facing each way and on the wrong side - were stuck and blocking the whole tunnel.
And another boat was coming through.
I finally managed to reach my pole and pole us back across to the correct side, helped by some Germans on a hire boat (we is it always the Germans who take charge - same thing happened on our cruise a couple of years back) and everyone struggled free and got on our way.
All a bit of fun but, to be honest, a BW warning sign advising that the tunnel was one-way and blind might have been a good idea.

Late night extra

2011-06-30T21:22:00.002+01:00

There we were sitting at our mooring last night and admiring the warm sunny evening when we thought "it's perfect; let's go cruising!"
So at 8.15 p.m. we did. Untied and headed off for another hour or so before mooring at the start of a strange low-lying landscape called Whixall Moss, uncannily like the Fens we know so well. These Mosses are actually areas of peat, now no longer harvested - if that's the word - but turned into wildlife reserves rich in plant and insect life. Including mosquitoes, though they'd gone to bed by the time we arrived.
It's a weird contrast to the rolling green pastures of Cheshire, with their black and white cows and handsome farmhouses. Instead there are a smattering of squalid homesteads struggling in flat, semi-barren fields.
These peat bogs were formed as the last ice age melted, the great chunks of receding ice crushing the land below. The same ice also melted to former a number of much more attractive lakes or 'meres' which you pass on the way towards Ellesmere - itself, as you can guess, the home of a 'mere'.
But before reaching it we had our own adventure....

A walk into Whitchurch

2011-06-29T19:35:00.003+01:00

How times change. Thirty years ago towns were busy trying to fill in the decaying remnants of their dirty and unwanted canals. Today those that succeeded in replacing them with car parks or drive-throughs are looking with envy at those who failed. Or who had the foresight not to try.
Today the little Shropshire town of Whitchurch would dearly love a canal arm to bolster its faltering local economy with tourists from the Llangollen a mile distant. Unfortunately the arm was closed in the 1940s and the land largely sold off in the 1960s save for a few hundred yards from the main canal. With some foresight the local councils did see the benefit of trying to resurrect it in the 1980s and put a stop on any building over the land that would prevent the canal's return.
Unfortunately, all that has resulted is a nettle-filled linear wilderness surrounded by modern housing estates.
There are very realistic plans to extend the arm a short way further into this and to create a small mooring basin a handy step closer to the shops, and rather bolder ones to go further and build an inclined plane. Given the snail's pace of progress on the former one wonders whether Whitchurch will still be around to witness the latter.
The reason for my pessimism is not just the potential cost of building such a waterway super-structure in the present and foreseeable future but also seeing the evident decline in the current town.
It's probably no different to many similar little country towns: a pleasant mix of fine church, elegant large houses and one or two decent local shops interspersed with too many empty shop fronts and decaying houses of all ages and sizes. Signs in windows speak of a campaign to 'Keep Tesco In The Town Centre'. If, as it presumably wants to, the store migrates to the edge of town then what reason there was to shop in High Street will vanish and Whitchurch will slip away with it. Whatever happens to any canal plan.

Through the bottleneck

2011-06-29T19:01:00.003+01:00

Entering the picturesque bottom lock and, below, beginning the staircase

The delightfully named Grindley Brook is the Llangollen Canal's equivalent of a motorway contraflow. The perenially heavy canal traffic is suddenly funnelled into a cluster of six locks, including a three-lock staircase.
A staircase, for the uninitiated, is a chain of directly connected locks: going uphill you enter the bottom one; fill that up with water from the (already filled) middle one; go into that, fill it from the top one; go into the top one and fill that from the canal ahead. Got it? The only complexity is the need to make sure all the locks are properly full - or empty - before entering the chain. And the staircase is inherently wasteful of water - if one boat goes up, all the lower locks have to be emptied of water before one can go down.
For that reason, a lock-keeper is on hand to ensure boats go either up or down in small processions (and to make sure we don't find two boats facing each other in mid-staircase!).
As you can imagine, the whole place can become a serious bottleneck in peak holiday times - witness the ranks of bollards for the queue-ers. It's also a goldmine for the lockside @29 cafe/shop and for the little back garden craft and secondhand bookshops in nearby houses.
It's a curiosity that the rest of the world passes such a busy and historic by without a glance. Step a few paces away to the road beyond and you wouldn't know Grindley Brook was even there.
Perhaps that's for the best. Let us boaters make our mistakes in peace !

Onto the Lllangollen

2011-06-28T22:03:00.002+01:00

Nantwich was this morning. Tonight we're moored up on the edge of Wrenbury, a little village some six miles up the Llangollen Canal and only 38 miles and 12 locks from our principal destination on this trip.
It was an easy couple of miles up the Shroppie to Hurleston Junction where the Llangollen begins with a flight of four locks to lift you 30 odd feet up above the surrounding farmland. Then another five locks climbing steadily up toward the Welsh hills found us here at Wrenbury.
We've rather rushed it to get here, conscious of a need to be back at Streethay by mid-August and a desire to beat the hireboat rush along Britain's most popular canal. Yes, we have indeed rushed it becausetwo boats ahead of us is the little Springer Waterbug of our Streethay neighbour, John, who left nearly three weeks before us! He admits he isn't rushing - he's already walked on to suss out tomorrow's mooring just a couple of miles away. John's been everywhere on his little boat: the Thames, London on the GU, the Kennet&Avon and the Llangollen - though not for many years.
It's a shame there aren't more Johns on the cut; people enjoying themselves in small affordable boats. You don't have to be a wealthy retiree in a £100,000 palace to explore the wonders of the waterways.

Footballers' wives shop here?

2011-06-28T20:34:00.002+01:00

Nantwich is indeed the attractive market town the guidebooks promise it to be. We strolled down Welsh Row from the canal past elegant Georgian houses and smart Victorian terraces with perfect gardens, over the River Weaver bridge and into a town centre that has remained remarkably unsullied by the corporate architectural savagery of the building societies, banks and High Street multiples whose bland facades have destroyed many a similar town.
No, Nantwich is charming, a maze of irregular streets and local shops. It is also extremely affluent, a mix of Cheshire land owning 'old money' and footballers' wives 'new money'. The biggest shop in town is a massive Christians Kitchens, the bespoke kitchen builders so sure of their place in the commercial world that the windows are clothed by blinds and you have to go in the shop to examine the wares! Right across the road is a sizeable Aga shop and everywhere you look are expensive clothes shops and chic coffee parlours. But there was a delightful little indoor market of largely amateur stallholders selling bric a brac - plus (inevitably in such posh environs) a plethora of charity shops so we could re-stock Star's paperback library.
Posh it might be, but Nantwich is a town like many towns used to be and all too few are today.

