Warrior's engine: now in glorious Technicolor

We spent an hour at the RN works in Daventry on our way back on Monday night, chatting to Allister and Brian. They now seem to like our engine a lot ... in particular, Allister raves about the quality of the casting. They just don't make them like that any more, apparently. Progress is pretty much as Jim reported a few posts back - but now there are new pictures! Only nine of them, because the camera battery ran out, but enough to see that progress really is being made now, especially if you go back to the beginning of the album and look at how it was. And what a treat - they'd broken out the paint (which Ian collected from Craftmaster the other week), just to see what it would look like for us. Well, I still like it a lot.

We also collected some souvenirs from the rather large pile of bits destined to be thrown away, including all three cast iron pistons, plus con rods and liners, and various smaller bits out of the gearbox. Novelty paperweights all round!

Electrickery *

Back again! Yesterday we finally got the electrician over to Warrior and decided what we're going to do in that direction. Our needs are relatively modest - no flat screen TV, no microwave; just a bit of light, a water pump and, the ultimate luxury (after living through last summer without one), a fridge. Basically we'll be all 12v, but with a 240 socket and charger in the engine room. We also have a 1200w inverter, although no great plans for using it - just in case. The plan is to have one big start battery, and two x 220 amp hour leisure batteries; one dedicated to the fridge and one for everything else.

These will be charged via two 100 amp Niehoff alternators, chosen in preference to one big one primarily because we were told that the big ones are very noisy. We will probably also have a solar panel for maintenance charging - even the tiny one I had on Andante made a big difference, at least in the summer, so this seems like a good idea. We're probably going to go for a thin one which is stuck permanently to the roof; while I have some reservations about the aesthetics of this it seems to win out on convenience and security grounds.

The existing batteries were rather inaccessible under the floor under the bed cupboard in the back cabin. There wouldn't have been enough space here for the new set up anyway, so the new battery space will be under the floor in the engine room. This means taking up the existing floor and replacing it with one a few inches higher, but we were going to have a new floor in there anyway... it still won't be higher than the floors either end of the engine room, so it should look fine. It will certainly make the batteries much more accessible, and free up much needed storage space in the cabin. All the fuses, controls, guages etc. will be hidden away in a cabinet in the engine room.

So, it's all decided then ... famous last words. It all sounds good to me, anyway. It also brought home to us how quickly time is running away, if we're to get the engine in by Easter as we hope (making it a nice round year in all). Only a month until Christmas, then only three months - of winter temperatures and day length, until Easter. Then only another two until June and the RN rally - by which time we really want to have the painting finished too. The end of Monday came all too soon as well, as we had to dash off at four to fit in a visit to Daventry on the way home ...

*with apologies to Uncle Marvo

Boating beginnings

How did it all start? Like most great passions, almost imperceptibly. We - my mum, my sister Ali and I - had our first boating holiday in 1977. Like the two that followed, it was on the Norfolk Broads. There are no photos (at least, I don't have any) of that first trip, but I remember some things very clearly. The boat was called Si-Gi (we never were sure how to pronounce it), and we hired it through Blakes from Richardsons boatyard. It was a very small boat, and what I remember of it very closely resembles, in layout at least, a 24' Freeman ... I also have the idea in my head that it had a wooden hull, but surely not ...

We must have enjoyed it, because we were back the following year, with Hoseasons this time, and Sorrento, a typical plastic Broads boat of the time. Lots more space than Si-Gi, but I remember much less about it. I think that was the time we tried making Angel Delight (did I really used to eat that?) with a fork. It didn't work. The photo is of Ali, aged nine (I would have been thirteen). On each trip I bought a postcard map, and marked our stopping place each night with a pinhole.

Our third and final Broads holiday, in 1979, was on Regal Safari, a Safari 25 mk 3, which we hired from Hampton Boatyard on Oulton Broad (I know this because I wrote it all in the photo album). What I remember about this trip is a dove which alighted on the boat at Waveney, and stayed with us all day, at least - possibly longer. And we learnt to play Newmarket (a card game which I can no longer remember the rules of).

What did I like about it? Well, I did like the scenery (reeds, windmills, and boathouses, always intriguingly sinister for Famous Five/Secret Seven aficionados), and the birds and the bats, and the quiet deserted mooring spots. But more than that I liked the navigating, the naming of parts, and the slight air of adventurousness. And best of all, I liked jumping (naughty!) off with a rope in my hands; knowing how to tie it (well, better than some people anyway) and the fact that if I pulled it, A BLOODY GREAT BOAT (or so it seemed at the time) moved at my will. Unprecedented and exhiliarating power for a shy, spotty adolescent. Having always hated sport of all kinds, here at last was something physical that I could do.

And so the seeds were sown, to lie dormant for two decades before bursting forth a hundredfold with the discovery of boats that are actually beautiful to look at, with gorgeous engines; big, heavy boats, with loads more parts to name; the physicality of locks ... I could go on, but I think that's quite enough for now!

We're off up to Stretton again tomorrow, just for a short weekend this time - hopefully seeing an electrician for Warrior at last, and dropping into RN at Daventry on the way home for the latest on the engine and hopefully some more photos for your delectation.

Book review: Idle Women

With winter now upon us, I'm going to reread many of my boaty books, and hopefully get some new ones too ... and after I've (re)read them, I'm going to say what I think of them here. Pure self indulgence really (well, what else is blogging for?). I'm starting with Idle Women, Susan Woolfitt's account, first published in 1947, of her year as a 'trainee'; a member of the all-female crews instigated by the Ministry of War Transport in response to the perceived or anticipated (but, Woolfitt suggests, not actual) shortage of male labour on the waterways. I got the book last February and first read it in the most depressing depths of winter, huddled by Andante's stove under the only light I dared use. For the few days it lasted, it cheered me up immensely.

Despite being identifyably of a very particular time and class (amid the privations, unbelievably hard work, and bombings, her greatest horror is occasioned by the prospect of being on first-name terms with people she doesn't know very well), Woolfit is an immediately likeable writer. Her prose is clear, but friendly and informal; and she has an actor's ear for the dramatic telling of a story. Her story is at times amazing, and frequently amusing, but tails off somewhat towards the end of the book, as the novelty wears off and a main thread of the narrative - the learning process - is lost, it becomes more bitty with isolated anecdotes and diary entries, in place of the fluency of the earlier chapters.

