The Standedge Tunnel Experience

No, not this Standedge Tunnel Experience, but our very own experience of the 'longest, highest and deepest' canal tunnel in Britain, when we went through on August 16th in Andante.

Someone asked me 'was it worth it?' - to which the answer has to be yes, as it costs nothing (if you are a long term licence holder), and it's got to be worth the time and trouble if it means you end up where you want to be. It is, of course, an experience not to be missed: the preparation, the excitement, the sense of achievement, the awe and wonder at the building of it, and even greater awe and wonder at its restoration.

The tunnel itself? It's a very long tunnel, and you go through it very, very slowly. (Three and a quarter miles in two and a half hours.) You can note that some sections are brick lined, some sprayed with concrete, and some (the best bits) bare, red, stone. You can see the drill marks where the blasting powder was inserted, and count off the leggers' plates on the roof to see how far you've gone and how far you still have to go. You can (upon donning a hard hat) sit outside at either end of the passenger module, which is a better way of seeing things when the windows get steamed up.

Because it is such a feat of engineering and restoration, and so many people are going to so much trouble to get you through, you feel as if you ought to find every single yard of it fascinating, and it can't help but fail to live up to that. Much of it is not fascinating, just tunnel. Number One Son has always had a low boredom threshold, and he was catatonic by the time we emerged.

And because you're never alone, and to a degree isolated in the passenger module, it's harder (at least it was for me) to really feel the excitement, awe and magic; I felt that much more in the Harecastle Tunnel, where, when steering your own boat and especially if leading, as we were, your relationship with the tunnel is much more direct, and your ability to see it as it was is much greater.

None of this is to say though that the Standedge Tunnel is not worth navigating; it is, it is, it is. The effort that's gone and continues to go into it should be rewarded with use and appreciation. If it's not used, the temptation will surely be, come the next round of budget cuts, to abandon it again. It is interesting, notwithstanding everything I said before. I would do it again, given the chance. And it is, of course, an integral part of navigating the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, which is most definitely, in my humble opinion, worth doing.

London Canal Museum

Last Friday I walked over to the London Canal Museum - thought I'd better check it out before I get too busy. Well, it was certainly nice and peaceful (one other visitor). There aren't many things you can do for three quid in central London, so I'm not going to knock it ... let's just say you wouldn't need to set aside a whole afternoon to see it all.

Being the narrow minded obsessive that I am, I skipped all the stuff about ice cream, but I did take the opportunity to try out a butty stern for size, and there were some interesting photos in the upstairs room. But the best bit really is that you can go out the back doors onto Battlebridge Basin and just sit peacefully out there in the sun, looking at real live boats ... Dover was there on Friday; it was like meeting an old friend.

The other good thing is that the museum has quite an extensive selection of books, and I'd go back again just to browse in that. One of my main reasons for going was to see if I could get a book of London canal/waterways walks, and in that I wasn't successful - I've ordered this one from Amazon instead, and if you have any other recommendations, do let me know.

Why British Waterways are wonderful

Heroic BW employee Ben gets us through lock 27E on the Huddersfield narrow

Of course, there are lots of ways in which they are not; we've all come up against their obduracy and inexplicable decisions at some point - but (to me at least) it is amazing that they exist at all. British Leyland; British Road Services; British Rail; almost every other nationalised body you could think of - dead and gone. Sold off; sometimes successfully (BT); sometimes resulting in chaos (BR). But British Waterways carries on, almost unnoticed, like the platoon that doesn't realise the war's been over for years, or the Soviet clerk who turns up to work every day and gets paid, but no one knows he's there. Surely if the government realised BW existed, they'd have privatised it by now? Think of the property portfolio! I know BW are going down this road themselves, by being more 'enterprising' and trying to become less dependent on direct government funding, but (whether we approve or not) that can be seen as a defensive move in a strategy to protect their position.

The wonderfulness of British Waterways was brought home to me by our Huddersfield Narrow trip; the first time we'd had much continuous contact with BW staff 'on the ground'. Not only were they unfailingly helpful and cheerful and friendly, there were so many of them! Getting us, and the others, up to the summit and through the tunnel is a very labour intensive process. The cost of maintaining the tunnel and providing and maintaining all the tugs and passenger modules must exceed the revenue they bring in by a factor of thousands - and keeping the tunnel navigable is clearly not necessary to any water supply function. Yet still they do it; still the taxpayer pays for it. Because it's there, and it's their function - albeit maybe a vestigial one - to do it.

In an age when everything has a price and the idea of getting something for nothing is held up as being self-evidently abhorrent, that's why I think British Waterways are great.

Lovely little narrowboat for sale

All good things must come to an end, and two narrowboats is a bit of an indulgence, so, very very sadly, we are looking for new owners for Andante. She is a lovely boat in every way - comfortable to live on, nifty and reliable to cruise in, and lovely to look at, with the sort of lines and detail very rarely seen on a small boat.

Some of Andante's vital statistics:
Length: 31'4"
Beam: 6'10" (was actually measured at slightly less at the Standedge Tunnel, so no danger of being oversize)
Draught: Recorded as 27"

Built in 1986 by R&D - well regarded builders - Andante has recessed panels and portholes to the engine room, and large windows elsewhere.

From the trad stern, with hardwood seat rails, you enter the engine room which is neat and tidy and, most importantly, dry. The engine is a 2-cylinder Kubota, which is very reliable and sounds good. There is a new start battery plus two 110 amp-hour leisure batteries, a landline (supplying a 240v socket in the engine room) and a 350 watt inverter. There is also a large and efficient calorifier, providing for all your hot water needs while cruising.

From the engine room you enter the separate bedroom which has a fixed double bed with storage under, plus cupboards and shelves, and a hardwood parquet floor. After that comes the toilet/shower on the left, and more storage opposite, and a very efficient solid fuel stove for heating. The toilet is pump out with a remote tank. Next is the kitchen, with Flavel four burner cooker, sink and solid wood worktop with full size Lec 12-volt fridge below on one side, and cupboards and Welsh dresser style shelves the other. There is a brand new Morco instant water heater which supplies the sink and basin/shower. Finally, inside, comes the dinette - two comfortable seats with a variety of table options, which converts into a second double bed. Andante is panelled throughout in pine T&G complemented by hardwood doors and shelving, and enhanced with lots of brasswork and traditional painting.

Out through the front doors into a well proportioned self draining well deck with cratch board and removeable cover, bench seats and storage space. The water tank underneath is very big. The gas locker right in the fore end is dry and spacious, taking two 13kg cylinders easily.

More photos of the inside here, and of her exterior among these.

If you think you might be interested in buying Andante, or know someone who might be, or would like more information, do please leave a comment.

Aftermath (II)

I've got a new job. That's why I'm no longer living on a boat in Huddersfield. The new job is in London, and I have a shiny new season ticket (£3,544, thank you very much) and a daily rather than weekly commute. The positive aspects to this are many - first the job: it's permanent, after years of temporary contracts, and it's at a respected, even prestigious, university. Secondly, I get to go home and eat dinner with Jim and Lockboy every night.

But what I didn't think about until yesterday evening was this: I will now go for weeks, maybe even months, at a time without setting foot on a boat. And I will really, really miss it.

Even though I knew that last week was Andante's farewell journey, I was so focussed on the trip (and the new job) that I hadn't really thought much beyond that. For the past eighteen months I've not spent more than a week away from one boat or another, and that never struck me, at the time, as strange.

I suppose that in the time I lived on Andante in Huddersfield I could have decided that it wasn't the life for me after all, but that hasn't happened. Instead, over that period I've become hopelessly hooked; on boat life, on the waterways, on the history, but above all, on boats themselves. The visceral excitement when you feel the engine start up and you know you're going somewhere. The feel of a rope taughtening in your hands, knowing that there's ten, fifteen tons of steel on the other end. The shape of a working boat. The sound of a Bolinder. The smell of a hot engine.

I think I'd better go and lie down for a bit.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Aftermath

Five days now, we've been back, and I've just finished the washing and got my nails clean. I've sorted out the photos and got them onto CD and have spent all day today uploading a (large) selection to the Webshots site. The plant survived, by the way - in fact I think it liked the rain - and is now safely at home with us. The threatened blue-green algae was long gone by the time we arrived. My steering has improved immensely and I have learned how to tie a proper boatman's hitch, at long last (in both cases).

I've come home having picked up a few interesting habits. I've found myself grinning and waving at total strangers, and only realised that that was an odd thing to do when they either completely ignored me, or shuffled away. But wouldn't it be nice if we were that friendly all the time? Perhaps we should slow down when driving past parked cars too, which is another thing I've found myself nearly doing.

Enjoy the photos!

Up the pub

Strictly chronological cruising (b)logs can perhaps get a bit boring, so I'm going for a more thematic approach in writing up this trip. Today: where we spent our evenings. Which, as it turned out, was more often than not in a pub - sometimes two. It wasn't our intention to eat out most nights, but as things turned out I think we probably did. And we were on the whole incredibly lucky in the establishments we found, given that we were guided only by a pair of not terribly up to date Nicholsons.