The unmistakeable sound

2011-06-27T18:06:00.004+01:00

Last night as I walked Brian down the top few locks of the Audlem flight I could hear the distant but unmistakeable 'plop, plop, gulp, pause, plop, pause pause, plop plop' of a Bolinder - the famous single cylinder working boat engine. Or should it be infamous given its foibles - like cutting out unexpectedly, deciding to run backwards when you want it to run forwards and trying to throw its human starter out of the engine room hatch when he tries to kick start it (off the flywheel) and it kicks back. "A lovely engine – in someone else's boat!" as one historic
boat enthusiast once put it.
The boat came into view - it was the magnificent looking Thomas Clayton boat 'Spey', a now rare wooden hulled boat which originally carried tar oil down the canal from the Mersey to the Midlands. The front third of Spey had just been rebuilt, using shaped and steam bent two and a half inch thick oak planks for the sides and three inch thick elm boards for the bottom.
It was on its way to the re-opening of the Droitwich Canal and making slow progress up this part of the flight, its three feet plus draft frequently seeing it grounding. Still the back cabin stove was lit, the pies were in the oven and the three man crew was planning to keep going until darkness stopped them!

A lorra lot of locks

2011-06-27T17:45:00.002+01:00

Fifteen of them this morning in scorching heat, even though we were started by nine a.m. Still, mustn't complain. By the time we did numbers 16 and 17 this afternoon it was wet and windy - and I know which I prefer.
The Audlem flight is as perfect as we'd come to expect from the immaculate canal. Locks working smoothly - and not leaking - grass around them trimmed, towpaths in good order and even seats to clump on at some.
Having just read the Canal Wolrd Forum post 'who wields the windlass?' I kept a check on the boats that passed us on the flight. All but one, crewed by an eager bunch of young hirers, relied on the woman crew member to work the locks while hubby manned the tiller. And usually stood motionless throughout while his missus sweated.
The variation in Body Mass Index was also apparent. The first crew set the trend: lean, fit locking wife and a husband whose physique answered another topical question, one raised on Radio 5 Live this morning, 'should men go around bare chested in the hot weather?' In this case most definitely NOT! The rolling layers of white flab made me glad I hadn't eaten a cooked breakfast.
The flight drops down steadily to reach Audlem village with two locks to go. The temptation of a convenient mooring for a pint in The Shroppie Fly (famous for its narrow boat fashioned bar) saw us moor up for a beer and an early lunch before finishing off the locks. Before you ask, lunch was a healthy salad including a fresh-this-morning lettuce on sale at a mid-flight lockside stall.
These local farmers have really embraced the canal as a source of business and good for them. So far we've passed at least four selling farm produced bacon, pork, salad, eggs, vegetables and so on.
After lunch as the weather worsened we tackled the last locks of the day at Hack Green. Nearby is a 'Secret Nuclear Bunker' - a regional centre of government in the early 1980s in which the civil servants and military leaders who had started the nuclear annihilation would have been able to survive it while the rest of us were vapourised. Today it's a tourist attraction but not for us. The cold war nuclear threat is too much part of our younger days to revisit.
Tonight we're moored up in Nantwich, ready for a wander round what is claimed to be an attractive and interesting town tomorrow.

Remote canalside pubs

2011-06-26T21:23:00.002+01:00

The guidebooks like to speak of these but, in my experience, the reality rarely seems to live up to the description. I remember the shock at arriving at the "remote" Consall Black Lion on the Caldon and finding a shrieking horde of kids rushing around while their parents boozed and shouted. It could have been Blackpool.
I hoped for more from the "remote" Anchor Inn at High Offley - and got it. This is a pub like I recall country pubs in my youth. Big settle benches in the public bar, vaguely uncomfortable padded stools in the posh folks' saloon and a choice of one ale (Wadsworth's excellent 6X), one lager and for the effete wine drinker, red or white from a wine box on the counter. Plus 'Strictly No Children' and - of course - no food.
In Tom Rolt's day most pubs were like this and it was amusing to compare his descriptions with today's reality. Thde Wharf Inn at Cheswardine "the most remote canal inn we had yet encountered" was a "simple, friendly house with a rough bench beside the fire". I think the picture of today's Wharf Tavern with (presumably) the owner's Range Rover outside says it all.

Earlier on the Staffs & Worcs we passed The Cross Keys, a decent looking pub across the canal bridge from a housing estate. In Rolt's day it was "a little lost canal inn standing amid the fields beside the towpath".
Times, sadly do change, and much as I miss sitting on a bench in a country pub while the landlord brought a jug of ale from the cellar, or playing bar billiards, I'm probably happier eating a decent pie and chips witha pint of decently kept brown beer picked from a choice of four or five. Trouble is such pubs are harder to find than welcoming village inns were in Rolt's day.

Entering a lost world

2011-06-26T21:05:00.002+01:00

Shrouded in trees, its damp, earth red stonework gradually being enwrapped in ivy, the towering buttresses of the Woodseaves Cutting could have been a gateway to a lost world; some vestige of a former civilization, some temple gate.
Which in a sense it was, the entrance to the long gone world of boat transport, of horses and carts, when the next town was an arduous walk away. But though it is just one Telford's many cuttings on the canal, this high sided, claustrophobically tight and tree enveloped corridor still feels a magical place.
We experienced it on a blazing hot summer's day (hard to think that two days back we were shivering inside our fleeces in the wind and rain!). Today we covered 13 miles and ten locks - Telford liked to stack his locks in flights and today we tackled two flights of five. Tonight we're at the top of tomorrow's much bigger challenge, the 15 lock descent down the Audlem Flight.
We also found a Lidl (in Market Drayton) and put an end to Vicky's week long withdrawal symptoms! Too far from the canal to bring home many bargains, though; just the essentials and some Yogosan – which despite sounding like some "lady's product" is an excellent yogurt. Isn't everything, says Vicky.

Never trust a weatherman!

