Granny Buttons

River/Canal Rescue

Narrowboat Pollyanna tonight tells of a grateful rescue
from River/Canal Rescue.

I have to say I've had nothing but good to report from RCR, and I echo their compliments. It's a shame that I now realise I just forgot to renew my subscription! I'd better do so tonight.

NarrowboatWorld and CanalTime

NarrowboatWorld claims to be the biggest and busiest canal website. It could well be. Certainly there are a whole slew of emails on the site today, about CanalTime. It's CanalTime that I'm talking about now, although NBW's link inspired me.

Why do people get so wound up about CanalTime? OK, so their users are too often inexperienced and commit solecisms. So they have less experience of the waterways, they don't know the rules, they tread on regular boaters' toes. But ultimately, that's only because they are more inexperienced.

I love CanalTimers. Of course we have to be more wary of them; they are more likely to crash or sink than us, they are more likely speed or annoy, they are more likely to annoy.

I also love children. They are the hope of the future, and I know full well that almost every child I meet has more potential inside him than I'll ever have.

And so it is with CanalTime. It's introducing people to the waterways who'd have never considered it before, and people of probably more talent and potential skill than me.

If I was faced with a night in the pub,with a choice either a whole coterie of traditional boaters or a single CanalTime crew, I'll choose the latter. They will, on average, be more open, more listening, more entertaining. And I'll bet they'll have more knowledge of the outside world; the world beyond the lockside or the pub.

Renting out your own personal narrowboat

Zinfandel is a privately owned narrowboat that, unusually, is also available for hire. Zinfandel's owners have developed a very simple pricing scheme - £100 per weekday, £200 for each Sat or Sunday.

That's £900 a week.  Not cheap, but you are getting a well-specified and well-fitted-out 46ft Sea Otter with a quiet 9kw PropGen engine/generator.

I'd imagine renting out your own boat is a potentially dodgy situation, but it could work to the benefit of many boat owners who fret about the maintenance costs.

There are ancillary problems with insurance and BW's attitude to sort out (the BW hireboat licence is several times the cost of a private licence). Some have tried the private hire route with their own dream boats and come a cropper.

Avalon - a glamorous modern fitout boat from the 2001 IWA festival, based on the Oxford canal - lasted a year before being taken private again, as did Kairos, another on show at Crick 2002.  Not sure why this was - perhaps they just got beaten up by hirers and the optimistic owners found that hiring out boats is a the quick way to ending up with a smaller fortune. Kairos was up for sale earlier this year.

Interestingly, both were fitted out as minimalist interiors, all gleaming chrome and hardwood floors and ventian blinds. Not for them the Granny Buttons approach of acres of fitted carpets to vacuum or curtains to dry clean (not to mention the faint smell of smoke and diesel in the saloon that those fabrics pick up, unfortunately!)

Zinfandel's looks to be a more confident business model, because it's not being marketed as a full-time hireboat. Also, it helps that they are based on the spacious Anglian rivers, and not on the narrow canals that almost invite boats to say "dent me! dent me!"

Pownall's Grand Contour Canal

The heyday of canal building was two centuries ago. More recently, one of the most remarkable canal schemes ever was proposed as recently as WW2.  J.F. Pownall observed that there was a natural 'contour' down the spine of England, around the 300ft level. In 1940 he put forward the idea that this could be used as a large (by British standards) ship canal. Pownall's Grand Contour Canal would have taken 300-ton continental-size barges from Teeside to Lancashire, Gloucester, London and Southampton, with no locks and just a boat lift at a few stopping points.

But in the 1940s Britain had more immediate, pressing problems, and its post-war energy for massive projects was channelled into the Attlee government's socialist schemes such as the NHS.

In his excellent waterways site, Mike Stevens says 'sadly the proposal came to nothing'.

I'm not sure about 'sadly'. Or rather, I completely disagree. The Pownall project might possibly have reduced our need for massive freight-carrying motorways and could well have been a long-term economic benefit. On the other hand it would have destroyed many of the more charming aspects of our waterways, in a far more drastic way than later canal builders destroyed many of Brindley's cutesy little wiggly, perigrinating waterways. And if it had proved a success, like, the M1 motorway in the 1950s, it could have led to a new wave of massive ship-canal building and obliterated the Brindley canals more surely than the housing estates and shopping centres ever did.