This focus on the learning process, the training of complete novices into competent, even skilled, boatwomen, is possibly the best aspect of the book, because it is so instructive. We learn along with the author what the different parts and tools are called, and what they're for and how they're used; I cannot imagine a better introduction to the workings of a working boat. Not only is it comprehensive, but it is brought to life through Woolfit's experience, both of learning the skills, and then passing them on to others. The book also vividly evokes the working and living conditions of boat families at the time, conditions which shock and anger Woolfitt, and, one imagines, awake her from her previous bourgeois slumbers. Sixty years later it is impossible not to share her indignation that servicemen and women in desk jobs were entitled to extra rations, while whole families doing some of the hardest work imaginable weren't, and went hungry.

I was particularly delighted to read of the author and her colleagues spending 'a riotous evening at the "Prospect of Whitby", a very well known pub on the banks of the Thames', because at the time (indeed, from 1919 until 1950) this pub was owned, and probably also managed, by Jim's Auntie Ada, who inherited three pubs from her husband when he died in the flu epidemic. Others of his aunts were installed as managers in the other pubs.

Idle Women is still available, currently in print in M & M Baldwin's 'Working Waterways' series; I've seen it on sale in museums and chandlers. They also publish accounts by two other 'Idle Women', which I look forward to reading soon.

Piece of cake!

Yesterday was Number One Son's birthday; on Friday night I decided that I should make him a cake, like I used to do when the boys were small. And as he enjoyed our Huddersfield trip so much, I thought I would make him a narrowboat cake. Now when I say make, I don't mean literally from scratch. I like baking, and do a lot of it, but for carving into interesting shapes, I've found shop bought cake to be much easier. In this case I didn't have much time either, so I popped down to the local supermarket as soon as it opened at 8 am for three Macvities chocolate cakes (very nice and chocolatey they are too). I was going to buy white fondant icing and colour it as best I could, probably to pale blue, for the boat, but next to the boxes of white stuff were packs of coloured fondant, in red, green, yellow, and ... black. Black icing! Well, I wouldn't eat it, but the possibilities for my project were too promising to resist, so I bought two packs. I also got a packet of liquorice allsorts (myriad uses), some white chocolate buttons (portholes), a big box of icing sugar and some liquorice catherine wheels.

I began by trimming the tops of all the cakes flat, then I took two of then, the right way up (i.e. wider at the top), cut one end of each off straight and butted them up to each other. Then I trimmed the other ends into shape for the hull, rolled out the black icing, laid it over the top, and smoothed it down the sides. That shop bought fondant is very flexible and much less liable to crack than home made. For the fore end I cut out the excess icing (with scissors) leaving a margin of about a quarter of an inch either side, and and pressed the overlapping edges together. I was very pleased with the effect, although maybe I should have put in some rivets ...

Next I mixed a lot of runny glace (water) icing with coffee to give it an authentic canal colour, and flooded a shallow baking tray with it, then very carefully lifted the hull into it. Now I could start on the cabin, for which I used the red icing, in honour of Andante. This time I turned the cake upside down so the wider part was at the bottom, smoothed the icing over and tucked the edges underneath. The icing was stuck on with apricot jam - I do believe in doing things the traditional way!

Then the fun really started. The signwriting was done in glace icing ('Mole' is Aaron's nickname), and a line around the bottom of the cabin neatened up the join. The remainder of the icing in the piping bag was kept for use as glue. The hatches were just cut out of rolled out green fondant, and for the pattern on the slide I used a handy little cutter and very thinly rolled yellow fondant. The chimney is a liquorice allsort, and the cans (of which I'm very proud) are made of those multi layered allsorts (for the stripes) trimmed down to shape, with handles made from slivers of liquorice. Allsorts also served as the rear fenders; I toyed with a front one; there was a sweet just the right shape, but in the end I couldn't see how to fix it, and anyway, I didn't want to hide my handiwork, which by now was set off with some very effective strips of liquorice.

All of it is edible (if you include the black icing) except the shafts (bamboo skewers), ropes (string) and tiller (a drinking straw, the least satisfactory part. I really wanted to use one of those stripey candy canes but as well as being too fat, they were impossible to bend without snapping). Everything else is shaped out of fondant and stuck on.

I liked the finished product so much that Aaron is letting me keep it until tomorrow before taking it away and eating it!

Number One Son is 21 today!

What an amazing thought. This is the sort of thing that makes you look back on your life and think 'Where did all that time go?' on one hand, and 'How did I manage to fit so much in?' on the other. Twenty-one years ago. 1985. Jennifer Warnes was number one in the charts with 'The Power of Love', but I preferred the number 2, Feargal Sharkey's 'A Good Heart'. I'd scarcely started living; I had vague, inarticulate, but nonetheless frustrating, ideas about the sort of life I wanted, and, marvellously, over the years I've largely achieved it. That's something not everyone manages, and I feel very fortunate to have done so. Back then, boats didn't feature heavily in my vision of the future. As a teenager, I'd had holidays on the Broads, and loved it but I don't think I'd ever seen a narrowboat. Canals were things - usually rather sinister things - I read about in books (and I did read an awful lot of books. Still do. And a lot of awful books). But, once discovered, they fitted seamlessly into the ideal.


But enough about me - this is Aaron's day. And hasn't he grown up into a fine young chap? But then, he always was very sweet ... pause here to insert obligatory embarassing toddler photo. I dug all the old photos out to find one to post, and they proved a great hit when he came round earlier with his friends.

So Aaron, here's to a happy and successful adult life, and lots more boating. One of the biggest surprises - for all of us, I think - whan Aaron came to help us on the Huddersfield Narrow earlier in the year, was just how much he enjoyed it (apart from the Standedge Tunnel, of course). One day we will finally manage to co-ordinate things so that both the boys can come with us at once!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AARON!

Music to our ears

As well as being Lockboy, Baz is a bit of a musician. He plays the cello and the double bass (the latter in the county youth orchestra), sings, and is learning the piano. As part of studying music at college (AS level) he also does composition. Whilst watching the video he took of the working boat gathering at Ellesmere Port last Easter, he was struck by the idea that the rhythm of a Bolinder would make a very interesting basis for a composition. It's hard to describe to someone who hasn't heard it, but what basically happens (in some circumstances at least) is that as the speed of the engine increases, it starts to miss beats, until the speed returns to the desired level. (This might not be strictly technically accurate, and certainly isn't the whole story, but we're talking Art here). The boat in that case was Stour, and the recording was quite good, but short.

Having failed to find any other recordings on the internet, Baz put the idea on the backburner until such time as we got the opportunity to record some more lovely Bolinder sounds for ourselves. We must have been tied up next to Rudd (temporary home to Rick who is helping out at the yard) for months before I suddenly slapped my forehead and put two and two together, and then only on hearing it come back one morning from a trip to the pub. Baz wasn't with us then, but Rick agreed in principle that he could record the engine at some mutually convenient time in the future.