2011-06-25T21:41:00.004+01:00

Woke this morning to hear the Radio 5 Live weather forecaster speak of a "heat warning" with temperatures as high as 30C and nightime highs of 15C. Sounded good to us after a night of incessant rain.
We set off at 9.30 on a cloudy morning for the last seven miles to the junction of the Shroppie. And, of course, it rained! Rained, then stopped, rain then stopped. That was the story of our morning. And never a sight of the sun.
They weren't terribly interesting miles and probably wouldn't have been a whole lot better in the sunshine, weaving as they did round the admittedly largely unseen edge of Wolverhampton. But then we reached Autherley Junction and the shallow stop lock leading onto the Shroppie.
It's remarkable what difference 50 years makes in canal engineering. The James Brindley Staffs&Worcs was opened in the 1770s and is very much an old school' contour canal that followed the natural lie of the land with locks interspersed where necessary. But by the 1835 Shroppie Thomas Telford was drawing straight lines on his maps and forcing the countryside to bend to his will with embankments, cuttings and lock flights.
Travel the Shroppie now and you'l marvel at his achievements as cutting follows embankment follows cutting. Think of the earth moving, the surveying, the sheer logistics of the job in an age of horse and wagon and no roads of note.
Nowhere did we see this better than on the astonishing Shelmore embankment which towers above the surrounding land; its sheer sides sadly hidden by trees. All you can see are trees, treetops below them and the hint of more trees even further down the slopes. With a distant glimpse of fields far below.
The embankments give the views while the cuttings are swathed in an almost tunnel-like green camouflage of trees (sometimes close enough for Vicky to get busy with her new toys - a pair of £2.99 Wilco shears!). And magnificent bridges cross these cuttings too, beautiful stone arches in perfect order - a far remove from the rickety brick bridges of so many narrow canals.
Tonight after a busy day of 25 miles and two locks we are moored outside the quaint Anchor Inn at High Offley - one of the few pubs that can still truly be called "unspoilt" - no food, no children and warm beer served properly without one of those ghastly foam creating taps.
But more on unspoilt pubs another time.

Wandering Gailey

2011-06-24T18:15:00.002+01:00

Five thirty p.m., we had just exited Gailey Top Lock, the last on our stretch of the Staffs & Worcester Canal when the rain started. Perfect timing. We pulled up and called it a day after 13 miles and 11 locks.
It's a delightful canal is the S&W, one of the older, contour following cuts whose meandering pgthway and tree-lined edges often make it feel more like a river than a canal. The locks can be a frustration, the distance between them gradually closing but always remaining just a little too far to walk ahead and set the next. The result can be, as it was today, that a queue gradually forms. But just as soon it can disappear. At Penkridge we were fifth of five, with no-one coming the other way at all. By Gailey we were second and only had one boat behind after others had stopped for various reasons.
With only a quarter mile between each of the last four I walked with Brian while Vicky steered; an arrangement that Brian didn't entirely approve of. He doesn't like his pack being separated anad runs back and forth along the towpath trying to keep walker and boater in sight. At one point he even leapt onto a moored boat, contemplating a jump from there to ours. Not a good idea when he found himself teeth to teeth with a snarling collie and had to be hauled off by his scruff!
Now we're moored, Vicky is cooking dinner and Brian is lying in the warmest part of the boat - on the floor above the calorifier! Sensible dog.
Seven miles tomorrow will take us to the junction with the Shropshire Union Canal where we swing north and head towards Wales.

Escape!

2011-06-23T19:37:00.003+01:00

We finally made it. Several weeks after we started promising ourselves we'd put Harry aside and go off cruising for the summer we finally did it.
We filled up with diesel, topped up the water, bought a new gas cylinder, said our cheerios and cast off at 11.30. Seven hours later and we're moored up in Tixall Wide near Great Haywood (an astonishingly busy Great Haywood and Tixall where we only just manged to squirm Star into the last remaining slot, barely a foot longer than the boat.)
Though it was mid-summer a brisk cold headwind had Vicky searching out her winter fur hat but the weather looks more promising as we near the weekend.
Remarkably, it's been a whole nine months since we arrived at Streethay to start the refurb of Harry. Naively we thought we'd be finished by now. Fat chance. In a way it felt strange leaving, we'd been there so long we felt part of the boatyard village. But we'll be back to carry on all too soon.
Meanwhile here's to a few weeks of relaxed cruising through the quiet countryside as we make our way up to Llangollen.
When we exit Tixall Wide tomorrow we'll be cruising in what is for us virgin territory and we're looking forward to it.

The Bermuda Triangle

2011-06-10T18:08:00.003+01:00

Cheap tools are easy to find; decent ones much harder to come by. Needing some plug cutters and router bits I headed for my nearest purveyor of decent woodworking stuff, Axminster Tools which I discovered had a branch half an hour down the road in Bermuda Trade Park, Nuneaton.
And when I got there I found not just Axminster but Screwfix and MacDonalds in a Bermuda Triangle of manly pleasures.
Axminster is the place though - a huge gleaming showroom with every conceivable woodworking and engineering tool (plus plenty more you've never heard of). I came out having spent £50 - I could have spent £5,000! There was everything from massive spindle moulders to exquisite and excruciatingly expensive hand tools from Lie Nielsen. Expensive as in £350 for a hand plane - albeit with a bronze body.
Ironically the next day, just as I was settling in for a session of routing mouldings on my new framing my trusty Makita router seized solid. If it had happened before visiting Axminster I would have been spoiled for choice. Today it was a toss up between the local Screwfix or Wickes.
Screwfix had the better buy but - of course - it wasn't in stock at the Lichfield depot. Or at Burton, Birmingham or Cannock. Why do they bother with these depots? Nothing I want is ever in stock.
So back to Wickes which promises to 'beat Screwfix prices by 10 per cent'. And, yes, they agreed the Screwfix router was cheaper than theirs. BUT Screwfix's was 1250 watt and the Wickes one 1200 watt. "Sorry, they have to be identical" they said. "But that makes the Screwfix one an even better buy." I said. No joy. It wasn't identical. But Screwfix didn't have one so Wickes got my cash.

Heart of oak

2011-06-08T19:59:00.004+01:00

Well floor and walls at least. After a long spell of faffing around on minor jobs which seemed to take forever but showed no outward sign of progress we've made a quantum leap.
We've laid a solid oak floor and I'm well on the way to framing the cabin sides in some chunky European oak too. The oak actually comes from Russia though we bought it rather nearer to home - from Peak Oak. They're our 'local' supplier of oak flooring being half an hour up the road near Leek and run by cheery and helpful farmer turned oak specialist, Adrian Plant and his son.
It seems he also supplies Braidbar Boats with oak flooring so if he's good enough for them he'll do for us!
For the floor we used 160mm wide 'character grade' oak, which means it comes with enough knots and flaws to give it, er, character, using long 2m plus lengths to minimise the number of cross joints. Then I bought some knot-free 120mm 'prime grade' and got him to machine off the tongues and grooves to leave me 110mm wide and 20mm thick lengths that would be just the job for some chunky framing.
About eight hundred quid later we hauled the lot back to Harry, coated it in Osmo Polyxoil to seal it and started to fit it. Well first I decided to ask for some advice on how to fit it. And I wished I hadn't. Basically it turns out there are two schools of thought - one says "screw it down" and the other says "whatever you do, don't screw it down". Their choice is to glue it together and leave it floating on the sub-floor. To which the first school says "don't ever glue it together".
Finally I decided to take Adrian's advice and screw it down with blind screws through the tongues - using some remarkable new floorboard screws from Spax which he recommended. And boy, were they good: they cut their own way in without splitting the wood even an inch from the end of the tongue and so need no time consuming pilot hole drilling. A small, steeply angled countersunk head lets them be pulled right into the surface too. Brilliant!
The floor went down with little more than a couple of days and a couple of top coats of Polyxoil produced a superb waxy sheen.