Our last evening in Huddersfield (Saturday 12th August) was spent in the company of Geraldine and Trevor from Annabel - fellow moorers at Aspley Basin. We started off in the Albert (to give it its full inexplicable title, the Albert Buffet Hotel). Contrary to what I was previously led to believe, the application earlier in the year to have this splendid Victorian building (photo above) listed was unsuccessful, which is quite worrying, although the new landlord seems to be committed to preserving the interior and getting lots of interesting beers in. We followed this with dinner at the Shabab Indian restaurant, where the food was pretty good and the setting was lovely.

We set off on Sunday morning and got as far as Slaithwaite - five miles, 22 locks. Normally boats going through the Standedge Tunnel in this direction go up as far as lock 32E on their own, with BW unlocking the ten locks above that and seeing boats through. Because of the shortage of water this week, however, we had to wait to be taken up from lock 25E, just above Slaithwaite. Monday night was spent on the towpath between locks 24 and 25E. Both Sunday and Monday evenings were spent in the Wharfeside Inn - unprepossessing from the outside, but owned by Skipton's Copper Dragon Brewery, and incredibly friendly with excellent beer. On the Monday we also ate there, and the food was fine, if not great.

Tuesday evening was spent, as long planned, in the Tunnel End Inn at Marsden, while Andante was moored at the mouth of the tunnel. This pub fully lived up to its promise and reputation for good food and beer, and could not have been more friendly and welcoming. We had two really good meals on this trip, and this was one of them. Normally food - all home cooked - is only served Thursday to Saturday, but if you're going through the tunnel and ring in advance Bev and Gary are delighted to dish something up. (I've tried to stop this sounding like a restaurant review in the local paper, but I'm afraid it just can't be helped.)

I have no record of our having gone anywhere on Wednesday evening, when we moored on the towpath between locks 10 and 11W. Thursday evening, when we moored in Portland Basin Marina, was spent in a launderette in Dukinfield. We arrived just as the owner was locking up and he very kindly let us in so that we could spend two hours watching our smalls revolve and emerge triumphant with dry clothes (not to stay that way for long). Is there any more reliable timewarp than a launderette?

On Friday we had our other really good meal, at the Ring 'o' Bells at the top of the Marple flight. Again the beer was good and the service was very friendly. On Saturday we had our only bad experience, at the Fool's Nook by the swing bridge at Royal Oak. It had been a horrible wet day and we were probably at our lowest ebb. The place was well written up in Nicholsons, but the reality bore no resemblance at all. It was full of smart casual people - god knows where they had all come from, as it was in the middle of nowhere, but it was most definitely not a boaters' pub. We asked about food, were looked up and down, and after a brief consultation between the staff were informed that they were fully booked. So we finished our extra-cold Bass and went back to Andante, where we lit the stove, put Born to Run on the CD player, cooked some spaghetti, and congratulated ourselves on a lucky escape.

Sunday was a two-pub evening, at Hardings Wood Junction. The Blue Bell, which we were moored right by, is feted for its beer but doesn't serve food, so we went first to the Red Bull for dinner, which was very nice. Somehow we got chatting to a splendid couple called Clive and Christine who were liveaboards in the 1970s, and they followed us on to the Blue Bell afterwards. The Blue Bell had lots of character and atmosphere to go with the beer, and I don't actually remember a great deal about the rest of the evening ...

At the Star at Stone, where we went on Monday night, the food was adequate, if uninspiring and relatively expensive, but we had a great evening with Tony and Sheila, with whose 27' narrowboat Owl Andante had shared locks during the day. Tuesday evening found us in Penkridge, on the visitor moorings above lock 38. We wondered around and looked at four different pubs, but none of them looked inviting. The only one serving food was rather posh and looked a bit weak on the beer front. One we didn't look at was the Cross Keys, as a pleasant young man sitting drinking Special Brew by the lock told us it was a bit rough, although we've since been told by others that it isn't, so maybe we missed a treat there.

And the next day, we arrived at our destination, with just one more pub to visit - the Bridge at Brewood. This seems to be the hostelry favoured by regulars at the yard, although when we asked for recomendations we got sent off to various other places: the Hartley Arms at Wheaton Aston (nice if a bit restauranty), and the Vaughan Arms at Lapley (so bad it was good in a horror story sort of way). The Bridge was great, with freshly cooked food at very reasonable prices, and, to Jim's delight, Jennings' Dark Mild. So, sorry chaps, your secret's out. The Bridge is our new local.

Anyway, this was the best pub crawl I've ever been on.

A Pilgrimage

Ashton-Under-Lyne: according to David MacKie in the Guardian (no, I'm not putting a link in; it's not that imortant), a Mecca for tripe lovers. On our travels I did see a retail outlet called The Tripe and Sandwich Shop, but strangely enough wasn't tempted to go in. ('Can I have some tripe please? Oh, and a sandwich ...') Our pilgrimage was not in search of tripe, or any of the other things for which Ashton is no doubt rightly famed, but the National Gas and Oil Engine Company Works. We weren't even sure they were still standing until we got chatting with Guy at Portland Basin Marina where we spent the night of Thursday 17th, but he told us that they were indeed, and that they were nearby, and showed us on a facsimile 1907 map of the area. We were so impressed we bought one. Guided only by this, we set off the following morning, in the rain (ho hum), to seek the very spot where Warrior's engine was built in 1937.

Finding it was a bit of a struggle, owing to a ring road having rather inconsiderately been built at some point in the past century, but find the place we eventually did - and very impressive it was too. Now an industrial estate, the extensive site is still largely made up of the original buildings. Some have modern cladding on, but many don't, as can be seen in the picture. Under the later, painted, names, the words 'National Gas Engine Co. Ltd' can still clearly be seen picked out in the brickwork (although not necessarily in this photo).

It was particularly heartening to see that the site was still being used for manufacturing and appeared to be quite busy and bustling. We got chatting to the people in one of the units, and they let us have a look inside; again, much of the building seemed to be, if not original, then certainly as old as our engine. And we spotted something very exciting. The steelwork supporting the roof was painted in a horrible shade of dirty lime green. We thought that it wasn't unlikely that a company making engines, and having quantities of paint about the place, might use the same paint for the buildings as for the engines ... Of course, the steelwork could have been painted much more recently, but nonetheless I made a careful mental note of the colour.

The following Friday, after we'd arrived at Stretton Wharf and Jim had collected the car from Huddersfield, we went to Wolverhampton to collect the crankshaft (another story) and dropped in on Phil Speight to pick up the paint we'd ordered for the engine, now thinking that it might have been entirely the wrong colour after all. But for some reason it had been made up in coach enamel rather than engine enamel, which was a true blessing in disguise as it meant that we could go back to the drawing board. Phil got out all his colour chips again, and while he and Jim pored over various sensible shades of green, I picked out the one that reminded me most of the engine works. Phil very kindly lent us some of the chips to take away with us and consult further ...

Fast forward finally to our journey home yesterday, when we dropped the crankshaft off at RN in Daventry. Considerable progress is now being made on the engine (again, another story) and it is now in about as many bits as it is possible to reduce an engine to. And on many of the bits that hadn't seen the light of day for decades there were distinct traces of a much brighter, lighter green paint. It matched my chip perfectly. This is enough evidence for us. We are going to stick our necks out and paint Warrior's engine a colour called Muscat. If it does turn out be be wrong, at least we will be able to explain why it seemed like a good idea at the time.

So our morning in Ashton was productive as well as enjoyable and exciting, and I'm very glad we went!

We're back!

Back from the land where time stands still, and there is no news, and a sliced loaf costs £1.50 ...
Some trip stats:
Miles: 103
Locks: 115
Tunnels: 6 (including two big ones)
Days: 11
Days it rained: 10
Injuries: 3, viz: Thorn in hand which went a bit septic but is better now (scrambling off via plank at a lock on Huddersfield Narrow); Scratched nose (hawthorn tree strategically placed after bridge on Macclesfield, very impressive with blood pouring down face in the lashing rain); Chunk pinched out of right thumb (tile cutters at Stretton Wharf).

So only minor injuries, hardly worth mentioning really. Unlike the crew member of The Honorable Lady, whom we first met at Marsden the night before going through the Standedge Tunnel. He'd taken a fall the previous day, and hurt his ankle, but was soldiering on. We met them again at Portland Basin; he was still soldiering on, but struggling a bit. Then we met the boat again at the Harecastle Tunnel and learnt that he was in Shrewsbury Hospital with a broken ankle and septicaemia. Best wishes for a speedy recovery Nick!

Will do a proper post soon - lots, in fact, covering the journey and making this temporarily Andante's blog rather than Warrior's. Suffice to say for now that it was absolutely brilliant. We found a good pub every night but one (thumbs down to the aptly named Fool's Nook at Royal Oak on the Macclesfield), and met up with some lovely people, in one case sitting talking til midnight (with Tony and Sheila from Owl in Stone - I've just realised that although I've noted our overnight stopping places I haven't attached the names of the pubs to them! Damn! Damn! Damn!)

Back in September ...

So don't go away!