And so it came to pass, that last time we went up there Rudd was due to be taken to Norbury Wharf for dry docking (couldn't be craned because of its wooden bottom). Not only did Baz get to make his recording, he got to go on an outing on a restored 1936 josher too. Rick was brilliant at explaining how the engine worked; we got to watch them start it (with a blowlamp; it takes a very long time), and heard all about the boat's history. We actually made two separate recordings: Baz took the video camera with him on the boat, to record the engine from close up, and he set up the laptop, using Audacity, for me to record from Andante. As far as I know a splendid time was had by all, although Baz spent almost the entire trip hunched in the cabin and the engine room (the video wasn't very exciting), emerging only to help at Wheaton Aston lock. I just stood and watched (and recorded) as they disappeared into the distance.

Then I went 'Oh God! How do I save this?'


Love the Willie Nelson hair! (Baz didn't though, but I persuaded him it was in the interests of safety, as well as seriously musicianly looks.)

It's hard work doing these multiple pictures. I hope you appreciate it!

Pride of place

Just a quick post tonight, to show William, as promised, in pride of place in Warrior's saloon. The professional framing (in ash) was worth every penny of the £35 it cost. I don't think William would have cared much for boat life though - all too much effort!

Unpainting Andante

Before we could paint Andante properly, we had to get the old paint off. The gritblasting took care of most of it, and an orbital sander works well on the wooden doors. There are other metal bits however, including the rear deck and around the window frames. Most people seem to use a grinder around the windows, but this seemed a bit violent, and doesn't easily get into all the little corners. (And anyway, I have a bit of an aversion to anything that makes sparks, including sparklers. No bonfire night fun for me; I'm the one cowering in the corner going 'isn't that rather dangerous?') Or some people recommend a nail gun or scabbler for larger areas - very expensive.

But Jim found this rather nifty thing - nothing like I've ever seen before. It goes on an electric drill, used at relatively slow revs, and it works very well. It takes the paint off in little chunks - not flakes or powder, much easier to sweep up - and covers a larger area than it looks like it would, because of the way the rubber flexes. This is only the single version - they come in double and triple as well (and seven-fold, with its own machine, for the big boys). It's very controllable, gets into all the corners, and leaves nice clean metal. According to their website, it closely mimics the action of shotblasting. Theres another version, with little blades rather than points, for use on wood - we have got one but haven't tried it yet. I think they cost just over £20 each, and they're claimed to last a very long time - certainly ours shows no signs of wear at all.

Painting Andante

Baz and Jim refit Andante's newly painted cratch board ...

Andante's Apollo Duck ad has been updated to say that the hull and superstructure have been newly shotblasted and painted, and the cabin awaits new livery ... this is true, and you can have any colour you like as long as it's red and green, because we've already bought the paint - Rylard's Pirate Red and Meadow Green - and painted the cratchboard (I clearly can't decide whether that's one word or two). We've stuck with the same paint as before because it's simpler, it suits the boat, and we already had some. Of course if someone did come along wanting to buy it and paint it a different colour ... no problem! But until they do, that's what we're doing.

Not much will happen now until the spring - unless an outside chance of getting under cover comes off - but she should be safely wrapped up for the winter now in two/three coats of MIO primer (which is also used industrially as a finish for exterior metalwork) and new blacking, which I tidied up while we were up there. We put the cratchboard back so we could put the cover on, to protect the wooden doors from the weather now they are being rubbed down.
And what did we find under the (rather casually applied) plain red paint, but some rather neat diamonds; it was the same with the rear slide; a club had been painted over in plain green. I think Andante would look nicer for having these paintwork features restored - perhaps with a panel of diamonds on the slide - and hopefully we will. Jim has already made a lovely job of the cratchboard and previously, the roof box.

I seem to have selected a Blogger template which only lets me put a picture at the top of the post - unless I'm missing something - otherwise I'd post one of the doors too. If anyone can tell me a way around this (other than changing the template) ...
I don't want to change the template because 1. Hardly anyone else seems to use it; 2. (possibly connected to 1) The background colour is, by chance, almost National engine green.

News from our engine correspondent

Jim writes:
It is that time again - no not Christmas although that is coming up fast on the horizon- but my report on the progress ( or not) on Warrior's engine and gearbox.
It seems very much the way of things in the narrowboat game that those on whom you rely for technical assistance or maintenance services operate in a way far removed to the rest of the commercial world. They seem to operate on the Julian calendar and set their times by the some arcane and secretive oracle who transmits the information by thought transfer. Needless to say none of this relates to the realitites of anyone but themselves. Should you not understand their way of doing things and therefore believe that appointments will be kept and that work will be commenced at least within a year of the agreed date, it is all your fault especially when you have driven 250 miles across the country and you will then be punished with further delays or extra costs or both.
This is the way of things for the rest of the industry but not the men with beards (and moustaches) of the RN Diesel Engine Co, for despite appearances they have been quietly -too quietly for my taste-beavering away totally rebuilding our National despite their early reservations. Not only that but more excitingly still they have totally refurbished our 1:1 Bruntons gearbox which is apparently unique or at least no one at RN had seen one like it. The gearbox has been totally dismantled and checked and the gears were found to be in good order Phew and twice Phew!! no nancy hydraulic box for us thank you very much. When it was reassembled all the bearings were replaced - well it is likely that not much has been done to it since 1937. Astonishingly Allister Denyer the engineering genius at RN located new ones with next day delivery!! even more remarkable when you consider that none have been made since 1940. You can't even get that sort of service from a Ford main agent apparently.

Back to the engine - the new pistons, liners and con rods have all been modified, machined and fitted in the block and are awaiting the crank case with the new white metal bearings machined to the restored crank. Despite their earlier resistance to building up the engine the RN Engine Co are actually very keen to build up the whole of the short engine including setting all the timing. The heads are currently being totally refurbished and will be finished next week so it is likely that I will be able to install the engine over Christmas provided Ian is available - now there is another story

Sarah picks herself up off the floor and adds:
Yes, and Santa and all his little elves will help ... and the tooth fairy, for good measure.

The rug is finished!

The rag rug which I started a fortnight ago was finished last night - much faster progress than I'd anticipated, especially as I was only working on it for an hour or so each evening. I am very, very pleased with it. It's very dense and springy, almost more like a cushion than a rug; I think the tufting might be rather more dense than is usual. I remarked before on how much rag it required - the final tally of what it consumed is:
3 shirts
3 1/2 pairs of trousers
2 blouses
1 skirt
1 pillowcase
1 pair of pyjama bottoms
- a whole wardrobe, in effect!