And then we covered it all up again!
It had to be protected from the rest of the work so it's now hidden under sheets of hardboard and cardboard.
The framing has been slower going. Even with the big compound mitre saw I bought to do up a house and which is far too huge really for boat fitting. Trouble is that nothing is square on a boat. Even things that look square are just a degree or two out. And there's nothing more exasperating than cutting a ninety degree joint and discovering it should have been ninety two degrees - the resulting gap looks like a chasm.
But we're getting there.
Meanwhile poor old Vicky had been trying hard not to get frustrated and bored at being unable to join in the refitting work. Until she decided to prep and paint the side of Harry next to the bank. She's been working away sanding, painting, flatting back and re-coating again and it looks superb.
Or it did.
I went off to get the camera to photograph it, came back and discovered she was busy sanding it all down again to get ready for another coat. So no picture until next time!

Gunning for Star

2011-04-28T21:28:00.002+01:00

Poor old Star has taken a bit of a back seat these past few months as we've slaved away on Harry but this weekend it gets its turn.
We came out of the water and onto the slipway today to give a well deserved spring spruce up - a new coat of blacking on the hull, a strip back and repaint of the tug deck and some touching up of the sides.
Which gave me a chance to try out another boatyard toy - the pneumatic needle gun. This is a fiendish device which batters the steelwork with a cluster of steel needles about the size of the knitting ones but a lot more powerful. They tap away at the steel and blacking and paint goes flying.
In only a couple of hours the sides above the waterline were back to bare metal so the blacking will look smooth and flat rather than patchily hiding years of scrapes and dings.
It's a great tool though a bit of a beast; my hands are still shaking from the vibbrratttionn and there's a decent size blister on one of them.
Tomorrow are alternative royal wedding enterprise will be another coat of blacking and a coat of paint. Maybe followed, like today, with some beers and a takeaway.

Spot the difference

2011-04-23T22:03:00.002+01:00

Yes, at long last that photo from the front of the boat looks different. The bulkheads are in. The bathroom is finally about to be separated off from the rest of the boat.
Even thought they are only temporarily pinned in place it feels like a huge step forward - finally the interior is starting to take shape.
Building bulkheads is harder than it might seem. Nothing's square, level or straight in a boat you see. The trick is to find the centre of the floor and the centre of the ceiling, drop a 'vertical' stick between them and take your measurements from. Which I did, and all seemed fine - except I'd failed to appreciate that the floor wasn't level either so the bulkhead didn't line up against the cabinside. Much fiddling with block plane and sandpaper later and we finally had a proper fit.
At least I then had a template for the opposite bulkhead. More or less. The two sides of a boat are never quite the same but some slight alterations and more planing finally gave me two bulkheads with an equal space between them from top to bottom in which to hang the door. One day!

Boating bling

2011-04-23T21:59:00.002+01:00

We've been hunting one of these elusive things for a while and now we've found one - a genuine copper dry sump oil tank for our Lister JP3M engine.
When we bought it it was covered in several decaying coats of various shades of green paint but some hours of scraping and stripping by Vicky brought the copper back to gleaming life. Just the brass tops remain to be done before it takes pride of place in the engine room.

We went for a cup of tea and came away members

2011-04-23T21:42:00.003+01:00

Enjoying a coffee - in a proper cup and saucer at Whittington Wharf

V and me are now paid up members of the Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust. We'd spotted there was a bric a brac and coffee morning sale in aid of the society in a canalside house just down the road in Whittington. So we pottered along on the off chance of finding a few paperbacks and maybe a pretty plate or some such.
Three hours later we departed with a sack load of books, a pack of raffle tickets, replete with tea and shortbread, up to speed on the canal restoration - and signed up as members.
And all because they were such a friendly bunch of people - happy to chat and explain what the L&H is up to and at the same time very professional in their approach to the whole restoration business. Everything from coffee mornings like this one to funding multi-thousand pound projects like the M6 Toll aqueduct.
When they're finished - as they certainly will be one day - the Lichfield and Hatherton canals will transform boating around the Birmingham area. All power to the Society.

Three locks = one pie and chips

2011-04-21T22:11:00.002+01:00

You've heard of lock miles, well say hello to pie miles.
We delivered a boat from Streethay back round the canal corner to Kings Bromley Marina. That's five miles and the three Fradley locks away - or eight lock miles. Took us two and a half hours.
In a fit of madness we decided to do this in the early evening and WALK BACK! But with a pit stop half way at The Swan at Fradley junction where we aimed to down a pint and a pie and chips (or in Vicky's case since she's a tad more health conscious, a lamb shank and new potatoes).
We left Church Bromley at 7.0o p.m., reached The Swan at 7.40 p.m., enjoyed our pints and food and left at 8.30 just as the sun was setting. A brisk walk - well as brisk as you can be carrying a load of pie and chips - and we were backat Streethay at 9.30 p.m.
So two and a half hours there and two and a half back. Therefore pie and chips and a pint = three locks. Or three pie miles.

Something is happening, honest

2011-04-18T21:53:00.003+01:00

Apologies for the lack of progress reports on the Harry refit. Stuff is happening though it's painfully slow.
The big news is that we have a bath. It may still be covered in its protective cardboard but it's in place and plumbed up. Well almost plumbed up.
The calorifier has been squeezed into the engine room which has saved space elsewhere but has meant that every connection has had to exit through a steel bulkhead. Which means drilling a 3/4 inch hole through three inches of wood and steel. Slowly!
We hummed and hawed for ages about the bath. Bath? Shower? Shower? Bath? We couldn't decide. We opted for the bath (which will have a shower over it of course) because it was easier to fit. But when we bought the bath, we put it place and thought it looked awful. We went straight off and advertised it for sale on Ebay!
It was a low, low point. We seemed to have spent weeks debating the bathroom and still got it wrong. Fortunately Streethay's boss, Ray, came to the rescue with some words of encouragement and the advice to throw away the feet the bath came with and mount it much lower. It was transformed and so were we. The Ebay auction was cancelled. Work resumed.
We're up and running again. Well, not quite running. More plodding steadily along.
Once the bath is in, the bulkheads can go in and, at last, I'll be able to show you a different photo of the interior.