The new car (1992 Volvo 940, £175 since you asked) is packed to the roof, and we will set off tomorrow morning for Huddersfield (I know I was in Huddersfield already, but I came back yesterday), to leave for the last time in Andante. It would be rash in the extreme for me to so much as suggest that there will be any updates to the blog while we're away. While I have carefully read Mike's handy wi-fi facts, and in fact have printed a copy to take with us, I doubt very much that we will have either the opportunity or the technical ability actually to get online whilst en route. We're taking the laptop, but that's mainly to store the photos and for Number One Son to watch DVDs (I don't want to be responsible for him dying of boredom. When we invited him along I kind of forgot to mention that there wasn't a telly.)

In the above photo, Lockboy demonstrates the Weed Weapon (Jim has another name for it which relates to the young people he expects to encounter on certain urban stretches, but we won't go into that). This is an ancient tool which Looks As Though It Might Be Useful On A Boat, lovingly restored and painted by Jim. I don't know whether he'll be repainting it in Warrior's colours once we get there, but it's in Andante's for now.

So, I promise we'll be back in September with the highlights of the trip. Meanwhile, wish us luck!

Bridges. Toilets. The usual stuff.

This is the view from Andante, on her proper towpath mooring, looking towards the Wakefield Road and the Narrow Canal and, on the left, Aspley Basin.

Observe the pretty rustic bridge. Or, in fact, the pretty useless bridge, as it has been closed for months and months. It is closed because it is unsafe. Even when it was open it was patently unsafe. It's curvature is such that you needed crampons to cross it in the winter, and it swayed alarmingly when induced to do so by the revolting offspring of patrons of the Brewer's Fayre. The grippy bits which were attached rather half heartedly to the wooden treads (what you can't see in the picture is that there are sloping steps either side of the big sloping bit in the middle) were all detaching themselves to become trippy bits. And to top it all there was a sign saying 'no more than four people on the bridge at once'. (Four slender wiry boaters? Or four Brewer's Fayre customers?) Which doesn't inspire great confidence.

Now what I can't work out is why the bridge was built like that in the first place. It hasn't been there all that long. The photo here (scroll down a bit) (pre-restoration, presumably, but post 1977 from the horrendous University edifice dominating the background) shows a bridgeless scene. Why does it need to be so high? (Compare it to the Wakefield Road bridge beyond on the right.)

The bridge is, apparently, to be rebuilt. Eventually. We cannot blame poor old BW for this one, it seems (though I shall be blaming them for something much more malign in a couple of paragraphs' time) as it appears to be owned by Whitbreads. A planning application has been made (it's a conservation area and, IIRC from the notices, bits of the stone bridge piers are listed. But how?? They weren't even there 30 years ago). However, it will all come to late for me to be able to visit the toilet.

Oh yes, now we come to the seething rage that I have sustained for the best part of a year. BW have built (relatively) glitzy new toilets and showers on the other side of the canal opposite the basin. These were quickly, if not easily, accessible via the footbridge. In the absence of the footbridge, you have to use the road bridge, which means walking round the basin, which takes about ten minutes. OK, no great hardship, but when I first moored here, totally unnecessary, because there was a toilet on the towpath side, set into the back of the 'pub', with a great big BW toilet sign on the door. It was in a very sorry state, and the amenities were basic, but I didn't care, because it was MINE! I cleaned it up, and kept it clean; I remembered to take a torch and my own loo roll, and in the summer other boaters used it too. Everyone was happy.

Then one day I came back from work to find the BW toilet sign gone and a suspiciously shiny new lock on the door. I rang BW and had a conversation that went very roughly like this:
Me: What's happened to my toilet?
BW: We had a complaint about it so we closed it.
Me: But it was a valuable resource for me and many other users of the canal.
BW: It was substandard so we closed it.
Me: But I didn't mind! It worked!
BW: We consulted with our user groups and they agreed we should close it.
Me: How can I get involved in these consultations?
BW: You can't. They're not for boaters, just for organised groups like the Sea Cadets. We don't consult boaters.
Me: Won't you reconsider? Lots of people used it.
BW: No. We've invested in lovely new facilities on the other side of the canal.
Me: But they're on the other side of the canal. It wouldn't have hurt to keep this one too. You didn't even have to clean it or anything.
BW: We had complaints that it was substandard so we closed it.
Me: Complaints? You said a complaint before.
BW: Ah, now you're trying to twist my words.
Me: (banging head on desk) Aaaagh! Everything anyone has ever said about British Waterways is true.

Wouldn't tell me who made the complaint of course. Interestingly though, I blu-tacked a note to the door with the BW phone number in case anyone else wanted to ring up and protest, and it was ripped down overnight. I don't suppose it was BW did that.

Travels with my tree

Got back from work yesterday afternoon to find Andante had a new friend - with a tale of disappointment to tell. They were on their way back from Marsden having learnt that they were too wide - by an inch and a half - to get through the Standedge Tunnel. When they say 6'10" they mean 6'10". When I got the tunnel paperwork through I thought about measuring Andante - but realised I could never do it accurately enough for it to be any use, so we too will find out when we get there. I was looking at this other boat thinking, rather desperately, 'well, it does look a bit fat...'

Note the rather sad looking yucca on Andante's bow. I don't like yuccas. I don't like houseplants. A tall top-heavy houseplant on the front end of a boat is a bad idea. This particular houseplant does not provide much in the way of aesthetic enhancement. But it's there because it was on its way to the dustbins, and I'm a sucker for anything that's being thrown out. It's a rescued houseplant. Will it survive the journey? Or will it fall in and perish amongst the dreaded blue-green algae? Or suffer a horrific lock-related fate? You'll just have to keep watching.

So, farewell then, Huddersfield

I'm not actually leaving, finally, until Saturday (my last day at work is Thursday) so this will be a week of farewells and souvenir photos of this rather lovely town. Like all big towns, at ground level it's a bit grubby, and it has its share of cloned shops, but if you look up it also has some fantastic buildings, and has managed to hang on to more of them through the 60s and 70s than many comparable places. It also has two canals - now prosaically called the Huddersfield Broad and the Huddersfield Narrow, but originally Sir John Ramsden's Canal and the Huddersfield Canal respectively. Andante's mooring is just on the broad side of Aspley Basin, the site of the old trans-shipment wharf between the two - no integrated transport policy in those days either.

There are two facts about Huddersfield which I'm very fond of trotting out, having taken the trouble to confirm them with a nice chap in the planning department at Kirklees Council. One is that Huddersfield is, in terms of its population, the largest town in the UK that isn't a city. Why be a medium sized city if you can be the biggest town? I mentioned this to a person from Northampton, at a conference earlier this year. Predictably, he said, 'No it isn't, Northampton is.' I then went on - in the next breath - to tell a woman from Liverpool that Huddersfield has the greatest number of listed buildings in Britain after Bath (some accounts say Bristol) and Westminster. Her reply was equally predictable - but I have that one on the authority of the Guardian as well as the man from the council. Unless of course you know different, as they used to say on That's Life.

Tonight I am going on a guided architectural tour organised by the Huddersfield Civic Society, a thoroughly sterling organisation.

Why the photo of such a relatively nondescript building to head this post, then? Well, the George Hotel in Huddersfield is well known (among people that like to know that sort of thing) as the birthplace of rugby league. And Caffe Nero in Huddersfield will go down in history as the place where we signed the papers and took possession of Warrior. Although only because the woman in the bank over the road who was supposed to be sorting out the money had gone to lunch.

Canal wildlife

Narrowboatworld reports a fresh outbreak of horrible disgusting slimy poisonous blue-green algae on the 'Shropshire Union Canal covering [covering!] the area from Wheaton Aston to Brewood'.

Utterly uncannily, that is the exact spot we are headed for.

Good news from the men with beards

On Saturday morning the chief wizard, Allister Denyer, from the Russell Newbery Engine Co phoned with the good news that there was progress with phase one of the engine rebuild. Progress in three ways, one, the engine was ever so slowly moving towards completion (only 4 months so far!), two, Allister and I are talking, in fact it is impossible to shut us up! and three the RN Engine Co has at long last, admitted to the value of communicating with their customers. The news is in fact better than even I hoped and certainly better that Allister's initial prognosis. The first part of the first phase which involves the complete dismantling of both the block and the crankcase and the complete steam cleaning of both items is now complete. The block is in remarkable condition and has been crack tested and is one of the best he has seen according to Allister. It just remains to hone out the black rust from the bores which remains after the removal of the liners. It is also remarkable because for the first 17 years of its life it was cooled by sea water as the power plant of a fisheries protection trawler based in Kings Lynn and spent the next 30 years or so sitting on the quayside in the company of a 4cyl Gardner until they were both bought by John Shotbolt in around 1985.
He installed the National in the one and only tug he built, Warrior, in 1995, which he originally intended to keep for himself, but 4 years later was prevailed upon to sell. The Gardner now powers his last boat - Revenge. These two boats were named after the Royal Navy's first two iron clad warships: HMS Warrior is still extant and moored in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
Back to the National; following the steam clean inside and out all the residual paint has been removed and both sections have been rubbed down, primed and undercoated ready for me to apply the topcoats of Craftsmaster Paints engine enamel equivalent of Mason's Dove Green which is, after considerable consultation with some of the stars of the old engine fraternity, the nearest we can get to the original National engine colour. Although to be truthful we are being slightly precious here as it is likely that all engines from what ever source were painted with what ever paint was to hand, we however would like to differentiate our unique National from the mid brunswick green used by Russell Newbery.
Next week, after the paint has thoroughly dried, and the honing has been completed RN liners will be slightly modified and then fitted to the block. The crank case and the block then will be ready for the next phase - casting the main and big end bearings in white metal and machining them to the crank which is currently undergoing major surgery at Custom Cranks. This should be ready to be picked up sometime at the end of August, when it will be delivered by me to RN at Daventry. Watch out for the next exciting episode then.