In the event, the waterways were left to decline in a more benign obscurity. I suspect a British Waterways whose main purpose was massive freight carrying would have discouraged the leisure aspect of the canals and flattened the gamut of its Georgian heritage, from inconvenient city warehouses to ridiculously narrow and inefficient accomodation bridges. It would, in short, have had carte blanche to eat out the canals the way the planners ate out the heart of the big cities in concrete.

And the fast, convenient motorways would still have been built, because even Pownall's Grand Contour Canal would not have been fast enough. It would, however, have been ideal for carrying the hardcore and asphalt around the country to build yet more motorways.

Monica and Mark go boating

Monica and Mark go boating is a classic example of a boat log that would be best put out in blog format. There are some very nice photos and some very useful and well-written commentary, but the text is in huge chunks and hard to focus on, and the excellent pics come without commentary or captions. It seems to have ground to a halt in late 1999.

Four years later, the blog format has matured to be ideal for something like 'Monica and Mark go boating". Who are Monica and Mark? And what's become of their narrowboat Solitaire?

Percussive maintenance

Thread on uk.rec.waterways today about 12v lighting, culminating in a comment from Neil Arlidge:

The 12v halogen lamp just under my rear slide must fail every time the slide is banged hard against it's stop. For 2 years now, when I go into the boat in the dark and turn this "first to be put on" light on, it often does not work, so with a swift slap of the lining, the filament vibrates, arcs, welds itself together and the bulb works until next disturbed!

This is known as percussive maintenance, and it has a long and honourable history. I remember, as a schoolboy, watching the Apollo 12 moon landing and being so disappointed that the TV camera failed to work properly. After much consultation with Mission Control, commander Charles Conrad gave up trying to make it work. Then Lunar Module (LM) pilot Alan Bean (see, I still remember every astronaut and every job they had!) had a go, and it started working again.

"What did you do?" asked Mission Control.
"I hit it with the hammer", said Bean.

It quickly failed again, but not before establishing the potential of percussive maintenance when all else fails.

USA Canals & Inland Waterways

There doesn't appear to be a USA equivalent to the IWA. Certainly not a voluntary society, encumbered with a self-appointed duty. And no easily-findable central information source. Try Canals & Inland Waterways - USA for an introduction. They estimate there could be up to 6,000 miles of waterway justifying the appellation 'canal' in the United States.

Now, this sounds impressive, compared to the mere 2-3,000 in the Kingdom. But considering that Britain is little more than the size of Alabama, and the River Thames would be only 131st in length of navigations if transplanted to North America, one wonders where the rest of the American canals are.

One curious and enviable characteristic of US waterways is that many of them are maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Curious to think that American sappers are perhaps the closest thing they have to British Waterways. Perhaps we in England can learn something. Although quite likely they could also learn from our bizarre British habit of treating waterways restoration and maintenance as a voluntary hobby, and indeed, a superb substitute for a summer holiday!

Waverton - Nantwich

I started the morning with a wake-up call from a boat speeding past too fast, its stern dug in at speed. I'd not have cared too much except for its paradoxical name: 'Kalm Downe'.

The stretch of canal from Waverton to Beeston is flat and of no great note, save that it hosts probably the longest linear mooring stretch in the country. Close to the hamlet of Hargrave is a boat club perhaps 1 1/2 miles long. Certainly it's a full inch long on my road atlas.

I started noting the boats at 'Clansman', the 12th from the Chester end, and boat after boat passed - Lulu Belle, Kalm Downe (can't think why it was in such a hurry an hour ago!), Glory Ann, Polly Pod - and counted 57 boats before I reached the bridge at Hargrave.