A day out on land

2011-04-18T21:05:00.003+01:00

The Peak District is less than an hour's drive from Streethay so when daughter Olivia came up for a visit last weekend we looked at the glorious weather, piled into her Peugeot and headed for the hills.
And what a fabulous day it was. After a stroll around the mini-Bath that is Georgian Buxton we went on to Chapel en le Frith then headed deep into the hills for a picnic and a not-too-strenuous stroll along the hilltops above Edale, gazing at the wonderful views all around us.
At the end of the day we gave the poor little 1.1 Peugeot a stern test up the spectacular 1 in 5 climb of Winnats Pass to bring us back to the main roads.
But you can't keep a canal-er away from the canals for long and a short diversion took us to Bugsworth Basin for a pint at the excellent Navigation before heading home.

A day out on the water

2011-04-18T20:48:00.002+01:00

Hang around Streethay too long and you'll find yourself roped into helping out on odd jobs. But this must have been one of the oddest.
Last week Pete and me pointed the Discovery truck south and headed for Enfield. The back of the Disco was weighed down with four huge lorry wheels, 30 odd sacks of shingle ballast and a couple of hundred feet of chain.
Still guessing what we were up to? I'm sure you are. We were off to Enfield Island Village, a housing and commercial development built on the site of the Royal Small Arms Factory, where the famous Enfield rifle was produced.
Centrepiece of the redeveloped site is an ornamental basin in the middle of which sits a restored butty resplendent in RSA cloths and colours, recollecting the importance of the waterways in shipping arms and munitions from the factory and down the River Lea.
The problem that we were out to solve was that the butty kept slipping its anchors in high winds. Our lorry wheels, weighed down with those ballast bags and anchored by chains were the solution.
We spent the day - which fortunately was warm and sunny - wading around the basin. And, yes, I did fall in.

Into the woods

2011-04-06T20:24:00.007+01:00

We've been living in a log cabin for a few days. No we haven't left the canals and disappeared into the backwoods. This cabin had underfloor heating, big flat screen tv, wi-fi and double glazing.
We were in the Forest of Dean on a Forest Holidays break thanks to our generous daughter and son in law Lucy and Nick. I think they felt sorry for us, stuck on our little Star and battling away on Harry.
Well we all had a great time. The Forest of Dean is not somewhere I know but it's a fascinating area. Remote, rural, picturesque and yet laced with disused coal mines as part of an all but vanished industrial past. Some bits survive - like the Dean Forest Railway we rode on Sunday down to Lydney.
And at Lydney itself where there's a restored docks that leads into - yes you've guessed it - a canal! Not that there's much of it left. Just a few hundred yards beyond the sea lock and the basin beyond it. The docks has been restored and is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument as an example of a 19th century harbour. It's hard to imagine, though, that this little harbour shipped out up to 300,000 tons of Dean coal a year.
The locks are impressive, built to cope with the huge tidal range of the River Severn. And the views are even more impressive; a huge panorama way down beyond the two Severn bridges and equally far up-river.
Our other day out was to somewhere quite different - Puzzlewood where the eroded limestone, overgrown old iron ore mine workings and tangled, overgrown woods have created a magical labyrinth of a spot. If you're a fan of 'Merlin' you'll recognise it right away.
Now we're back afloat but already thinking about another log cabin break when Harry wears us down.

Esse est percipi

2011-03-28T21:26:00.002+01:00

Brian relaxing with all crew present

Apologies for the pompous Latin. It means 'to be is to be perceived'. Or, how do I know Starwoman exists when she's stepped out of the room?
This was the philosophical problem discussed by 16th century thinker Bishop George Berkeley who came to the somewhat curious conclusion that "esse est percipi". Or, all we know is our ideas. Oh, and God who sorted everything out. It was a somewhat complex argument that was shot down by Samuel Johnson who kicked a stone and said "I refute it thus".
So where's all this going - apart from demonstrating my university education (BA in Philosophy & Old Car Maintenance)?
Well, Stardog Brian is clearly a Berkelian thinker. When we're out on the boat he'll happily stand on the roof - until one person goes inside and then he dissolves into a state of panic looking everywhere for them. He can't see them so they can't exist. Which understandably makes him upset. He's only happy when they're out again.
Poor chap, I'll have to read him some Descartes or Wittgenstein to give him a broader view of the world. Or maybe just a bone.

What can you see in this picture?

2011-03-28T21:22:00.001+01:00

Spotted while out cruising!

The phone is dead, long live the phone

2011-03-23T19:39:00.002Z

I finally braved Lichfield O2 shop and found a) no queue of Ladies Who Buy Mobiles and b) a very helpful female assistant.
Fifteen minutes later I was on my way with more monthly minutes and my perfect phone - at least given recent circumstances - the Samsung Solid Immerse. Guaranteed scratch, dust, drop AND water protected. It's IP67 certified and US Military Standard which sounds good even though I haven't a clue what they mean.
Anyway, it'll work under a metre of water and can stay submerged for up to half an hour. So given my predilection for taking unexpected dips in the cut, it should be just the phone for me.

Sony Ericsson RIP

2011-03-22T19:41:00.002Z

My mobile phone was in my trouser pocket when I went for my swim in the canal. Not surprisingly it didn't appreciate it. It flickered briefly to live and then died with a cloud of damp on the inside of the screen.
But after a night gently warming over the stove it burst brightly into life next morning, gave me a couple of texts and looked ready to face the world. And then it died again - this time for good.
What a shame, I'd just got to like my little Sony W810.
So now I've got to get a new phone. Boy, how I hate searching for phones. To upgrade on line O2 texted me an upgrade code --- to the phone that no longer works. So I went to the O2 shop at 9 a.m. Only to find it doesn't open until 10; like all the phone shops around it. Why, when every shop in the High Street opens at 9 do phone shops (apart from the C*rph*n* Wh*rehouse) stay shut until 10?
So I went to the Tesco phone shop instead - and found myself stuck behind a couple of Ladies Who Shop For Mobiles as they debated the merits of various phones and deals with the solitary assistant.
I left and headed back to the internet. Where I got even more confused. What's the better deal: 600 call minutes and a phone you pay for or a free phone and 100 call minutes. Strikes me the former is - so I'm now off to Ebay to find a phone!