This doesn't look good ...

My post about the French stove last week got more response than anything else I've ever written about here. Not all that much, admittedly, but still more than anything else. As things are a bit quiet otherwise, I thought I'd do a quick update on it. Jim managed to get it to pieces - it's made in quite a lot of separate pieces; in particular he extricated the inner cast iron firebox from the enammelled front and top. It does not look good. There is a single, big, crack that extends from the bottom left of the front, by the ashpan, right round the side to more than half way up the back. The good news is that that's the only damage; the bad news of course is that it will be fiendishly difficult, if not impossible, to repair. It's cast iron, it's old, it's rusty, it probably wasn't very good quality in the first place - and our only hope is to try to get it welded. Mission Impossible for Len the local welder, with whom it now rests. Last we saw, he was still sucking his teeth and shaking his head at it.

Tomorrow, a report from Jim on the engine's progress .....

Logistics

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the 'art of moving, lodging, and supplying troops and equipment'.

In a decidely non-military context, that's what I've been trying to sort out this week: planning, as far as is possible, to ensure that people and things are in the right places before, during and after our forthcoming trip. The starting point was to get an itinerary from Canalplan - an amazing website. Two itineraries in fact, to take account of our passage through the Standedge Tunnel, which is booked for August 16th.

Lockboy, sadly, has too hectic a social life to accompany us this time, but we have recruited Number One Son to provide extra muscle on the first leg of the journey, along the Huddersfield Narrow, where I fear it may be much needed. The only hitch is that he has to be back down south for a wedding (not his own, fortunately) on the Saturday. The best plan I could come up with was to put him ashore at Stalybridge and onto a train home via Manchester. I've booked him a Virgin advance ticket - a bargain at £16.50 - but if he doesn't make that particular train we're looking at at least £74. So in a way that's the most time-critical part of the journey.

We'll drive up to Huddersfield on the preceding Saturday - so Jim needs to be able to get back to collect the car from there once we've arrived at Stretton. Stretton Wharf is five miles from the nearest railway station - hopefully someone will be found to give him a lift!

With personnel all in the right place, we turn our attention to Things. Andante is a pretty small boat, especially for three people, so we want the minimum possible amount of stuff on voyage. But there are loads of things we'll need once we get there to start smartening her up. So that all has to be fitted into the car ready for collection. And then there are the books and things I need to take home after the whole trip's over in order to take them to London for the new job. There are five boxes of them, so I've enlisted the help of a colleague (thanks Pete!). He lives about seventy miles along the south coast from us (another weekly commuter) but what the hell, it's all Down South, so he's going to bring those for me when he's next 'passing'.

Well, I just hope I haven't forgotten anything too vital. Bet I have.

230v, 3.5 kva alternator for sale!

Isn't it lovely? This piece of kit came with Warrior - it had to be to cut off to get the engine out - but it doesn't appear to have been used. Certainly on Warrior it wasn't connected either to the engine or the electrical system. We have no use for it so are hoping someone will buy it from us to help defray some of our outgoings! As we've never seen it in operation we obviously can't guarantee that it works, but if anyone buys it through the blog (it's also on ebay, but very well hidden) we can come to some sort of money back if not satisfied arrangement.

More photos here.

The specifications are as follow:

3.5 kva output
57/110/230 volt
30.4/15.2 a
50 hertz
3000 RPM
weight 18.2 kg
clockwise rotation (looking from front)
90mm overall double pulley
length 375mm O/A
diameter 173mm O/A
Manufacturer's name (?) Mecce Alte, made in Italy
Date of manufacture is 2000.
It appears to be very similar in specification to the Electrolux Travelpower

Any enquiries/offers/expressions of interest, leave a comment here with your email address (or phone number if you prefer) and Jim will get back to you.

Into the digital age

Hampstead Lane locks, Regents Canal, about 2.30 pm today ...

I posted a couple of weeks ago about my trusty Practika SLR camera which I bought in the early 80s when I was about seventeen, and have been using happily ever since ...well, how quickly things change! For my birthday last week (thanks Jim!) I received a Canon Powershot A700 (needless to say) digital camera. Jim's latest engine pictures, and yesterday's stove one, were taken with it. It certainly is a boon to the blogger to be able to point and shoot, upload and post, all within minutes.

But I suspect that the shift from film to digital will also have wider ramifications; it is already affecting the way I think about both taking and keeping photos. Digital images are at every stage more ephemeral, easy to take and easy to delete, and somehow that makes them seem less sacrosanct. Having been a fairly keen photographer, on and off, since my teens, I have many large boxes of prints. I've always felt it would be wrong, somehow, to destroy any of them. But at the weekend, leafing through some prints of Andante in Huddersfield, I found myself throwing half a dozen in the bin, because they were out of focus, or shaky, or simply near duplicates of better pictures. I still have the negatives though ...

More importantly, what about the digital images we do want to keep? Apart from the danger of (someone else) accidentally deleting them, will we have the right software to look at them in ten years' time? Will the hardware be compatible? Will the CDs deteriorate? Do we have to back up our most precious pictures with prints - an expensive process for decent ones. Or do we develop a new attitude to photographs, no longer seeing them as a moment frozen in time and captured forever, but as passing elusive glimpses that will themselves disappear?

Oh yes, and what was I doing at Camden Lock this afternoon? I went up to London for a meeting related to the new job I'm starting in September, and took a half-hour stroll for a little waterways refreshment. Had to fight my way through a lot of tat, but I did get to see the canal in the end.

No fire without smoke?

This is the stove we were hoping to install in Warrior. The Morso Squirrel which was already installed, despite having nice new glass in the door, was in a parlous state. Given that it was a maximum of ten years old and that they aren't cheap, this was rather disappointing, not to say shocking. But it appears that it had been abused somewhat, being used very hot with no or inadequate firebricks in, and with water running down the stovepipe for some time, it's little wonder that the iron at the back was very badly burnt away with actual holes at the top. So that's off to the tip.

The 'new' stove is an old French one that I fell in love with many years ago in an antiques shop in Lewes, East Sussex. Round here it's quite common for antique dealers to go to France for attractively rustic artefacts and lovely enamel things like this. For years it sat in our kitchen, with us constantly meaning to get around to plumbing it in, but then last winter we got a cast iron range and fitted that instead, leaving the French stove homeless. One of the main handicaps with is is that it's a non standard size for British pipes and fittings. The other was that we didn't know whether it actually works.

So this morning we hauled it outside and lit some paper and wood in it to see where the smoke went and whether it had any serious leaks. Depressingly, it looks like it might have. I know it's not really a fair test, because it's not going to draw properly outside without a chimney (although we actually managed to rig up quite a good temporary chimney with a bit of liner left over from the kitchen range and part of a traffic cone). Even allowing for the fact that it needs new sealing stringy stuff (whatever that's called) in the top and the door, and new mica, probably, in the door (and where do you get that?), there were still mysterious wisps coming out around the top. It's hard to see where they were coming from because of the stove's double-skinned nature; it could be swirling around anywhere between the firebox and the enamel cover. I cling to the hope that it's coming out of the door then being sucked back behind th enamel to emerge from the top. We don't want to spend any money on getting a new pipe and fittings made if it's not going to get past Ian with his BSS hat on. But I really don't want to give up on it. It's the sort of dilemma that seems to happen a lot in this game.

Woo! New engine photos!

Jim has returned from his travels with a new set of engine pictures - see them here in the 'Warrior's Engine' album. All in all the news seems good: the crankshaft is basically sound and the taper will be laser welded and machined to the correct dimensions by the Custom Crank and Engineering Company of Wolverhampton. This will cost (gulp) £900. This is much cheaper than a new crankshaft (sigh of relief). The block seems to be in good shape too. The original cast iron pistons (above) are going to be replaced with new Russell Newbery alloy ones. This is a bit sad, but the old ones are, unsurprisingly, very worn, and we do get to keep the old ones to use as paperweights (or ballast?). Although some people have suggested that it would be OK to replace them with other cast iron ones - assuming we could find some - the balance of opinion is that we can run at higher revs (and that we might want to) with the alloy ones. And some Nationals were built with alloy pistons, so it's not too unoriginal.

Enjoy!

Travel plans

Jim's been doing some travelling this week. He's currently on Warrior - back in the water for the time being - having taken a rather convoluted journey up there, calling in at Guildford, to collect the crankshaft; Daventry, to pick up the gearbox cone; Kidderminster, to collect a teapot; and Wolverhampton, to drop off the crankshaft and gearbox cone at Custom Crankshafts who will be machining it.