There's cotton, wool and linen in there - I varied the width of the strips according to the thickness of the fabric. I avoided artificial fibres (didn't have any anyway), but successfully used both woven and jersey fabric.

Although we had originally planned just to paint the floor in the back cabin, this looks less likely now. Firstly it has vinyl stuck to it, which isn't going to come off smoothly, and secondly, the board underneath isn't ply, but that rather bitty stuff (Primaboard?), and it wouldn't look very good. So we thought we would try to get some black and white check vinyl to replicate the lino that was popular for back cabins. No luck - despite it being, I would have thought, a classic design, it seems there's no call for it these days. Anyway, we then had second thoughts about having vinyl - for a start, it's very environmentally unfriendly, unlike real lino. And we happened to have an offcut of the real thing, which is of course very trendy and expensive now, left over from a job Jim did in Brighton. It's not black and white, but it is a pretty traditional lino design, just sort of swirly (you can't really see it in the photo, but that's it under the rug). So we will probably use that, if it's big enough.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin. Warrior came complete with these two chairs. Lots of narrowboat owners seem to favour furniture of this ilk. I hate them. I hate them for the following reasons:

1. They are ugly
2. They take up a lot of space
3. They are heavy and difficult to move (especially the especially ugly rocking one)
4. They are ugly
5. They are completely out of keeping with everything else on the boat
6. Even though they are very expensive, they look as if they came out of the Viking catalogue
7. I wouldn't have them in the house, so why would I have them in the boat?
8. They are dark and gloomy and intrusive
9. They are so bloody spirit-sappingly, heartbreakingly UGLY!!!!!

But they have their good points:
1. They are comfortable

And therein lies the rub. Would you sacrifice comfort, at the end of a long hard day's boating, for aesthetics and mere convenience? Well, yes, I would, like a shot. But there are two of us involved here and Jim values his comfort very highly. So we are engaged in a search for a compromise: a seating arrangement that is both comfortable and attractive. So far, we have had little success ...

P.S. That photo was taken before I tidied up. It all looks much more respectable now.
P.P.S. Ignore the baby stove - we're putting the French one in after all. Hooray!!

Happy birthday, Leslie

My father would have been eighty-nine today, if he hadn't died in 1992. That's him in the middle, aged about seventeen, flanked by his sisters Doreen and Ina, and his parents. I'm often sad that I can't share our boating activities with him, as I'm sure he would have loved it.

It must be him I have to thank - either via genes or early upbringing - for my interest in industrial history and engines. His father - my grandfather, whom I never met - was a boilermaker on the Great Western Railway, who met my grandmother on a company trip to Jersey. He whisked her back to Swindon and married her despite her not speaking a word of English (and he, presumably, not being fluent in Jersey French).

Leslie wasn't on the whole what you'd call a very hands-on parent; being 48 when I was born, he was rather more old fashioned in his outlook than was even usual for the time. (He was quite self conscious about this, and my sister and I were adults before we found out how old he was. When asked, he would always reply 'as old as my little finger and a little bit older than my teeth'.) But I have very vivid memories of the times he would take me (just me! Because I was the biggest!) on the train to London to visit the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum or the V&A; there was such a sense of occasion about it.

Most of his career was spent in a desk job (all we knew was that he was a 'civil servant'), but when he retired he threw himself into the establishment of the British Engineerium, a steam museum housed in a former pumping station in Hove. Once it was up and running he worked there as a volunteer, doing the books, taking round school parties, and stoking the boilers, right up to the end of his life. It was a marvellous place, full of beautifully restored, and working, steam engines, and models, and other industrial (and some domestic) artefacts, and I absolutely loved it there.

Just as he would have loved Warrior, and everything that goes with it.

And heat

After tidying up the cabin I attacked the stove. This is a standard ‘boatman’s’ type stove with an oven, but not a commercially made one; it was made, presumably, by John Shotbolt himself. When we first spent time on Warrior last Christmas, it worked quite well. It even heated water, and a radiator (in the bathroom), very efficiently via its back boiler.

On every subsequent visit however, it has refused to draw, and frequently even to light. A good poke about established that the chimney was clear, and we were starting to think we might have to replace the stove, at not inconsiderable expense. But then it dawned on me that there is only a gap of about an inch between the bottom of the chimney and the inner lining of the oven, the chimney being on the opposite side to the firebox. Any crap falling down the chimney (and there was bound to have been plenty, given the locks we bashed on the way down from Hargrave and the craning in and out) would just sit on top of the oven lining at the bottom of the chimney, blocking it very effectively.

But how to get at it? The only removable plate in the stove top is the one on top of the firebox. This, as far as I can see, is the only access. So I got a small piece of wood, the maximum length that I could work in through the firebox, which when held in the tips of my fingers just reached under the chimney, and patiently scraped away, guiding the soot and rust flakes across the top of the oven and into the firebox, where they could fall through the grate into the ashpan. And after a couple of hours and a rather bruised and scraped right hand and wrist, I had an ashpan full of the stuff.

It was well worth the effort, though, because now it works better than ever, lighting easily and staying in very well, and with no smoke in the cabin (unlike before when poor Baz had to sleep with the doors open despite the canal being frozen). Some sort of wire handled brush, or failing that, a big bottle-brush, would make the job easier next time.

Lamplight

We achieved quite a lot this weekend just past, thanks in large part to the fact that it didn’t pour with rain this time. Nonetheless, with Jim and Baz on rubbing and painting duties, I was mostly occupied in an indoor capacity.

The first thing I turned my attention to was Warrior’s back cabin. Over the last few visits this had become a repository for spare timber and odds and ends, to the extent that it wasn’t possible to get in through the rear doors. So I cleared all that out and tidied and cleaned up. Then we put up the new oil lamp, having found a glass for it at Midland Chandlers in Penkridge. It looks lovely, and we saw (in a different chandlers) a not-quite-so-nice new equivalent for £46. I’m very glad now that I spent the £12.50 on our one. We even tried lighting it, but I think maybe it had the wrong sort of wick, as it burnt down very quickly. The glass funnel got really hot though; what with the smoke as well it must have been no fun having to depend on oil for lighting.

Greenwich polemic

We took Baz (the son formerly known as Lockboy) up to the boats with us last weekend, and he slept on Andante while Jim and I occupied Warrior. As teenage boys go, he isn't bad at all. But the amount of dirt he managed to trail onto that boat in the space of three days beggars belief. On top of which, Jim had been doing final little repairs and touching up. So I spent the best part of Sunday (when it was lovely and sunny, naturally) cleaning and tidying and polishing in case any prospective purchasers should materialise in our absence. And this took longer than I expected, somewhat to Jim's chagrin. We'd planned to leave at two, and in the event, it was nearer three by the time we got away. But when we got home, I realised that we should have put the clocks back the previous night, so we had left at two after all. I felt thoroughly vindicated.