Taking a look

2011-03-20T19:35:00.002Z

I took a look today. Rather too close a look at the inside of a canal. Yep, I fell in. It was a falling in of truly comedic proportions – if only someone had seen it happen. We were mooring. I was slipping the mooring chain into the armco at the canal edge. I leaned over to grab the bottom loop of the chain. Leaned a little more so I could see it. And slowly toppled in. Splash! I don't know quite how. It was before lunch; I wasn't drunk. I think the ground maybe just gave way slightly under my foot.
Anyway, in I went in a slow motion arc; right under. I hauled myself out, laughing too much to feel shaken and revealed my dripping form to Starwoman and Stardaughter. The latter offered assistance. The former merely burst out laughing. The falling in score is now 3-0 between her and me.
It was an entertaining end to a very enjoyable little trip. We just pottered down from Streethay and moored outside Alvecote Marina. A pint and a watch of the England v Ireland rugby (what a disaster!) turned into a very enjoyable meal.

Can't see the trees for the wood

2011-03-11T18:03:00.002Z

I did the last pre-installation top coat on the ceiling planks the other night by the light (and heat) of my 1000w work lights and while listening to Barcelona v Arsenal in the Champions League on Radio 5 Live.
Quite a game; a damned sight more entertaining and eventful than crawling around the boat trying to topcoat twenty 4.8 metre lengths of wood propped in precarious positions all around the interior so I could barely move.
Anyway, it's done now and I've started fitting them to the ceiling – another job that's easier said than done. Getting four metres of tongue to slide into four metres of groove is trickier than it seems, especially when the grooves are a bit jammed up with paint and the planks slightly twisted. (It only takes a couple of miillimetres of roof beam misalignment to twist a plank out of true.)
But we're getting there. Slowly.

Paint, paint and paint again

2011-03-07T18:41:00.002Z

Oh the glorious tedium of painting. I seem to have been painting the ceiling t&g planks for most of my life. I'm on the fifth course now and still on the hors d'ouvres - the main course awaits.
First came the knotting compound, then two coats of aluminium primer followed by two coats of undercoat. The top coats await.
Worse thing is that while it only takes 3-4 hours to paint the 20 planks, it takes 24 hours for them to dry. So, since they fill the whole of the interior of the boat, it's twiddling thumbs time –there's really not much else one can on with.
Now they will need some extra drying and hardening time before I rub down and prepare for the top coats. The only consolation is that it's a whole lot easier to do it on the floor than when their up on the roof.

PS Hello and thanks for the encouragement to the blog follower who hailed me from their passing boat this afternoon. I was so taken aback I didn't even spot the boat's name.

Boatfitter's block

2011-03-03T20:47:00.003Z

Apologies for the lack of posting. I haven't had much to write about. I've been suffering the boatbuilding equivalent of writer's block.
You know when you catch your jumper on something sharp and break a stitch. Before you know it the whole damned thing is unravelling around you. It's been the same for me. I had a plan, then I caught myself having a re-think on one aspect and before I knew it the whole damned plan had dissolved away and I was questioning everything.
It all revolved around the calorifier. We've always been able to place everything in our boat plan - except the calorifier (hot water cylinder for the landlubbers). On many boats it goes under the bed. It can't in ours because we're a tug and the bed is at floor level under the deck. Or it stacks in the bathroom. That's tricky in ours because there's really no room.
But I came up with a scheme and it seemed ok - until someone suggested we could always put it in the engine room. And, of course, if we put it in the engine room we could have a bath in the bathroom - which would be easier to install than a shower.
But by now we were also re-thinking our heating system. We'd planned to have an oil stove with back boiler and rads but the oil stove on our present boat, while great in the cold weather, overheats us madly when the weather just a tad parky. So why create a sauna for ourselves when all we want to do is take the chill off the room and maybe heat some water.
Which is why we've thought about fitting an Alde gas boiler - one of the tall thin ones that cleverly fits in a tiny space. A great plan but where will it go? Answer: in the bathroom. Meaning: no bath. Which means we're back to a shower and maybe back to putting the calorifier in the bathroom. But now I have a lot of extra water pipes to think about the location of.
So I've stopped thinking and started painting. I've bought a load of tongue and groove timber - I went for the cheap softwood stuff after being scared off the expensive hardwood - and I'm busy priming and painting it. All 20 4.8 metre long planks of it which completely fill the inside of the boat. Half are on the floor so I can crawl around and paint them; the rest are on trestles above them so I can do them too.
In 3-4 days they'll all be ready to fit and after that it will be time to start thinking again. Hopefully my boatfitter's block will have lifted and I can find answers as well as questions.

You cannot be serious!!

2011-02-12T20:14:00.004Z

That was the reaction of our girls to news that we were planning to wallpaper the saloon walls in Harry. Well we are. Wallpaper is the new black. Or in the case of narrowboats, the new ash veneer.
The one thing we were agreed on was that we didn't want Harry to have one of those look-alike shiny wood veneer interiors. Too modern. First of all we thought of going the all solid oak route. ("You cannot be serious; it'll be like living in a coffin!" Guess who said that.) We bowed to their opinions - and to the eye watering price of solid oak.
We thought of painting. We thought of scumbling. We thought of using tongue and Vee-groove. And then we thought of wallpaper. "It's traditional for tugs like yours," insisted Ray at Streethay.
All we'll need is a couple of rolls so we can splash out on some expensive remainders off Ebay.
Now all we need to do is agree on the which ones. There are 16,424 items listed under 'wallpaper' on Ebay. Maybe we should ask the kids...

Mission Accomplished!

2011-02-12T19:28:00.004Z

All panels safely in place
Here's the dreaded blue glue

Last night I confessed I was a wimp. This morning I decided to be a have-a-go hero. I lay in bed, drinking my morning cuppa and thinking about the problem of glueing those veneer panels in place. (All the best thinking is done in bed - that's where you resolve the problems you woke up worrying about at 4 a.m.)
I decided it was worth a go. If I could glue a short board in place then why not a long one using the same principles? After endless dress rehearsals with an un-glued panel I 'went live' – and almost went catastrophically wrong. The spacer I had loosely gaffer taped in place to hold the top edge away from the wall got stuck half in and half out. The gaffer tape was stuck on the glue! Fortunately after much wriggling, pulling and cursing it came free and the panel went down fine.
The rest of the side was done by lunchtime. Fortified by a pork pie and a Mars bar, I then had the other side done before Man U had beaten Man City on Radio 5 Live. So there was still time to glue the bathroom cabin-side panel on before knocking off time.
And then head home to double sausage, double bacon, double eggs and beans for tea. From which dietary information you will have probably guessed that Starwoman is off on granny duties leaving me to eat Man Food.
Oh, and watch 'Action' DVDs. Like last night's Goodfellas!