Most importantly, we've finalised (famous last words!) our summer travel plans for Andante. The original plan was to do a Pennine ring taking in the Huddersfield Narrow and the Rochdale and end up back at Andante's home mooring at Aspley Wharf. I was determined not to leave here without going through the Standedge Tunnel - it'll be a long time before we get Warrior up here - if ever; Warrior might be a bit too deep drafted. The new plan includes that - then we head south, bringing Andante down to join Warrior at Stretton, where we will tidy her up and paint her, and then, I'm sad to say, sell her. The reasoning is that it will be easier to get the work done with boatyard facilities (such as they are!) and easier to sell Andante in the Midlands, especially with someone on hand to show people over, so we don't have to keep travelling up and down. It should also make for a really interesting journey, with a purpose at the end of it. And it means that when I leave Huddersfield for the last time (Jim will be coming back to collect the car) it will be by boat. Which is nice.

Taking sides?

Last week, Granny Buttons drew attention to the idea that there is a sharp dividing line between people who approach the waterways with an open mind and those who are obsessed with 'heritage'. This led me to wonder which side of the divide I fall on, and whether this is the only, or even the most significant, distinction to be made between different waterways users.

Part of me definitely has a strong rivet-counting tendency, best illustrated perhaps by my niggling obsession with getting the right colour paint for Warrior's engine (we have now committed on this by the way, having ordered the engine enamel from Phil Speight and asking him to match it to the best of his knowledge). It's not that there's any innate virtue in reproducing the original colour, but rather a case of, if you can, then why wouldn't you? The research, and the things you learn and the people you meet through this sort of obsessiveness, is a major part of the fun. The detective work is a challenge, and often leads to a great sense of achievement (and possibly even smugness - an emotion not to be underrated).

Do I feel we have a duty to posterity to preserve things exactly as they were? Not really - as long as there are records, and, importantly, examples, somewhere. History is important, but change is part of history and that includes changes that are taking place now. So why am I pleased to see buildings listed and working boats restored? Ninety nine percent of the time it's simply because they are just more beautiful, lovelier and better built than any modern replacement would be. I don't want to live in the past, but I do despair of the contemporary lemming rush for ever changing, gimcrack, disposable rubbish, whose only virtue is that it's 'new', the pursuit of which drives us into debt and heart attacks and ultimately the environmental grave - and which always still leaves us hungry.

Here's a thought. The age of canal transport lasted, say, 200 years. We think of this as an interesting and significant blip in history, whose end was inevitable. Mass road transport, which we take to be the norm, has been in place for about seventy years, if that.* Will it last another 130? Of course not. I'm not a great lover of sci-fi, but I like to toy with a futuristic plot in which roads are broken up and overgrown, but a few hardy souls set out to restore them so that they can chug around in their salvaged and restored lorries ...

Finally, a lot of waterways users (and I have gleaned this largely from the letters pages of the waterways press and Narrowboatworld rather than direct experience) seem to be neither interested in heritage nor open minded: the ones who complain about 'tatty boats' running their engines, about not being able to take their dog through the Standedge Tunnel, about online moorings being an eyesore or, conversely, about boats passing their online moorings too fast and so on. I don't mind seeing online moorings; I don't mind feeling the boat move, I'd rather hear an engine running than listen to someone else's taste in music, and I'd rather see a tatty, loved and lived in boat any day than a fresh out of the box identikit tub spray-painted dark blue or dark green that you have to take your shoes off to go aboard. If it's inhabited by a couple of hippies with a hairy dog on a piece of string and preferably a clutch of grubby (but happy!) children, so much the better. Bonus marks for a wind generator.

So pleasure-boating and heritage-obsession can, perhaps, go hand-in-hand. It's the misery-boaters who are out on their own!

(The above paragraph was sponsored by Hyphens-R-Us Ltd of Chapel-en-le-Frith.)

*Please feel free to correct or tighten up these figures - they're very much off the top of my head but I hope the general drift still stands.

Now we're cooking with gas!

Friday, July 14th

Our last full day up at Warrior last week, and we took advantage of a visit from Ian not only to bend his ear about the engine, but to get him to check out the cooker, following the kitchen refit, and OK it for use. After finding and fixing a slight leak we were at last cooking with gas again. Until now, while on dry land with 240v available we'd been using a microwave - something we don't even have at home. Combined with a lack of refrigeration facilities, this rather limited our menu repertoire, and we mainly lived on tinned vegetable chilli and Uncle Ben's microwave rice. I have to say that, if you ever find yourself in the position of having a microwave and no other cooking facilities, Uncle Ben's microwave rice is highly recommended. It comes in lots of different varieties and heats to perfection in two minutes. To celebrate the inauguration of the cooker, Jim had cheese on toast for tea. This meant that I got a double helping of tinned vegetable chilli and Uncle Ben's microwave rice. Then we put the microwave in the car.

I'm a great fan of gas for cooking, at home as well as on the boat. I can't see the attraction of the 'gas free' boat - especially if it relies instead on heavy electricity use. To my mind, 240v on a steel boat is a much scarier prospect than gas - at least you can smell the latter. But then, I still find electricity in any context a little mysterious and frightening. Talking of which, we also discussed Warrior's electrical requirements, as Ian will be bringing an electrician up (or possibly down) soon. These will be entirely, or almost entirely (haven't finally decided yet), 12v.

Decisions about the engine have been going on and changing all week, but we seem this morning to have come back round to what we decided on Friday - in short, that we will do most of the reassembly of the engine ourselves, at home, rather than have pay RN rates to have it done by them, and in the meantime will get Warrior mobile again with an engine from Ian, a 1970s Lister HRW3, with a Blackstone gearbox, which we can sell on once we've finished with it. This should take the time pressure off. There will no doubt be many more hitches and changes of plan along the way, but that is the latest state of play. The latest news is that not only is our engine unusual, but that our Bruntons 1:1 gearbox is itself a very rare example. Lets just hope that we can get them both up and running!

True Grit

Thursday July 13th

We did very little work on Warrior on Thursday, as another boat was being gritblasted. We were warned to batten down the hatches against the ensuing dust, but it wasn't too bad. We put our clear plastic sheets in the front doors and the kitchen side hatch, but the back end of the boat wasn't too affected. In fact, in the kitchen it wasn't the dust that was the problem so much as the exhaust from his enormous compressor which was lined up right alongside. Running almost continuously for what seemed like all day, this had the inestimable benefit of drowning out the sound of Radio 1 (yes, I really have got a downer on them; I honestly would rather listen to a compressor all day. More musical, too).

Well, it was very impressive to watch - and looked like an absolutely horrible job, especially on a day as hot as this was. We had (briefly) considered having Warrior's topsides (too naval?) blasted as we had the hull, but watching this decided us against it - on top of the cost (every penny well earned, mind you) there is also the hassle of masking eveything properly, and clearing up afterwards - and Warrior's paint, though horrible, is sound. So it's back to plan A, much sanding. Enter Number One Son, Lockboy's older brother, who owes us a favour or two ... He's not mad about boats, but he does like power tools, so we have high hopes of his assistance.

Other things I did while confined to quarters included putting the bed curtains up - that's a curtain on a rail either side of the steps and a flat panel in the middle, attached to the back of the steps, and I'm quite pleased with them even if I do say so myself. I also varnished the insides of the kitchen cupboards. Oh yes, and I sat out on the back and read the paper quite a lot.

Two other boats arrived and were craned out in the evening - a couple with a boat each. One of the boats, at eighteen months old, was an object lesson in the importance of removing millscale - the blacking was just falling off the hull.

I'm all alone in the office today, the kid that couldn't go on the school trip - everyone else is off on a departmental 'awayday'. The fact that I'm only here for another three weeks seemed like the perfect excuse to give it a miss. In case you're worried that I'm missing out on an all-expenses-paid treat to some exotic location, they've gone to Oldham.

Panelling the engine room

Wednesday July 12th

What I actually did on Wednesday was more blacking. What I am going to write about, however, is the panelling out of the engine room, which has been going on since our last visit, and is still underway.

For some reason, the engine room was never lined. This meant that it was cold and prone to condensation in the winter and an absolute oven in the summer. We are lining the cabin sides (vertically) with reclaimed old beaded edge pine t&g; the ceiling, in the same material, will be a little trickier, as the roof has a removable section for getting the engine in and out. Jim is currently working on it and it will probably end up with the middle section being a removeable panel, larger than the hatch, which screws on to the surrounding woodwork. We are using polystyrene for insulation behind the panelling. The porthole will now need a liner, but we won't be getting a brass one to match the rest of the boat; rather, we will have one made from steel and paint it.

The painting will be in pale grey for the woodwork (by and large everything above the gunwale) and raddle red on the metal, including the hull sides and engine bay. The Craftmaster paint is justifying its cost by being a pleasure to put on and covering very well.

Not one of my more scintillating posts, granted, but it's late afternoon in sweltering Huddersfield and I just want to get out of my airless office and go and swelter on Andante instead. Remember, when it's too hot to work, it's not the heat that's the problem!