Which is all by way of introducing a pet rant. I love it when the clocks go back. I dislike British Summer Time with something approaching a passion. I want to scream when people say it 'gives us an extra hour of daylight'. Apparently sane people who nonetheless genuinely seem to believe that such a thing is possible. (So livid am I that I have lost the ability to write in sentences).

British Summer Time is a con; a flim-flam to make us all get up earlier in the summer so that we don't stay up too late enjoying ourselves and fail to turn up for work the next day. (Seriously, that's how it started, for WW I munitions workers. I read that in a book review, although I'm afraid I can't remember what the book was.) Instead of setting our alarm an hour earlier (because that would be a bit obvious), we put the whole clock an hour fast. Same effect. My father used to do this, but only because his alarm clock was missing the knob to adjust the alarm hand, and he was too mean to buy a new one. The entire country then participates in the mass delusion that the evenings have suddenly got lighter. They haven't! You're just pretending that it's an hour later than it actually is, throughout the whole summer.

Some people argue that we should keep British Summer Time all year round, citing things like road accident statistics. It might well mean fewer accidents if people could get home from work before twilight for more of the year. It would be great not to have to clamber all over the house adjusting myriad timepieces twice a year. But the way to achieve this is to keep Greenwich Mean Time the whole year round, and adjust our working hours, once and for all (or possibly have different hours at different times of year). Greenwich Mean Time means something; it bears some resemblance to natural reality (e.g. the sun being directly overhead at noon). It would be honest, transparent and consistent. GMT is the default time system for the world (one of the few things I can get all chauvenistically misty-eyed about. Beer is another) yet some people would have us abandon it for no good reason.

Dear Reader ...

Warning - contains introspection

When I first started this blogging lark, I'm not entirely sure what my motives were or whom I expected to be reading it. In part, it seemed like a good way of keeping a record of progress with Warrior, for my own benefit. And it would also be an easy way for me to update family and friends who might - or might not - be interested, rather than bombarding them with detailed emails about what we were doing last weekend that was so important we couldn't come and see them etc. The same reasoning was behind the setting up of the Webshots photo albums, only more so. (Now I bombard people with emails asking whether they've been reading the blog and looking at the photos - well, at least they're shorter.)

And then I found myself part - a marginal part perhaps, but part nonetheless - of an online community of narrowboat bloggers, thanks largely to Mike and Andy (if I may be so familiar). Which is nice. And so I chunter on, sharing my half formed thoughts and highly imperfect knowledge with, I fondly imagine, people who are by and large in a similar position: passionate about boats, desperate to learn (and, yes, to belong), but not necessarily very knowledgeable or competant or experienced (yet). By assuming that you, dear reader, are thus placed, I have been able to expose my ignorance and worse, my little learning (one of my father's favourite phrases was 'A little learning is a dangerous thing'. But why is it? Too late to ask that now; I'm obviously scarred for life by the thought).

But what if you're not? What if you're not my mum or my sister, or a former colleague, or a fellow newbie, but someone who really really knows about all this stuff I just play at? When I re-read some posts through those eyes, I cringe at my naivete and/or presumption. The thing is, I think that probably makes me pretty unusual in the world of blogs, which is all about shameless self confidence. If I want to play the game, which I do, I have to force myself to overcome that diffidence. If I get something wrong, please tell me. Ditto if I'm rambling incomprehensibly. Having issued that invitation, I can carry on with a clear(er) conscience ...

And from tomorrow, normal service will be resumed with lots of minute detail about what we have been doing over the weekend on Warrior and Andante.

Run ragged

When it comes to the feminine arts, I’m no slouch, really. I can cook, and sew (not so hot on making flowers grow); I can do tapestry and embroidery and dressmaking. I am quite possibly the youngest person in Britain who knows how to darn. I can knit – fairisle, cabling, pictures, frills, lacy bits – I can do the lot. But can I crochet? Despite my best efforts, that single hook defeats me. My attempts at cabin lace end up as so much tangled string.

So I have given up on that traditional art for the moment and turned my hand to another – I am making a rag rug for Warrior, and so far it seems to be coming along rather well. I’ve made woollen rugs before, and the other sort of rag ones, where you use a continuous strip of rag and pull loops through to the front, but with this one I’m largely playing it by ear. I know it’s really not the right sort of canvas, but I think the final effect should be all right.

The surprising thing is how much rag it uses – that’s nearly three whole large men’s shirts so far, cut into 3/4 x 2 inch strips, and I am about to raid Lockboy’s wardrobe. What I can’t work out is where they used to come by so much rag in the days of working boats. Until relatively recently people had far fewer clothes and less stuff in general, and were far less cavalier about throwing them out. Boat people, presumably, would have had even less than the average for the time. So what did they make their rugs out of?

Brassware...

I've just bidden farewell to my sister Ali who has been staying with us over the weekend. One of the things she likes to do when here is to visit the local flea market. I walk past it every day, but don't often go in - it tends to be rather expensive. However, I was glad that we went in today, as I got a nice brass jug (£2) some horse brasses (£1 each) and best of all, a real old gimballed oil lamp which will be perfect for Warrior's back cabin. It doesn't show up very well in the picture - partly because it's polished up so well, which took quite a lot of effort, but it looks splendid now. I wish I'd thought to take a 'before' picture.

On Saturday we went to a jumble sale where I picked up some old shirts to start my latest project - a rag rug for Warrior. So far Ali and Jim have done all the tearing and cutting up of the rag, which I have been attaching to the canvas. It's strangely addictive and I can't wait to get back to it.

Ali came all the way from Wales to see us - what with the jumble sale, brass polishing and rag tearing, not to mention the slideshow of 160 Huddersfield-Stretton photos, I think we showed her a good time!

A bad photo, and a good excuse

Last Tuesday, I think it was, I decided that it was about time I went and had a look at Little Venice. The image conjured up by the name, so redolent and romantic, was not really lived up to by the reality; it was very quiet and, I thought, rather soulless, particularly walking up towards Paddington.

I experienced the traditional friendly welcome when I got the camera out in Paddington Basin – a besuited chap appeared from nowhere to say that this was private property and taking pictures wasn’t allowed. I took it anyway (but that’s my excuse for it being so shaky) and murmured sympathetically about how they must be very concerned about burglars casing all those expensive flats. ‘Oh no’, he said, confidentially, ‘It’s much worse than burglars. It’s terrorists. You just don’t know what they look like these days.’ I dare say that’s true (should I be flattered?), but I don’t suppose a dedicated terrorist is likely to be deterred by the inability to take a souvenir snapshot of his target before obliterating it.