Good grief, the boats continued immediately after the bridge for almost another mile - Doggone it (no 69), Little Tich, Lucie Atwell - and I could only putter along until I reached Blue Rose, boat no. 128, then a couple of empty moorings. I turned round and took a photo:

The occasional linear marina is a pleasant break from a dull stretch of canal, and usually offers good facilities - but this one was nothing more than boats and owners, with nothing to welcome visitors except gratitude that we slowed down. I can see why BW is trying to discourage long linear moorings.

At Chas Hardern's marina I filled up the heater tank with diesel at a reasonable 30p/litre. The reception from Chris was very pleasant, considering I'd pulled him out from his Sunday lunch at 1pm.

At Beeston I noticed something about the famous Iron Lock - it has no emergency ladder to climb out of the lock chamber. I'm not one to complain about health and safety dangers, but this looks a dodgy place for lone boaters to fall in. At the Stone Lock above I bought their home made chutney for people at the office. Only sorry they didn't have their summer pies to taste.

Approaching the delightful Tilstone Lock, I noticed again 'Turnothworld', the beautiful Bridgewater replica tug now looking dulled and muddied and covered in autumn leaves. And definitely uncared-for.
At the junction with the Llangollen canal I tied up GrannyB and clambered up the steep sides of Hurleston Reservoir to capture the sweeping view stretching north-west toward Barbridge, and the junction with the Middlewich Arm that links the Shroppie with the Trent & Mersey Canal.

Had to race to rendevous with Ray, mooring up close by Nantwich Aqueduct. Ray and I slithered downhill from the canal to the new housing development, where he to introduced me to his friends Martin and Lisa. who live in the new development overlooked by the canal. Next week the three of them (not forgetting the dog) are taking my precious boat to Audlem.

Ellesmere Port - Waverton

Hard to find anything exciting about this stage of the trip. Coming away from Ellesmere Port doesn't carry the same frisson as approaching it. Three hours to Chester. Another of those mile-long linear moorings at Stoak. A young family of four, on three bikes, stopped for help and I ferreted around for spanner.

One more for the Grandchildren photo library. Apart from that, there's nothing of memory, thrill or grandeur ...

That is, until you reach the grand, steep and awe-inspiring Northgate Locks once again. It's slow work climbing the staircase by yourself, but I was lucky enough to get the help of a family from Seattle. Mr, Mrs, and three of the sweetest little girls I've ever seen. He's working for Airbus in Cheshire for a few weeks, whilst they are just visiting Daddy.

I shared the remaining locks up the Chester flight with another boat. At Chemistry Lock I stumbled on a quartet of young fishermen too busy landing the biggest perch I'd ever seen to pay attention to me. But they were packed with well-earned smiles when they'd finally found time to pose proudly:

Chemistry Lock's cottage is surrounded by the most amazing motley collection of pets and smallholding animals. A peacock, chickens, a turkey, bantam cocks, Aylesbury ducks, geese, a pony, a pig, a donkey, a horse, a goat, even a couple of dogs - all scurried around the feet of the old lady feeding them scraps. I seem to remember a cat, but memory might be playing a trick on me here. It was a superbly entertaining melange of beasts, though. The most memorable sight was the peacock winning a beak-wrestling match with an energetic cockerel, and running off with a hefty piece of gristle which he had trouble swallowing.

I stopped at the Old Trooper pub and checked the local bus timetable, and waited. Right on time, a large double-decker crossed the old humpback bridge, looking crazily too heavy for the bridge, and I banged off a couple of photos just in time.

I'd seen this oddly proportioned sight the week before, coming down to Ellesmere Port, and was delighted to be in time to get a record of the experience on the way back.

Hmm, did I say there was nothing interesting today?

Granny Buttons overnighted at bridge 118, beyond Waverton, and spent a couple of hours in search of a decent pub close to Egg Bridge (No. 119). There isn't one, in case you wondered.

A night out at Ellesmere Port

It was my birthday today. I chose to spend it alone, touring the museum, ship-shaping the boat, and opening my gifts. Went for a canalside run as well, a mile along the towpath before the dark frightened me and I left the canal and spent another hour getting lost in the characterless backstreets of Ellesmere Port. I always seem to get lost once I leave the linear familiarity of the towpath, and the Loster the Better, because I love serendipity, and Lost is the only place to find it.