Black stuff, and bed

Tuesday July 11th
It has fallen to me to do the blacking - mainly because I lack the myriad other skills which Jim is deploying elsewhere on Warrior. Not that blacking isn't a skilled job! (Well, no, it isn't really.) In our absence, Warrior's hull was shotblasted and two coats of blacking put on; my aim this week was to add a further three, making a total of five coats. We are using Rylard Coflex vinyl tar (comastic) and are taking it right up to the gunwale for ease of future patching up. I'm putting it on with cheap (£1.29) bristle brushes and chucking them away at the end of each coat - actually, despite being cheap they shed far less hair than most brushes I've used. I've always preferred brushes to rollers; it may be slower but it's less messy and it goes on thicker and better. This stuff went on very nicely (and the finish is authentically rough with plenty of runs and brushmarks!).

I did the third coat on the Monday, half of the fourth on the Tuesday and the other half on Wednesday, and the fifth on Friday - Thursday was a day off because a boat was being gritblasted nearby. The only bit not done is the fore end - owing to a large and apparently growing pile of gravel having been delivered around it, which provides a lovely effect of Warrior ploughing through the waves but impedes painting access. Rather than move the gravel, Keith is going to move Warrior at some point, and then we (or they) will get the last bit finished off.

The tin the stuff comes in is of course emblazened with myriad warnings to the effect of how nasty it is, and I was careful not to inhale too much of it - but I was still surprised to find that - at least in combination with the sun - it will burn skin where it drips on it. I first noticed this with a mysterious sore elbow on Monday evening which then developed burn marks; I suffered no ill effects on the Tuesday or Wednesday, but on Friday nearly every drip was leaving a mark and I finally sussed out the cause. Whether the difference was in the different tins, the temperature or the sunlight I don't know. But it's obviously good stuff!

Other tasks today included Jim building the base for the bed under the foredeck. This is as close to the floor as possible, to give us maximum headroom, but raised up enough to provide some airflow to the mattress and clear a water pipe. Originally, there was a very ingenious and well built roll out bed, but it had several disadvantages: it was narrow (3'9"); the head sloped downwards, and we had to move the furniture to make space to roll it out. Having a fixed bed under there means the bed can be wider - about 4' at the head end widening to the full width of the boat, and the head end slopes (slightly) upwards rather than downwards, making it much more comfortable. We thought of levelling it out but that would have lost us more headroom. As it is we have about two foot, which is cosy but adequate for getting in and out. The whole space under the foredeck is panelled in pine and beautifully finished - even though it was never intended to be seen. There is a large hatch over the centre of the bed that we can prop open for ventilation - before the wasp season starts I have to make an insect screen for it! We had a mattress made in 4.5 inch thick foam, covered in striped ticking, by the Foam and Fabric Shop in Seaford, East Sussex - I think it cost £270, and it's very comfortable and shaped to fit in both dimensions.

Finally, on Tuesday, we went out for dinner to the Hartley Arms in Wheaton Aston, which was pretty good; certainly much better than our other attempt at eating out in the area, at the Vaughan Arms, Lapley - definitely not recommended! After a nice meal and some very good beer we went for a walk along the towpath where we saw a lovely new boat and engaged the owner in conversation - he turned out be to a repairer of boat engines, specialising in old ones, and we may hear more of him here ...

An early start ...

And AFTER! More photos here.

Monday July 10th
We were awoken on Monday morning (as indeed on every other morning) by the arrival of a welder, at 5.45! As he didn't realise we were there, he put Radio 1 on immediately (the rest of the week he waited until he knew we were up - we always were, but it was a challenge to see how long we could keep quiet enough to stop it going on). In best holiday fashion, I have come home with a couple of mindless songs stuck forever in my head.

The first thing we did this morning was to look at our new kitchen. It is magnificent! And it was a total surprise - when we rang Keith to say we were coming he didn't say a word about it, and we were fully expecting to find the empty space we'd left. Looking from the front of the boat, to the left is the fridge, with a full depth worktop over it, which then tapers over about 600mm to about eight inches deep. Under here is a cupboard with double doors on the angle, and the side hatch is accessible above it. On the right is the cooker with inset hob (we reused the old one), then a white china sink with integral drainer which we bought from the local tip years ago (£3, I think) and have finally found a good home for. This has cupboards below as well, and facing you at right angles to this is a worktop about a foot deep with another cupboard below. It's a very efficient and attractive layout. All will become clearer when the photos arrive.

The worktops are iroko, a combination of worktop offcuts and timber offcuts which we found, and the cupboard doors are quarter sawn English oak, supplied by Derek, the brilliant cabinet maker who built and fitted the kitchen. The trim is ash, which we specified to tie it in with the rest of the boat. The ash trim and the insides of the cupboards have been varnished; the oak and the worktops oiled.

In the afternoon we went to see Phil Speight of Craftmaster paints (and Canals and Rivers) fame to talk about paint and painting. We came away with some light grey paint for the engine room woodwork, and having ordered raddle red engine enamel for the engine bay. We also asked him about National engine green, and he suggested that Mason's 'dove green' is about the nearest. This does look very similar to a stationary engine we saw online which was claimed to have original paint, although it was darker than Tony Redshaw was suggesting, with a sort of silvery tinge. On the way back we stopped at Wickes in Wolverhampton (God, we see some glamorous places) to buy wood for building our bed ...

What I did on my holidays

Warrior's kitchen BEFORE! (This picture does not fully convey the horror ...)

A week under the baking sun, yards from the water's edge, hot black sand between my toes ... no, of course I wasn't in Tenerife! I was in a boatyard on the Shroppie, a much more desirable holiday destination. I still managed to acquire some impressive insect bites, plus some small but interesting chemical burns, and all without even needing my passport (which I have just renewed, after a lapse of over ten years, in order to avoid being put on the national identity database for as long as humanly possible - see the NO2ID link for details of that - it's the one link that works).

It's a funny thing, living and working on Warrior in the yard - it's a bit like setting up camp in somebody's factory, or building site. It makes me feel rather intrusive, and as if I might be getting in the way - but it's also very hard to resist watching and listening to the people working there, because it's so fascinating and instructive. Blokes, I've noticed, seem to suffer no such qualms - within minutes of arriving they're marching round like they own the place and chatting away as if they've known each other for years.

I'm very envious of that insouciant sense of entitlement; a few women (rich and particularly upper class ones) have it, but nearly all men seem to. I think this is related to the question that was raised in the press the other week about why so (relatively) few blogs, particularly political ones, are by women - one answer was that men just assume that the world is interested in their opinions, while women set the bar a lot higher in judging what they have to offer before they say anything.

Back to Warrior - we arrived last Sunday evening, just as it was getting dark, and my plan for this week is to put a daily diary up here of what we did last week - I've been making notes in the log. Photos will follow with the usual time lapse - but as the first thing we noticed on arriving was Warrior's new kitchen, just to be going on with, above is a picture of the old one. This photo does not actually do justice to its awfulness, which, as it was taken by the previous owner, is not really surprising - the trim was plastic and falling off, the tiles were very crudely stuck on top of curved-edge worktop and also falling off, and there was very little worktop space. Without altering the overall size of the kitchen, and utilising the existing fridge and cooker, we now have a layout that gives us significantly more workspace and cupboard space - more details tomorrow!

Warrior's floor

While we were at Stretton a few weeks ago, one of the things we did was to lay a new floor through Warrior, as far as the engine room. Previously there was carpet, laid on top of more carpet, laid on board. The bottom layer of carpet was very firmly glued down! We were pretty sure that we wanted a wooden floor, and I was keen to have the planks going full length across the boat, which meant we needed six foot lengths, which ruled out most flooring available in the shops. Our first preference was for douglas fir, but that turned out to be prohibitively, unbelievably, expensive. In fact, new timber of all kinds, as well as all but the cheapest laminate, was more expensive than what we ended up with: 200 year old pitch pine, sawn into six-inch-wide tongued and grooved boards, from reclaimed laminated roof beams. It took Jim two days to lay the floor, using hidden nails through drilled holes, and then we practically lived outside for the rest of the week while six coats of boiled linseed oil soaked into it. We decided on linseed oil because it's cheap and natural and the least noxious option. We use it on our pine floors at home and they've been fine. I fully expect the floor to pick up some knocks and dirt, which we can live with, but we'll protect it from the worst while cruising with some rubber-backed absorbent cotton mats we bought for 50p each in B&Q in Huddersfield. (Too much information yet?) The pine floor goes through the saloon and the kitchen; in the bathroom we will have some heavy duty vinyl which I got out of a skip; hardwood decking boards in the engine room, and red oxide paint in the back cabin.

On Sunday we're back off to Stretton, where we will be mostly painting - more coats of blacking on the hull, priming and undercoating in the engine room - and putting up the curtains which I have spent today making.

Photos at last

I got back yesterday from sweltering in Nottingham where for once I was quite glad of an air conditioned conference centre (though I would rather have been on a boat). I've just finished uploading the first tranche of photos to Warrior's Webshots site, and it seems to work quite well as far as I can tell so far.