As soon as the guy approached me I remembered reading about this happening; and I’ve since talked to people who have had it happen to them too. Just how many security suits are actually patrolling the place, and why? (Real terrorist targets get real police patrols, don’t they?)

Anyway, I saw this boat winding in the basin, and as I have lately been honing my ability to recognise a Grand Union boat* when I see one, and wanted to test it out, I engaged the owner in conversation as he moored. He turned out to be a man of few words.
Me: What is it?
Him: What?
Me: Your boat, what is it?
Him: It’s a boat.
Me: Do you know its history?
Him: It’s an old working boat.
[well, I wouldn’t have been asking if that much wasn’t fairly obvious, would I?]
Me (the killer question): What’s it called?
Him: Tadworth. 1937.
Me (to self); Yes!!!! [nods sagely]

*Large Woolwich, I was going to put, but just double checked and Tadworth is a Large Northwich. If there is a difference visible to the naked eye, then it's too advanced for me.

Decisions, decisions

Never too soon to start thinking about next year's cruising (especially as we won't be getting any done this year). An envelope has been sitting on my hall shelf for the past three weeks. It is addressed to the IWA Festival organisers and contains a booking form and a cheque. We thought it would be really great to go to the IWA by boat, especially as next year's venue, St Ives, is near where Warrior was built, and the trip could take in a visit to John Shotbolt (the builder), and to Floods Ferry, where we based Helyn, our first (plastic) boat very happily for a couple of years. It's a long way though - and there's one other trip we have to make next year.

In June, the Russell Newbery Register are holding their tenth annual rally at Atherstone. This we absolutely cannot miss, as by then we will (I brook no doubts) have a spanking shiny brand newly rebuilt unique 3 cylinder National in a gorgeous stunning refitted and beautifully painted boat. Oh yes we will.

Canalplan (what a site!) calculates the journey from Warrior's home mooring at Golden Nook (notorious linear mooring, but we like it) to Atherstone at six days; from Golden Nook to St. Ives, a fortnight. And then in both cases we have to get back again.

Oh what the hell! We can do it. And as an act of faith that Warrior will be finished, I think I'm going to nip out and post that envelope right now.

As I walked out one misty morning

I've mentioned a few times that there are no canals near where I live, but we do have a river, the Sussex Ouse, and I nipped out (five minutes' walk) this morning to take some pictures of the misty estuary. In the late 18th/early 19th century, the river was made navigable from here for 22 miles to the north, via 19 locks, but this was (a familiar tale) never commercially successful.

The navigation served only rural areas, and cargoes were mainly of chalk, lime, manure, aggregates and coal, with fifty one barges registered in 1801. The upper part of the navigation was effectively abandoned by the 1860s, although trade on the seven or so miles from the county town of Lewes to the sea continued into the 1950s, and today, in the estuary, aggregates and sometimes other bulk goods are still unloaded from ships to be transported onwards by road and rail.

I abstracted much of this information from the Sussex Ouse Restoration Trust website (I know, it's disgraceful that I didn't already know it). What I do know, however, is that this is also the river where, in 1941, near Rodmell, Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself, and the river that flooded Lewes in 1960 and 2000. There was a photograph, which I can't now find, in which it looked as if we did have a canal - but it was Lewes railway station, floodwater almost level with the platform edges.

A strange tale (in two parts)

A written account can't really convey the jaw-dropping, spine tingling, hairs-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck way this actually felt at the time, but I have to pass it on anyway ...

Since Easter, Warrior has been at Stretton Wharf boatyard; we were sent there by the Russell Newbery people (and very nice it's been too, although it would be even nicer to have an engine). Keith, who owns the yard, first appeared on our radar in 2004 when we started seriously looking at narrowboats - he was the builder of the first boat we really fell in love with (but couldn't afford), Pendorric.

A couple of weeks ago, Jim and I were sitting in our kitchen, 200+ miles from Stretton, talking about Warrior, when our neighbour Sophie knocked on the door. Her friend Jacquie had been having a clearout, and wondered whether we could use a Nicholson's guide she was throwing out. As we stood and chatted I casually opened the book to have a look at the date, and saw the inscription 'Merry Xmas Margaret '89, Happy travelling in 1990, Keith ...' , and his wife and sons' names, making it obvious this was the same person we'd just been talking about. After we'd recovered from the shock, Sophie told us the little she knew, which was that Margaret was Jacquie's mother, and that she had been having a boat built, but sadly had died before it was completed.

Naturally, when we went up to Stretton a couple of weeks ago I wasted no time in telling Keith about this extraordinary coincidence. He recalled Margaret, and her daughters, because it was him who was building her boat.

And the boat was Pendorric.

Another good cause

I must now confess to being an inveterate lurker on the uk.rec.waterways Google group. Discussions there about DEFRA's cuts to the budgets of British Waterways and the Environment Agency (which will affect the former much more harshly) have coalesced into a campaign, with a website bringing together a range of interested groups and individuals, and details of the background to the cuts (waterways paying for the incompetence of others) and their possible consequences (potentially dire). I (OK, Lockboy) have added the site to my links list.

One thing we are all urged to do is contact our MP, stressing the importance of the waterways not only to boaters (looks like special pleading) but to nature, conservation, recreation and, possibly most persuasively, regeneration. Despite living in a canal-free constituency, I will be writing to mine - laying into DEFRA is one of his many hobbies, so I'm sure he'll be up for it. If your MP is Labour, you probably have the chance to be even more effective, so do take it.

A lot of suggestions for a name for the campaign were thrown about before 'Save the Waterways' was settled upon. My favourite was the admittedly esoteric, but undeniably snappy, 'Cut Cut Cuts'.

Boat thoughts from an office ...

Check out that desktop wallpaper!

I've been in the new job a month now and it seems to be great. I am installed in a newly converted bijou Bloomsbury basement, and as I get to order nice new office furniture, this morning I measured it. My office is six foot four wide, so no wonder I feel so at home.

Blast!

Andante naked in the rain ...

In which I venture into giving advice … (with all the usual caveats, of course)

In the end I had both Andante’s hull and cabin gritblasted, although not at the same time. From that experience, and from talking to the bloke that did it, I offer the following pearls of wisdom.

1. Having your hull gritblasted is probably on balance less trouble than scraping all the weed, crap, rust and old blacking off with a scraper and a wire brush.

2. It is of course more expensive – unless you could use the three days that it would take you doing it yourself to earn some money doing something else.