Frayed nerves

2011-02-11T18:03:00.003Z

I'd never made a bomb disposal expert. Not that I want to be one of course. My nerves are well and true frayed after glueing the first veneer top panel to my ply linings.
Don't laugh. Everbuild Smart Tack glue came with every sort of health warning from around the boatyard. Knowing chuckles echoed around my ears. "Oh, hoh. You've got to get that right first time! Once it's touched the other surface you'll never separate them."
While the experts in the joinery shop insisted it wasn't hard to use...followed by that damning start to any bit of advice "you've just got to...". 'Just'. How I hate that word. Invariably it means completely the opposite. Rather like 'simply' which tells you you're facing a nigh on impossible task.
Smart Tack's makers call it an 'aggressive bonding agent' which means it grabs and sticks. Fast. Once the two surfaces touch you will not be able to get them apart. And that's a potential problem when you're trying to accurately stick an eight feet long sheet of flappy 4mm ply into place.
I decided to practise on a shorter, four feet board that would be hidden behind the galley units so any mistakes would hopefully be out of sight.
The glue is strange stuff. It's in a spray can but what comes out is a fine spider's web of adhesive rather like one of those party sprays. You spray to both surfaces, wait five minutes until the glue looks dry and 'just' press them together.
I made up some vertical guides to keep the sheet in the right position, a prop to keep the bottom away from the side and a slim batten to keep the top edges apart until everything was lined up. Then I pulled the batten away and worked my way down the sheet smoothing it into place.
And there it was - stuck.
The only thing I remain puzzled by is how I got the stringy glue on the back of my jumper. Good job I didn't lean back against another glued surface or I'd still be shouting for help from inside Harry.

'Elf and safety gawn mahd!'

2011-02-03T21:04:00.003Z

A gang* of BW workmen descended on the towpath at Streethay and a couple of hours later we had this very handsome new stout oak signpost warning anglers of the dangers of electric power lines and to always carry their rods, poles and perches horizontally.
Now if you can see a power line anywhere in any direction from here....
It would be easy to blame BW but I suppose it's all down to today's ell pervading fear of being sued by some halfwit who waves a 30ft long carbon fibre pole about like a flagpole right under a high voltage cable and then looks for someone to blame when he's fried with 11,000volts.
Rant over.

*When I say 'a gang' I mean five blokes. Yes FIVE people to dig a hole and plant a post!

Progress

2011-02-03T20:58:00.002Z

A couple of pics to illustrate the slow but steady progress in lining out. By the fifth porthole I'd devised a foolproof (touch wood) method of accurately measuring the position of the cut so things are speeding up. Sort of.
Note the Heath Robinson arrangement of Workmate, scraps of wood and clamps that supports cabinside panels in position while I screw them up (an unfortunate turn of phrase in hindsight).
Unfortunately I can feel a sore throat and cold looming so I might have to get a sicknote from the Boss for tomorrow.

Measure twice...

2011-02-01T19:51:00.003Z

...cut once, so they say. Or in my case measure about four times, cut and still find you've cut it wrong!
So today's task filled me with understandable trepidation. Cutting the holes in the cabinside panels for the portholes. You think it's easy, eh?
First comes the task of getting the eight feet long panel lined up square on the cabin side - remembering that the side slopes inwards so gravity is your implacable enemy in this job. If you don't get it square then subsequent panels will only amplify your seemingly tiny error. A Workmate and a carefully arranged pile of scrap timber at least supported the base and gave me a fighting chance.
And once you have got the panel up you can't see the portholes any more so the position of the holes has be gauged by accurate - very accurate - measuring. Which is made harder because you've just taken the panel down and have to rely on a variety of pencil marks and a string line to recall where it was.
Understandably I cut a very small hole to begin with. At least I could see glass through it and not sprayfoam! Next came a rather bigger hole (still well within the eight inch diameter of the porthole). And, yes, the glass was still underneath.
Next I trimmed my best (best because it was my only) pencil down to a stub, put my hand through the hole and attempted to mark the circumference of the porthole on the back of the ply. The result when I removed the ply looked like a drunk's attempt to draw round a large beermat.
But there was no more prevaricating. It was time to cut. I worked the jigsaw round what looked the clearest approximation to a circle, repeated the job with the other window and hefted the ply up yet again. Unbelievably the holes were in the right places. Even more unbelievably the porthole liners fitted into them. Well, with a little bit of skimming here and there they did.
Job done.
One panel up. I retired to soothe my frayed nerves and aching tennis elbow with a beer. Only six more window holes to cut.

Stuck in the nineties...pt 2

2011-01-31T20:20:00.002Z

If I'm rubbish on phones I'm even worse when it comes to what I gather is now called 'home entertainment systems'. Or what I would call radios, tvs and CD players.
I discovered just how lacking in knowledge I am when I started thinking about installing this stuff (or at this stage the wiring for aerials and power supplies) in Harry. After a few days' research I've pretty much mastered digital tv - 12v flatscreen tv, digibox and a portable mini satellite dish should sort that - but radio and music are another thing altogether.
I asked an 'expert' but he said I needed to decide what I wanted and then he could advise on how to fit it. Which is just the trouble. How can I decide what I want when my knowledge stops at pushing CDs into car stereos and I can just about remember how to turn on the iPod my daughters gave me.
All I want is a radio that can play MW so I can listen to football on 5 Live (which in a perfect world I could do while lying in bed and switching on and off by remote) and a halfway decent device to play music. Starwoman wants The Archers on R4 and she doesn't want her saloon cluttered with ugly speakers either.
It ought to be simple.

Stuck in the nineties

2011-01-31T20:05:00.002Z

Occasionally I contemplate changing my mobile phone. Usually after having a demonstration of someone's iPhone or - this week - an Android. Whatever that is.
And that's the trouble. I thought an android was a robot in human guise but apparently it's a phone. Or rather an operating system. Whatever that is.
Anyway I got rather more actively engaged in changing my phone this time when my trusty old sellotaped together Nokia 6310i finally died after being dropped on its head. So I started trolling around the internet trying to get to grips with phones. O2 - my service provider - were only too happy provide me with any number of phones and plans. So many that I was soon completely baffled. Should I have a free Nokia 63008 or pay £25.50 and get a Samsung XYZ Rio? I read the reviews and got even more baffled.
So in the end I did what I always do. Dug around in a drawer and pulled out another old timer - a Sony Ericsson which I gave up using because it was too complicated for me.
When it comes to phones I truly am stuck in the nineties. I wish I wasn't. Our friend Ian on Nb Nobby was telling me about his new LG Optimus which lets him make calls at the same time as linking his computer to the internet (I think) and telling him where he is by GPS. I'm envious. I think. But when I tried to read up about the phone I soon felt my brain start to ache. I wonder what a Nokia 6310i costs on Ebay?