The photos were all taken with my trusty Practika BX20, which I bought as a teenager in the early eighties. If I remember rightly, it cost £200, including the flash unit and two zoom lenses (35-70 and 70-210mm) and is still all going strong, although the flash unit's attaching bit has been repaired with superglue, and the rewinding handle broke off at Braunston. The only other breakage occurred while Baz (aka Lockboy, but not for much longer) was carrying the camera while out on a walk and tripped over his shoelaces, landing on and breaking the 35-70 lens. Fortunately Jim was able to find a second hand replacement, although I've never found out what it cost. So don't walk round with your shoelaces undone! (Especially on a boat.) It's a big, heavy, aperture priority SLR and I'm very fond of it, although I suppose I will have to enter the digital age sooner or later - perhaps when they stop making film. Most of the photos were taken on bog standard 200 ASA Kodak film and developed and printed by Messrs Bonusprint; the last few lots I've also had put on CD in order to be able to upload them. The photos on the site are a selection from eight sets of 36, which is why it's taken a while.

You might notice that before I went to Nottingham, Baz and I tried with only limited success to establish a links list for this blog. As soon as we work out how to do it successfully, the photos will be top of the list.

Engine update: Cheryl from Russell Newbery rang while I was away to say that the crankshaft has gone to Guildford for its x-ray - fingers crossed!

Mmmm ... pie and peas

As I will shortly be leaving Huddersfield, last night I took all my favourite colleagues out for a slap up dinner. Well, OK, I stood them pie and peas at the brilliant real ale pub The Star - under fifteen quid for nine of us (Jim had two). Pie and peas in The Star will be one of my fondest abiding memories of Huddersfield. It's the only food they do, and they only do it on Wednesdays, but if you're lucky you do get a choice of cheese and onion, beef, or pork. Yes, as in a pork pie, but served hot and sitting in a sea of peas (mushy, of course. None of your poncy petits pois here). You douse the lot with mint sauce and eat it with a spoon. Naturally on first arriving in The North I was rather sceptical about the attractions of this, but bravely plunged in, thinking 'when in Rome etc'; by the third time I was looking forward to it all day. The Star is about ten minutes walk away from the canal, but totally worth it if you have the slightest respect for beer - they always have loads of different real ales, always very well kept; no TV, no music, just a rather sweet dog. I shall miss it greatly.

My second favourite Huddersfield pub is the Albert, in the town centre. Recently reopened, and newly listed after a worrying few months at the beginning of the year, they now do food (which I haven't tried) and a decent pint (which I have, often), but the main attraction for me is the stunning Victorian interior, particularly the bar, all marble, mahogany and mirrors.

Nearer Aspley Basin is the New Wharf, which proudly advertises that it's been given an award for its food ... by the Huddersfield Student newspaper. When I ate there, admittedly about a year ago now, the food was average but edible, but the beer was dire. When I went back a second time, both food and beer were worse. So I've not been back a third time. Pity, as it has a nice eccentric, eclectic interior and a nice feel about it. Right on the basin of course is the Brewers Fayre (why, just typing that made me feel a bit queasy) 'pub' The Aspley. Just don't go there. They don't need your custom. There are enough people with no sense and no taste and no idea to keep them full every night of the week.

Oh dear, this seems to have turned into a pub review - well, I did try to relate it to the canal.

Bits and bobs

I'm dead chuffed this morning to find nb Warrior on Granny Buttons' blogroll. I am steeling myself to have another go at setting one up here but I am so technologically challenged in this area it may take some time yet. Advance apologies - it will be a bit quiet here for the next week or so: I have to go to a conference in Nottingham next week and then we'll be back at Stretton with Warrior the week after that. Over the weekend I shall be trying to set up a photo website(see above for caveats). I'm thinking of using Webshots - it's less glitzy than Flickr but it looks simpler, and you get to post more photos on the free account (240 as opposed to 200). Any other suggestions?

This afternoon Andante should finally go back to her own spot on the towpath at Aspley (Huddersfield). Just before our epic trip at Easter we got a call to say she'd been broken into (in the middle of the morning! Big lump of stone through the window, followed by a couple of skinny herberts - must have been skinny to get through the window. Nothing taken (nothing to take) except an aging gas lighter, and blessedly no gratuitous damage done, just glass everywhere and a chunk out of the woodwork where the stone landed) so we made a detour to replace the window and fit security bars. At this point she'd been moved into the basin for security and someone else had nicked her towpath spot, so she's been sitting in the basin ever since, right up against the pub car park. Which is really no fun. That is, until I turned up on Monday to find her gone - moved round the corner to make room for a new boat. So this afternoon reinforcements are arriving to fight our way back onto the towpath somewhere. First off though a well deserved pumpout and watering should see her sitting a little less drunkenly. You were right Mike - those tanks are enormous. We emptied Warrior's water tank in three days and couldn't work out what had happened, we've been so spoilt.

A grand day out

Braunston: beer, beanburgers, boats - what more could a girl want?

Lots of other things that don't alliterate satisfactorily but were also present: sunshine, friendly people old and new, engines, morris dancers (OK, I can take or leave them), teenagers scarily good at handling boats; boats and more boats (although perhaps not quite the numbers they were hoping for? I confess I didn't count). Well worth the 320 mile round trip and £10 car parking charge.

But, I hear you ask, what about the National Paint Colour Mystery? It deepens (or lightens). Apparently it should be neither bright green nor dark green, but according to someone who ought to know (just what is the protocol on naming people?) 'a sort of dirty lime green with black in it' and 'really horrible'. So horrible that it seems no one has attempted to reproduce it on a rebuilt engine. The colour he picked out on our chips was more what I'd call a sort of darkish eau-de-nil - a good thirties colour for a thirties engine. So what we need to do now is to track one down (possibly our own) with some original paint still on it and try and find a match. It might be argued that it really doesn't matter - people could paint their engines any colour they liked and it needn't try to look as if it's straight out of the box. But if we're going to do it, why not try to get it right - tracking these things down is so much of the fun of it. Of course, that might not be the last word on the subject - someone else again might have other ideas about how it should be. Anyone got any ideas of other ways of finding out?

Green paint

Just a quick post today - firstly thanks to Mike for picking up on yesterday's rant and making me feel like part of the blogging community! Secondly, if anyone ploughed through the post about Warrior's engine and thought they detected the odd schoolboy (girl?) error, well all I can say is hopefully they're gone now.

We're off to Braunston tomorrow, armed with a set of paint colour chips in various shades of mid to dark green which we will be holding up to any National engine we can get near enough to. Warrior's engine is currently painted quite a dark green, and a cursory examination hasn't revealed any other shades underneath. While at Daventry we saw two engines - one RN and one National - nearly completed and both painted the same shade of what I think of as 'park bench' green - lighter and brighter than Warrior's. It seemed to me that it would be a bit of a coincidence for a separate company, having licenced the design from RN to make under its own name, to paint its engines exactly the same colour - surely National would already have their colour schemes established?

Why do so many people want to buy new boats?

This is a subject that's been exercising me for a while, particularly given the preponderance of stories recently about the pitfalls encountered by the buyers of new boats - poor steelwork leading to sinking; builders going out of business owing customers tens of thousands of pounds; the near impossibility of getting moorings, plus smaller scale local stories about a new boat that's on its third engine, for example ...

Sometimes people buy a new boat because they have very specific requirements, and want a boat built to meet these exactly. This is a reason often given by people whose boats are reviewed in the glossy mags (and frequently make a second appearance in the brokerage ads a year or two later). There are hundreds of boats for sale in Britain at any given time - 378 on Apollo Duck alone yesterday, many of them no more than a few years old - is not a single one of them suitable? Have these people even looked? (Possibly not; I remember reading a review a few years back of a new semi-trad. The owners were very pleased with their boat, but said that had they known about the possibility of having a trad with a back cabin, they would have preferred that.)

But anyway, while it may be true that some people have very specific needs or wants, and have a boat custom built to meet them, that doesn't account for all the bottom end boats sold off the peg with little scope for customisation and even less character or aesthetic appeal. The longest queue I saw at Crick was for the New Boat Company's boat. What's with these people? Even if they can't afford a boat by one of the 'top' builders exhibiting there, aren't they even interested in looking? I'm not saying no one should ever buy a new boat - I don't want to see high quality bespoke builders and fitters running out of work; I don't want to see the supply of good quality boats dry up. But in terms of numbers, we are talking increasingly about boats being made on production lines in Poland and Morocco, and even China (max length 48' to fit in a shipping container). Surely in many cases the same money would buy a much nicer boat that's a few years old.

Lots of people, it seems, simply never as much as consider buying anything 'second hand'. These are the people that buy a new car every three years and whose complaints about said cars fill the consumer and motoring pages of the press. The sort of people who buy a Barrett home because they don't like the idea of having a second hand toilet (I have seen that cited as a reason!) I would never buy a new car, or a new house - let someone else have the inevitable teething troubles, and pay extra for the privilege. But then as far as possible I don't buy new clothes, or furniture, or anything where I can utilise some one else's cast-offs, save money, stop something going into landfill and end up with better quality stuff to boot. But to many people, that seems to be a completely alien world.