3. Stuff something (removable) up your sink waste outlets, and stick (with gaffer tape) the plug in at the other end. Otherwise you will get a sink full of grit at the very least, and if you have a u-bend, its contents will be sprayed up the walls.

The cabin is more trouble – but might also be of greater benefit if you want a really good start to repainting.

4. Grit will get in everywhere if you let it. Tape up all vents on both sides; tape round the inside of all opening windows and window drain holes. Tape round the doors after you leave. Don’t light the fire and sleep in the boat after doing this. Don’t forget the gaps at the top of the rear doors (voice of bitter experience and a gritty engine room).

5. Handy hint I thought of all by myself: remove the grilles from ceiling vents or they will just act as a receptacle for grit that will fall out over the next few months. Instead of taping or masking over the holes in the ceiling, tape small tubs underneath And seal round them. That way it won’t all fall on your head when you unmask it.

6. The main reason for masking the windows (on the outside) is to protect the glass. Start by running a line of gaffer tape all round the outer edge of each pane. Tape your heavy duty polythene to this or to the glass itself. Cover any gaps with more tape. Finish with a line of tape on the window frame. Don’t let this extend onto the paintwork – the whole point of the gritblasting is to get under the paint so it would lift the tape too. Make sure there are no loose edges, ditto.

7. If it’s cold or damp the tape won’t stick and you’ll be wasting your time. So try not to run out of tape at six pm with the nearest B&Q half an hour away.

8. If it’s cold and damp (see above) lighting the stove and ramping it up like a blast furnace helps. (Unless, presumably, you have exceptionally good insulation) As you have already taped up all the windows and vents, best leave the doors open while doing this. This also works following the heavy two minute downpour that will happen while you’re putting the primer on.

Yesterday's photo

Here's the photo I would have posted yesterday if the laptop's battery hadn't run out (yes, I forgot the charger). Warrior nearest the bank, then Rudd, Zulu and Minnow.

If you can read this, it works!

It's a chilly autumn Saturday morning (Jim's birthday, in fact) and I am writing this with the laptop sitting on Warrior's cabin slide, two gorgeous joshers and a beautiful tug to my right, with the birds singing and the occasional hum of traffic off the A5 ... shivering slightly, but then it is nearly October. It still doesn't get much better than this. And clearly, the T-Mobile datacard is working fine; in fact it's very impressive.

Andante's cabin was blasted yesterday - more thoughts on that when I get home - but it poured with rain before we could get the primer on so that is still to do once it warms up today, which hopefully it will (even though it is nearly October ...) At least we finished blacking the hull on Thursday. The steel was in very good condition, and with the paint off you can really see how well made a boat it is.

Jim has just got back from shopping in Brewood so time to go in for a warming cup of tea!

More stove musings

If you were one of those who envied us our French stove (July 30th), then take a look at Stovefinders. These splendid people not only find, restore and sell all manner of gorgeous stoves, they have been really helpful and interested with regard to ours (a Deville 'Lily'), and they supply all the peripheral bits like gaskets, flue adapters, window mica and heatproof vermiculite sheeting (because you can't get round firebricks any more).

The big crack in our stove did weld up - but as it cooled, not unexpectedly, lots of hairline cracks appeared. We are still not sure how it will stand up to being used (will it fall to pieces?) but I think we are going to give it a go. The Stovefinder people say that cracks there (in the lower part of the firebox) are not a problem with regard to leaking smoke. Where this is a problem is when the top is damaged - and the top of ours is in good nick. Anyway, we will line it with the vermiculite stuff and seal any cracks with heatproof silicone, so the only worry is really its structural integrity. Apparently we needn't have had it welded; we could have screwed a steel plate across the gap instead. Live and learn.

We came across Stovefinders whilst just generally browsing for stoves, thinking we might need a new replacement. There are so many different designs of wood and solid fuel stove available, in many different sizes - these, for example - that I marvel at the ubiquity of the Morso Squirrel - one of the plainest, most basic looking designs on the market, and not cheap either.

House/boat

Leafing through Waterways World this morning I noticed that following one company's explicit marketing of an 'apartment boat' at Beale Park, at least two advertisers have picked up the term and incorporated it into their adverts. This suggests the beginning of a trend, the possible consequences of which we might ponder.

Of course using a boat as a pied-a-terre (a l'eau?)* is nothing new, and I would be on shaky ground if I got on my high horse about it as that's exactly what I was doing with Andante in Huddersfield. But at least to think of it for oneself required a modicum of imagination and a passing knowledge of the existence of boats; now it seems, what with estate agents selling boats as well, it's being forced down the throats of people to whom it might never otherwise have occurred; people with even less interest in boats and waterways than the production line shiny boat brigade. People who don't even think they're interested.

One consequence I will guess at - an even closer, inflationary, correlation between boat and property prices. Another, more difficult to pin down: an increase in the number of boats that never leave their moorings, mostly desirable city centre ones. Let's hope that these 'apartment boats' will be corralled into the glitzy new marinas leaving moorings actually on the waterways to boats that move occasionally.

I am always aware, when I rant about anything, that I am a total parvenue on the waterways scene; that I frequently don't know what I'm talking about, and that I am in no position to pontificate to people who have been involved for thirty years and more, who have served their time and maybe even played a part in saving and restoring the waterways and boats that I love so much, back when it was difficult and a fight, and that I have it easy compared to them. I also really envy them; I wish I could have been there then.


*If you know how to do grave accents in HTML then I take my hat off to you. I had to get Lockboy in to sort out the links list - but look! It now works!

William

In 1988, when Number One Son was two and a half and Lockboy was nearly two years off being born, we bought a little ginger kitten, and called him William. Other cats, and other pets (hamsters, rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, fish and, briefly, snails) came and went, but William stuck with us - and me in particular - through all the ups and downs of contemporary family life. When I saw this tapestry design that looked exactly like him, I had to buy it. This would have been in late 2002/early 2003. Knowing there wasn't room on my lap, William - now an old cat - would lay beside me, stretched out against my leg, as I stitched. In the heatwave of June 2003, William suddenly started going downhill fast, and died, essentially of old age, within a couple of weeks. This was particularly hard on Lockboy, who had never known life without this amiable, lazy cat.

This was at the time when we were first seriously thinking about buying a narrowboat, and we declared that our boat, when we got it, would be named 'Sweet William' in his memory. I had some reservations about changing a boat's name, but if we had bought one called, say, Foxy Lady, I would not have hesitated. Warrior however is a different matter. We have met the builder, who built it for himself, and named it after HMS Warrior. His current boat is named after her sister ship HMS Revenge. What's more, the name really seems to suit the boat. So we won't be changing it after all. But what we will do is have the tapestry - which I finally finished yesterday, after about four years - framed, and it will have pride of place in Warrior's saloon.