There's precious little outside the waterway cocoon to see at Ellesmere Port. Tonight I stumbled upon Cheshire Oaks, a surprising parade of 'designer' shops, all of them brands of repute, and set in a coherent 'model village' atmosphere. It felt stylish, even though every shop was closed and the only humans around were security guards. Not a PoundStretcher or a Lidl in sight. I wondered where the money was in downmarket Ellesmere Port to support all this shopping (and the massive entertainment complex next door). I guess Ellesmere Port is just the servants' quarters for wealthy Cheshire.

My run amounted to nearly 7 miles, and I arrived back at the boat close to 10pm. I showered and shaved and dressed smartly to take just one late drink at the Holiday Inn. I like to dress for dinner when the boat's in town; it's such a contrast from the scruffiness of boating.

The Boat Museum

17th October - my birthday.
The Boat Museum is pretty much as you'd imagine it. Nationwide there are few clusters of original boating buildings remaining, and I guess Ellesmere port has as dense a concentration as any. Even this site has too many sad ghosts to do justice to the side - dominated (if an absent building can be said to dominate its site) by the wonderful but gone 'E-shaped' warehouse of Telord, bridging the old wharf. Had it not burned down it would doubtless be the star attraction of the site, but then the site might not have the spacious feel it now possesses. And it would probably have only been too magnetic to developers of apartments, hotels or offices.

The main indoor exhibit is a spartan upper floor of one warehouse, with its starpiece being Friendship, the sawn-down old boat of Joe Skinner, but the whole show is spread rather thinly over the many still-remaining buildings. There's the library too. Or rather, there isn't. It's closed for the foreseeable future.

There are broad and narrow locks side by side, a goodish collection of old working boats, many engines in the engine house and a smithy (wonderful, ain't many smithys left). There are several roomsful of historical memories, albeit a bit too locally focussed.

I'm being grossly cynical here. David Owen, Harry Arnold and the other progenitors of this national museum have created a splendid work out of very little, and it's a work in solid progress. Worth a visit.

But the difficulty with the 'boat museum' concept is the splendid condition of the English waterways themselves. For in a way, the whole canal system itself is a museum, and a week on a narrrowboat in the Midlands, provided you find and read a good canal history book, can convey the feel of the old days more than one of the boat museums ever can.

Nevertheless, go see. There's still a lot there that's worthwhile, and it'll only grow more splendid over the years. And it's a worthy terminus to an interesting canal.

Chester - Ellesmere Port

Sunday Lucky 13th Oct
Tower Wharf to Ellesemere Port Holiday Inn

It was the dry dock that surprised me most. Tower Wharf has a dry dock so close to the public, and it must be another talking point for the gongoozlers who drift from the nearby Northgate Locks. One boater came out this morning and I was admiring his newly blacked hull while he was apologising for the rash of pigeon droppings on the boat's roof. The dry dock is not a place to paint your superstructure - the characterful Victorian roof is proof only agains rain, and many birds use its rafters as a hostel.

The route to Ellesmere port is flat, lockless, and largely characterless. The two features I remember are yet another half-mile long stretch of linear moorings, and - closer to the Port - the huge Stanlow refinery. At night Stanlow glows like Disneyland, like a veritable fairyland of illuminated jewels. I'd love to see a professional photograph of the view. It sparkles like a cosmopolitan science-fiction cityscape, and where the refinery scores is in its fierce sense of industry, with steel chimneys hissing angrily, red flares burning and indeterminate machinery whirring constantly. It's just so damned awe-inspiring.

Ellesmere Port itself is an anti-climax in comparison. Or was. It will be different at other times, but while I was there, after the museum closed, there was little or no sense of community. Granny Buttons was the only visiting boat in the lower dock, and I saw only one other boater there in a week. Yet it feels a safe mooring, with many CCTV cameras and well-protected shops. Don't look for the nightlife, but don't worry about attendant drunken yobbery either.