Back to the problem of moorings: of all those hundreds of boats currently for sale, most are taking up a mooring somewhere. In many cases they haven't moved or even been visited for years. That's a complete waste of a mooring. Add to those the hundreds more (at a wild guess) that aren't currently for sale but whose owners don't or hardly use them and would sell if there was a buyer. If moorings owners, including BW, allowed moorings to be transferred with a boat this could provide a significant incentive to buy an existing boat rather than add a new one.

Building new boats uses resources and fossil fuels (OK, marginal amounts in the scheme of things, but everything we do as individuals is marginal in the scheme of things, it doesn't mean it's not worthwhile). If a beautiful, well made, loved and used boat is the result, then that's arguably a good use of those resources. If it's an ugly tub that causes its owners so many problems they give up on boating altogether, then that's a wicked waste. Especially when there are so many (potentially) nice boats out there just waiting for someone to love them.

A trip to Daventry

We took a brief day trip yesterday to Daventry, to visit (aah!) Warrior's engine where it sits in the workshop of the Russell Newbery Diesel Engine Company. This trip was to find out their first impressions of what sort of state the engine's in, and also do do a bit of bridge-building, having got off to a rather shaky start with one of the RN mob who, let us say, hasn't exactly been to the Dale Carnegie school of customer relations - although, to digress here, as I am wont to do, I'm not entirely convinced that it's a bad thing that there are genius engineers (for such, we are told, this person is) out there who don't subscribe to the bland 'have a nice day' approach. Anyway, yesterday we talked mainly to the bearded contingent (David and Ian) who were very nice and helpful; Ian in particular is very good at explaining things, without even seeming to notice he's doing it. So we are now committed to Warrior's engine receiving their expert care and attention, having been told by everyone we've talked to about it that they might be grumpy and miserable, and they might be slow, but that nobody will do a better job.

So what was the verdict? Well, no nasty surprises, at least as yet. The block seems to be in good shape, full of rather frightening sludge, but David says that's normal. The pistons are in OK shape, but we will probably replace them anyway - they need new rings, and they're cast iron, which means they shouldn't be used above 800 revs, which apparently we would want to do, so we will replace them with alloy ones. The crankshaft is going to be thoroughly inspected and sent off to Guildford for an x-ray (aah again) but on cursory inspection looks to be OK. The camshaft is going to be remade on a special machine they have for the purpose (they have a lot of old machines).

We will have a new alternator as supplied by RN. The starter motor, while not original (the engine was originally hand start) is an old and repairable CAV one, in pretty good nick, so that stays. The water pump is a bit more of a poser - the previous owner noted that water pumps were constantly wearing out and it turns out that this is because they were attached to far too large a pulley, making them run about six times as fast as they should. There's no space at the flywheel end to add a smaller one, so we are left with two alternatives. One is an electric water pump, which we'd like to avoid for authenticity's (and reliability's?) sake. The second is that on the front of the engine there is a cover, which apparently covers a spindle that would originally have been used to drive a water (presumably raw water) and bilge pump; it may be that this can be adapted for the purpose provided it won't protrude too far into the gangway. We won't need a fuel pump (it previously had an electric one fitted) as we are having a gravity system installed - they've already made the day tank, although we haven't seen it yet.

The gearbox was quite a nice surprise, in that it turns out to be quite sound. It is (we're told!) an early Bruntons box, 1:1, all metal parts, very simple. It looks like it might require a slight modification to the propshaft to allow some backwards/forwards movement, and this may be why it wasn't engaging effectively before. The gearbox does sport a National plate with the engine number on, which is what led us and previous owners to think it was a National box. We're still pretty sure it's the same box the engine has always had, but was the plate put on by an owner, or were these Bruntons boxes badged by National?

After this successful visit to Daventry we went on to Whilton to have lunch at the garden centre at Whilton Locks, and then we made a move for home - all in all the round trip took from 0730 until 1700 - and we weren't more than an hour at RN. We'll be doing pretty much the same trip on Saturday when we're going to go to Braunston - I've volunteered to drive, as long as my beloved Bluebird is back on the road by then. The cars are another story, but when Warrior news is slack I might get round to it!

Will try to add an engine-in-bits photo later, but I haven't yet joined the world of digital photography so have to wait till I've finished the film and got the pictures back!

What sort of a boat is Warrior?

What Warrior looks like - but ignore the paintwork - that's going! (Believe me, it looks worse close up)

Last month in Canals and Rivers magazine, Phil Speight was expostulating about the way any old (or new) boat with a bit of a curvy fore end and/or a few washer rivets gets sold as a josher - and it's true, you only have to look at the ads. His point was (I think) that this devalues the skill and effort of those few people who build/built faithful josher replicas, as well as rendering the term itself - which should be very specific - pretty much meaningless. He also had a few digs at boats that are called tugs because they have a longish foredeck and portholes.

It is into this latter category, of course, that Warrior falls. I don't have much problem describing Warrior as a 'tug-style narrowboat' (it's a fairly widely and consistently understood term), but a tug it definitely isn't. Although, with the engine it's got, I suppose there's no reason why not! Looking at real tugs, their proportions are noticeably different; generally, more foredeck, less cabin, and less length overall (Warrior is 54'). After all, generally speaking they neither carried goods nor were lived on; apart from the engine, what did they need space for? (Not a rhetorical question, I would actually like to know.) There are some leisure boats about that do suggest those proportions more accurately, but at the cost, obviously, of accomodation.

Warrior has a fairly distinctive fore end, more suggestive of an icebreaker than anything else, I think. I've asked John Shotbolt (the builder) whether the design is based on any particular boat or style of boat, and the answer was no. That makes Warrior a real one-off, as it was the only tug (-style narrowboat) he ever built. An interesting, characterful, nice looking and well built one-off. And that's before we even start talking about the engine, which is, as far as we know, unique on the British inland waterways system. That'll do me.

Having said all that about how Warrior doesn't really look much like a real tug, that is how we're going to paint it, when the time finally comes. We might even attempt a bit of tromp l'oeil to make the cabin look shorter, at the very least keeping it very plain toward the front. All part of the compromise inherent in canal boating between history and practicality.

Returning to my starting point, why even try to ape the shape, style or appearance of old boats when we all know it's fake? Not to recreate history, create a floating museum, or romanticise life on the working boats, but quite simply because those old boats are the most beautiful. And if you're going to do something, then you should do it the very best you can.

He, she or it?

Some random ramblings this time ...

We're used to referring to boats - right up to bloody great warships - as 'she'; it's a courtesy we're taught to extend them from an early age. But does this apply to canal boats? After all, much of the maritime terminology that worked its way up the rivers wasn't traditionally used on the canals: 'in' and 'out' (or right and left), not port and starboard; fore end, not bow, and so on. Having diligently learnt the nautical terminology on first taking up boating, those of us who want to get it 'right' are then faced with unlearning it and learning a whole load of new terms. (Whether it's more pretentious to try to get it 'right' than to merrily get it 'wrong' is another question I might come back to. I'm not so much motivated by a desire to 'get it right', as to know what is right, just for the sake of knowing.)

And it's amazing how ingrained those terms have become. Mind you, port and starboard are such useful concepts that I've taken to using them when talking about cars, and unlike near- and offside, they're international. Only understood by boaty types though, unfortunately. We also habitually characterise our cars as female, 'she' and 'the old girl' (or is that just in my household?).

But is Warrior conceivably a she? Not a problem for Helyn - clearly a river boat. Not really a problem for Andante - obviously female (don't ask how I know). But somehow for Warrior it doesn't seem to fit, even as a courtesy title. One likes to think, perhaps, that canal people were less sentimental, or maybe less superstitious, than their seafaring peers, and for that reason less likely to anthropomorphise the lumps of metal and wood on which their livelihoods, if not their lives, depended. But try referring to a boat as 'it' - it feels awkward. I find myself avoiding pronouns altogether when talking about Warrior. Hmmm.

Shamed by my boring blog

Yes indeed, I knew I'd been a bit lax with the updating, but I reckoned that as no one was reading it anyway, it didn't really matter. But I've just been totally put to shame by this new(ish) blog http://www.nb-globetrotter.co.uk. It's the work of Mike Beveridge, who I've kept in touch with since he sold us our first narrowboat, the dear little Andante, and it's interesting, informative, frequently funny and above all a pleasure to look at. Well, I can't compete with that - for one thing, I'm not an IT professional, and for two things, I don't live on a boat in the sense Mike does, so have rather less material. But there's enough going on at the moment with Warrior to make that a pretty feeble excuse. And that will be in another (or many other) posts, coming soon, I promise.

Two other hindrances - some other blogs go in quite a lot for giving out information and advice, and I don't really feel up to doing that. Sure, in my own mind I think I know lots of stuff, but there's a rather ingrained aversion to possibly being, well, presumptious. Another blog stock-in-trade is moaning about people/companies/BW, etc etc. I could certainly do that too - just try to shut me up in person! But again, there's something inhibiting me from putting it down in potentially permanent black and white. What if I turn out to be wrong? Or regret upsetting someone? Maybe it's a girl thing.

Still, with those excuses given in advance, I really will make more of an effort to post at least every couple of days now, and then I can actually start telling people that this blog exists! And next time it shouldn't take me so many attempts to remember my password.