Three long weeks

2011-01-31T19:40:00.002Z

Yes, three long weeks since I last posted. If any of you are still bothering to look then apologies that you've been having some wasted 'clicking'.
It's not that nothing's been happening. More that the rate of progress has been snail like. And I've been embarrassed to admit as much. I read other 'build blogs' and boats seem to grow like leylandii hedges in a flurry of photos and diary entries like "today I put in the wiring for the electronic CanBus control modules" or "we built the galley and after lunch began on the hand-made oak bed".
I wish. My work is more akin to high altitude climbing - one agonising step, a long pause, then another, long pause, small step, pause, slip and slide back. Etc, etc.
Even the smallest things demand a back-to-basics learning process. Where to run the wiring - and how to stop it all falling in a heap on the floor as it hangs in fresh air below the gunwales. Fitting the hullside linings with endless drilling through steel bearers for self tapping screws. And today, lining up the cabinside ply lining sheets and marking the position of the portholes so I can cut matching holes in the ply. (Given my skill with measuring and cutting...well put it this way, I ordered an extra sheet of ply just in case.)
Plus of course endlessly moving all those tools and bits of wood around the inside to get them out of the way!
So where have we got to then? Well the floor is down. The hull sides are lined in 18mm WBP ply which will eventually be covered with 4mm oak veneered ply. The under deck sides are lined too with two layers of 6mm ply to accommodate the curved shape.
The wiring is basically done, though there are still plenty of danging loose ends to be dealt with and the cabinsides in 9mm birch ply (probably also to be covered in oak veneer) are going on now.
Doesn't sound much, does it, but it's kept me more than busy.

Raise the Titanic

2011-01-10T19:51:00.003Z

The 'Maid', the floating pontoon jetty at Streethay Wharf was a victim to the ice a couple of weeks ago, subsiding slowly to the bottom after the four inch thick sheet pierced its hull. An attempt to pump it out only saw it sink completely.
Today, with the ice now gone, was Raise the Titanic day. The massive eight wheeler crane extended its jib out over the water and lowered a cluster of chains down to hook onto the few extremities of deck that were still showing.
Then it pulled. And peeled the deck back like the lid of a sardine can while the hull sat determinedly on the bottom.
Take Two. The chains were re-attached to the cross braces now revealed by the inadvertent can-opening. And finally up came the Maid to rest propped half out of the water and await more pumping and then an even larger crane to drag it completely out for repair.
Lew Grade couldn't have done it better.Here's the Maid prior to the sinking with a very handsome boat tied up

Today's plan is...

2011-01-10T19:37:00.003Z

We should have learned by now. We've done up a few houses in our time and fitted many a kitchen but never yet have we had one of those perfect spaces you find in DIY manuals or kitchen planning guides.
You know the sort. A window to put the sink under, a drain in the right place, a door over the other side, a neat rectangular shape. No, ours have always had odd shapes, awkward corners, deep windows, doors where they aren't wanted and so on.
And it's the same with Harry. I've read all the books, walked through many boats and could lay out a typical 57ft boat with my eyes shut. So why have I chosen a 54ft tug with a cabin just 20 feet long into which I have to fit saloon, galley and bathroom. Worse, all the portholes and hatches are exactly where they don't want to be.
Yes, it looks delightfully symmetrical on the outside but inside I find myself thinking about whether I dare have a porthole in the shower. Or where to put the damned calorifier.
Which is why we've been filling page after squared page with drawings and doodles trying to find a way to squeeze a quart into our pint pot. Well, even a pint and a half would do.
I think that, finally, we might be there. At least until tomorrow. So now it's time to plan the wiring and understand the mysteries of voltdrop. And think of a way to get four feet wide sheets of ply through two feet deep doors!

Brian goes bonkers

2011-01-10T19:21:00.004Z

Was it the glimpse of sunshine? Or the disappearance of the ice? Or the change back to IAMS from Lidl dogfood? Or his new Christmas toy? Whatever the reason Brian has been behaving like an ADHD child who has flushed his Ritalin down the loo.
Ignore him just for a couple of minutes and he grabs his toy and starts growling and bashing it at you. And won't stop until you play tug with him. Which, as anyone who owns a terrier will know, is a game that never ends for a terrier never lets go. Even if he is hanging suspended from it by his teeth.
This is Brian's toy - a Christmas present from his two legged puppy pal, our grand-daughter Martha. She chose it herself. The knot-tying cognoscenti among you will spot that this toy giraffe is made with a neat bit of knot-tying - crown knots I think - which makes it particularly appropriate for a boat dog.
Quite what he's up to we can only guess. He doesn't want a walk - he's had enough to tire us out the last couple of days. He's not secretly scoffing Haribo either.We think he just doesn't like being ignored while we're trying to plan out the interior of Harry.
"Stop looking at the laptop Ma and Pa and pay some attention to me."

One of those days

2011-01-06T19:16:00.004Z

A lot of hard graft and not a lot to show for it. Spent the morning stripping down the Refleks oil stove which has given up the ghost after months of perfect running. Put it all back together having found no faults and it seemed ok.
In the afternoon we went up to Fradley for a second go at bringing back to the boatyard the little narrowboat moored there. There seemed to be less ice. Seemed...
After a bit of bashing we broke out from the bank and set off but the ice was unrelenting. Not always thick but crashing and cracking around all the time. And every now and then we hit a thick stretch which ground us to a halt and demanded more smashing with the three inch fence post we were armed with. Starwoman was steering and I was up in the bow wielding the pole.
With Streethay almost in sight we hit the thickest ice of all and ground through it, forward, stop, smash, reverse, forward again until we reached the moorings. And there we finally did grind to a halt in four inch thick ice. Reinforcements were called for and we finally got it to the yard, blistered, knackered and cold. That's us not the boat.
After that it had to be a fish and chip supper. Ate it in the van, came back to the boat and found that the stove was, once more, running badly.
One of those days...

Back to work...tomorrow

2010-12-29T16:45:00.002Z

The Big Melt is on. I've been to B&Q and bought myself a half-price pendulum jigsaw (with an extra ten per cent off because it's 'Over-60s card day'. There's no excuse. It's time to get back to work.

Tomorrow.

Our other Christmas guest

2010-12-26T10:11:00.003Z

You can't help but feel sorry for the birds in this weather - even the pestering ducks - but our favourite is 'Scruffy' the dishevelled pied wagtail who visits the galley hatch every day. We started off feeding him oats but now he has his own finely chopped cheese. And on Christmas Day a little touch of brie and camembert went down rather well!

Christmas Day with the Stars

2010-12-26T09:54:00.003Z

There are some traditions in a Blick family Christmas Day that never change - even on a boat.
Like the family photo round the table with the ten second delay timer...
Or the monstrous portions - even on a tiny table...

Or the family walk - not always in the snow.Or the chance to inspect another boyfriend