Approaching Chester

Bunbury – Chester

Arriving at the boat last night, I found the entire cabin battery bank dead, and the tripped headlight switch told the tale. It's so easy to leave something switched on! Still, it was my own fault really, for never preparing a shutting-down checklist. I had only a wall oil lamp to read by, and felt like I was in the old Jewish joke –:

Q: How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a lightbulb? .
A: Don’t worry about me, I’ll just sit in the dark.

Bunbury Staircase locks began yet another beautiful descent, now to Chester.

And the route to the city’s outskirts, at least, is of great charm. I’m not a flatland lover, but even the Cheshire plain, which spills over the lower stretch of this section, has great appeal, thanks largely to the ubiquitous Holsteins which pepper the landscape. I presume we have these iconic black-&-white cows to thank for Cheshire Cheese?

Holsteins, incidentally, always remind me of the Star Trek episode that has the two races persecuting the bejesus out of each other, because each are black and white, but their colouring is reversed, and neither can stomach the sight of the other. Cows appear more tolerant, but who’s to say that’s a sign of intelligence?

Just below Bunbury is the simply gorgeous Tilstone Lock. On today’s clear autumn sunshine I felt blessed to see it, to be there. I’ve yet to see a more delightful waterways setting. This is real chocolate box/picture postcard territory. One day I’ll return with a panoramic camera; until then my plodding colour prints must tell a duller tale. Moored below the lock is replica Bridgewater tug called Turnothworld. (This is the official Stowe Hill site - but it's very slow to to load. Try Roger Fuller's site for a faster load). It was looking sorrier and less cared-for than when I last saw it a couple of years back, at a reunion of Stowe Hill boats on the Grand Union. Turnothworld is (was) simply splendid inside, fitted out in what I think the magazines called an Art Deco style. Its paintwork is looking faded and duller now. Has it been forgotten?

There’s a curious lock pair at Beeston. The upper (‘Stone Lock’) would be quotidian by the beauteous standards of this stretch; what makes the black and white timbered lock cottage special is the little shop. A homely, smiling housewife sells her own fine selection of homemade chutneys and jams, and – get this – even bakes homemade meat pies in the summer. Sadly she stops making them in September. I think I’m in love and will have to return in April.

Beeston Iron Lock is unique in having sides of overlapping cast-iron plates, a legacy of being built on shifting sands. This odd structure replaced, in 1828, brick staircase locks from the original construction fifty years before. Its design has coped superbly with the sands, although its sides are spreading a bit with age, the fate of all old grannies, I guess.

Below Beeston, overlooked by the outcrop of the castle ruin, is one of those irritating modern canal features, the long linear mooring. This one has to be perhaps the longest I’ve seen – it’s a good mile and a half from bow to stern. The moorings are manicured and full of happy people – it’s clearly not just a winter repository for boats – but why does BW allow these stationary convoys to grow so long?

The locks to Chester are all accompanied by gongoozlers, and this single boater was grateful for the company and the help. The final descent into the city is particularly grand. After a single, undistinguished lock you see a skyline with several impressive Victorian chimney towers, and many well-restored warehouses. At a bend you are faced with Chester’s famous medieval city walls , still substantially intact, and one potters along in its shadow for a quarter-mile, the walls towering immediately above. It is truly spectacular.

At the end of this canyon I met the Northgate Staircase Locks, falling 32 feet in just 200feet, and had an audience of young cider-drinkers keen to help. I was glad to shrug off their attentions without irritating them into mischief.

After mooring at Tower Wharf, I went for a run round the city walls. Chester is, from its walls, unique in being a city of chimneytops, a more private world than seen down below. John Betjeman used to say that you missed half the great archtecture of Britain by walking around towns at street level, and I can see his point. I commend a nocturnal perambulation of the walls to get the full effect. The daytime just isn’t the same. At night you can see into lit rooms, you smell restaurants, you see people dressed up for nights out, and you aren’t distracted so much by the traffic, the noise or the irrelevant horizon. In the dark your focus is all on the city.

Chester or bust.

I'm off to Chester this weekend from the security of Bunbury. Perhaps I'll get to Ellesmere Port. The big problem is finding somewhere safe to moor in the coming week. But I'm looking forward to a Chester Saturday night.