There is a small postscript to William's story. Shortly after he died, leaving us with just one cat (Emily) the local paper ran a story saying that the local cat rescue centre was having to close for lack of funds, and desperately needed to home all its remaining cats. I rang up and said we could take two, perhaps three ... The woman who ran the centre was overjoyed - she had, she said, three cats - three generations of the same family - who were so devoted to each other that she couldn't bear to part them; could we take them? Of course we said yes. And now have a trio of cats who hate each other and are not conceivably related. And the following week the rescue centre was reprieved by a large donation. We now actually have five cats, having added a stray who has a nice line in killing pigeons. But there will never be another William.

Blog 'n' Boat

Life is full of new experiences. This afternoon I went into a T-Mobile shop. I signed a contract with a mobile phone company.

I've signed up for Web 'n' Walk Professional which hopefully means that I will be able to Blog 'n' Boat, and Boat 'n' Work. Lockboy has installed the necessary on the laptop, and given me a demonstration of how to use it. Tomorrow I will practise.

Next weekend we are going up to Stretton; I think Andante is being craned out and gritblasted on Tuesday, but it's hard to be sure as my main form of communication with Keith is text message, and there's only so much detail you can manage. In any case, Jim has arranged to see a man about a teapot, and there are plenty of little jobs to do on both Andante and Warrior. So if I post next weekend, you'll know it works. If I don't, it most likely doesn't - I know mobile reception is pretty dodgy there. Or else I've forgotten how to do it.

It might turn out to be twelve months of wasted expenditure at £19.97 a month, but I've a feeling that now we've got it we'll find lots of uses for it, many of them not related to the boat.

By the way, if you sign up for 12 months online the datacard is £58, but if you sign up in one of their shops it's only forty.

Models not thin enough shock!

I was dusting the other day and found myself fiddling about rearranging these Wade narrowboats. The smaller one Jim bought years ago, before we were anywhere near having a real one, at a jumble sale for 50p. The others came later, for eleven and fifteen pounds respectively.

The bigger ones, which must be butties or horseboats, have much bigger steerers; I usually arrange them so that they're having a friendly chat as they pass each other. The smaller boat, which is called Heron and owned by one John Wilson, is also, judging by the rudder, not a motor boat. This one appears to be in the water, whilst the others have so much freeboard they look like they're sitting on dry land. To be proportionate with their beam, these boats would need to be 15" long rather than the eight inches they actually are. But they're still lovely little things - and they are meant to be a 'pin dish' and 'posy vases', not scale models.

Not so this Hornby model narrowboat, intended to add realism to 00 guage railway layouts. While its proportions are no doubt perfectly to scale, much else about it is decidedly odd. It's described as a 'butty boat' while its tiller strongly suggests a motor; its cabin/engine room looks rather long, and its cloths look to be all ruched up in a way I've never seen on any real boat - more like a curtain-sided lorry. This is a shame; I don't think Hornby would try to get away with such a slapdash rendition of a locomotive or even the most insignificant bit of rolling stock.

A bigger menace than blue-green algae ...

I got out, exhausted and disillusioned, of politics and community activity about eight years ago (although I still teach and write about it), but now something has happened to drag me back in.

The night before last I went to an inaugural meeting for a local group of NO2ID, the non-partisan campaign against the government's plan to introduce identity cards and, far more sinister, a national identity database that will hold at least fifty different pieces of information about each and every one of us, accessible by all government departments, much of the rest of the public sector and probably, ultimately, private businesses too. (And that's just those with legitimate access. It is inevitable that the register will be misused and the information held get into unauthorised hands.) It will be the responsibility of each of us as individuals to ensure that the information held on us is correct - with a £1,000 fine if it isn't - but we won't have the ability to amend it.

What's this got to do with boats? Well, it has already been noted (I think by the Residential Boat Owners' Association) that the requirement to register a permanent address at which you live (i.e. not just for mail) is going to present problems for continuous cruisers. But it goes beyond that - you will be required to inform the government if you are going to be away from your registered address for any period of more than three months, and tell them where they can find you. So there goes that long cruise.

If you care about your privacy; if you believe that your rights aren't just given to you as a favour by the government but are something bigger than that that should protect you from the state; if you don't want to live in a country where you daren't leave home without your pass card, then please go to NO2ID and support the campaign in whatever way you can.

And if you think that ID cards might be a good idea, that they could help fight crime and terrorism, and that 'if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to fear', then please go to NO2ID and find out the real facts.

Narrow Boat TV marathon

Lockboy helps move Dover at Stretton Wharf - not on the telly.


Three years ago come Christmas, we got rid of our TV. We'd gradually arrived at the conclusion that it was providing more irritation than entertainment, and when the licence was due for renewal we decided to take the plunge and see how we got on without it. To be honest, it was easy; we haven't missed it at all, and can count on the fingers of one hand the programmes we regret missing.

So we'd never seen the Sky series Narrow Boat, in which former Grand Union boat Dover is restored/converted (we've never seen Waterworld either, or even Rosie and Jim) . Quite a few of the people we've met through Warrior were involved in the programme, particularly Keith, but also Ian and the Russell Newbery mob, and both Lockboy (see above) and Jim have at various times been on the other end of Dover's ropes, so it seemed a bit of a shame.

But even when we had a telly, we didn't have Sky - but our next door neighbours do, and just before they left on their holidays this morning they insisted that we take advantage of this afternoon's screening of all ten episodes, back-to-back. I wasn't planning to sit down and watch all five hours of it, on a lovely sunny afternoon, but I'm afraid that's exactly what Jim and I did, and we were joined by Lockboy when he came back from orchestra.

And it was very enjoyable. I was expecting horrible choppy editing and nasty music and lots of repetition, but it wasn't too bad at all. We enjoyed finding fault with all the things we would have done differently, and shouting 'those cloths are going to fade dreadfully you know'. Parts of it were very interesting and there was a fair amount of nice boat footage. On the downside, it was rather bitty and the overall rationale was unconvincing - if you want a glitzy hi-tech holiday home, then why start with a 1937 boat? If you like it that much, why has Dover been up for sale (increasingly desperately) ever since you finished filming? - and some bits were boring, but that's probably just a matter of where your interest lies.

Apparently a new series is currently being made, in which the presenter travels around in Dover, being filmed from a helicopter, and interviewing waterways-related people; on the basis of the first series, I'm looking forward to seeing it. Will just have to wait for the neighbours to go away again.

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.