Granny Buttons

Define: TUNNEL BANDS

Tunnel bands are the two (rarely three) brightly painted bands/stripes on the back of an English canal narrowboat. Usually they are cream and red, and in my recent dry-docking I had mine own painted those colours once again.

They are always visible on a floating narrowboat to a towpath walker, but sometimes they are visible even to a passing motorist. Last year, when we moved Granny Buttons by road around a canal obstruction, you could even see the tunnel bands from behind and below, if you were unlucky enough to be stuck behind a slow-moving flatbed lorry.

I say 'slow-moving', but clearly it wasn't as slow as the trailer of harvest straw being towed by the tractor. At times, Granny Buttons was in motion at over 45mph, which is a dozen times her usual top speed on the waterways of England.

Dog dirt and dirty old dog owners

Of all the petty exasperations that can spoil a day on an English canal boat, perhaps the worst is when you tread in a dog deposit on the towpath or lockside.

As a crime, ignoring dog dirt is not far shy of child molestation in most boaters’ opinions. And land-dwellers don’t know the half of it, because - unlike their own private homes – their dog-walking route is also our doorstep, our front lawn, our driveway, or walk down to the shops. So it’s hardly surprising that we suffer far more heartburn when we tread in one of their dog’s dirty, uncleared deposits. Be known here that I'm saying 'their dogs', not 'your dogs'. Whilst fouling the towpath is still a popular occupation for most dogs, clearing it up is also popular amongst most dog owners.

But the uncleared dirt is a continuing problem, and British Waterways are fully aware of it. Every year they bring out another effort trying to shame the dog owners who don’t clear up.

The latest ‘clear up after your dog’ campaign has just been launched, and someone at BW had a bright idea of enlisting the support of the latest Supreme Champion at Crufts, a whippet called Deedee, to promote it. Crufts is an internationally prestigious trophy, famous around the world as my link shows, so Deedee is a substantial figurehead to enlist.

How proud must be owner Lynn Yacobi-Wright (pictured above with Deedee and Jimmy Swindells, waterway superviser for the Rochdale Canal) to have her dog representing every responsible towpath-walking dog in the country.


What a shame that the sponsors of the Manchester dog dirt bins (and thousands of others), Drontal, chose to spoil the Crufts show result and the BW launch with a daft spoiler 'awards ceremony' of their own: The UK's coolest canine competition.

I'm not sure that BW can do a lot about dogs fouling the towpath, much as they are trying. One dogwalker, at Audlem last Christmas, let his dog strain and defecate right beside the lock (the man was actually looking at the dog at the time, and just ignored the sight) as I pulled my boat into the lock. I was alone and too busy steering to protest at the time, and had to wait until Granny was safely in the lock before I could do anything. Eventually I chased the (human) offender and could only curse, swear and take a photo of him a hundred yards up the canal.

What struck me was the old man's response: "I don't need you to tell me what my dog has done", said the dirty old man.

As for the BW promotion, I recognise the photo as being taken at the bottom of the Rochdale Nine, but the dog turd bin is a welcome new addition. Here's a photo I took of the site last August. The lock has a lovely pub close by, hence the couple enjoying a pint on the balance beam, and it's a glorious place on warm summer evenings. Mercifully free of poo, too. Perhaps BW should have chosen a more suitably turfed lockside for their photo opportunity, because its the turds lurking in the grass that cause the real problems.

Define: WELL DECK

Traditionally a well deck was the stern deck of a horse drawn boat, where the tillerman or steerer stood in a 'well', surrounded by the sides of boat. Since the advent of the motor narrowboat a century ago, with its flat COUNTER stern, and especially with the modern leisure narrowboat, the well deck now generally refers to the front deck.

I call it the cockpit, my more jocular friends call it the poop deck. But I'm told it's technically the 'well deck'.

Referring to the front deck of the narrowboat as a cockpit can result in confusion. I once told a boat engineer I had a problem with a gas pipe in the 'cockpit' and could he fix it. I gave him the key, and off he went. He phoned me later that day to say he 'couldn't find a ****** gas pipe in the cockpit'. He'd been looking at the stern. Mea culpa.

Define: WINDING HOLE

A winding hole is the widened part of the canal designed to allow a long narrowboat to turn in a narrow canal. The name, as with the technique 'to wind', is pronounced as in the wind that blows.

The technique is basically simply, but a neat 3-point turn is rarely possible. It's important always to put the bow into the 'hole' or v-shaped part. Hold it there - let it go aground if necessary, keep the tiller hard over, and apply a healthy burst of revs to the propellor. The bow will be held against the mud of the shallow part, and help 'pivot' the whole boat slowly round. You'll almost certainly need two or three extra reverses, and even more if 'the wind that blows' is blowing the wrong way!

Of course, you might have a bow thruster, you posh bastard! (I mean, lucky devil!)

Canal article leads to Lindy

I've been reading Locks, docks and barrels of laughs, an article from the Scottish Sunday Mail last year about a short holiday on the Llangollen Canal. It's quite a good taster if you've never done this sort of thing before, albeit a little truncated. The distance covered in the article is barely a day's sailing, although I presume the writer and her family were aboard for a week or more. I enjoyed the Four Things To Do To Pass The Time'!

The original article isn't on the Sunday Mail site, and hunting for it I stumbled on something rather more interesting: Lindy Foster Weinreb's web site.

Lindy is the only person I've found who's a specialist waterways PR agency (there are probably others), and I guess she must be the same Lindy Foster who used to run Bridgwater Boats with Mike Foster, for I think the house shown on the web site is next door to the boatyard. I recall some public pronouncement that they were no longer trading together - there's obviously a private story there!

Incidentally, I've often wondered about all the various 'what I did on my holidays' canal boat holiday stories in the newspaper travel pages. One of Lindy's clients is holiday boat company Black Prince Holidays, and she's cleverly gathered together 42 press articles about them on a single page.

Perhaps inevitably they are all UK sources. It would be interesting to hear or read of canal boat hire stories in other parts of the world. Seattle Times reporter Sherry Stripling did a graphically described and affectionate story on her vacation a couple of years back on the Leeds & Liverpool canal (you'll have to register to read this story in the paper's archives, but it's quick and free). There must be many others, but finding this one took me enough time for now!

BW chooses shortlist of pubs

A background story on the waterways recently has been British Waterways' plan to find a pub chain partner to develop five dozen canalside sites as brand new pubs and restaurants.

The Publican magazine says that BW has just announced a shortlist of three chains: Punch, S.A.Brain and Scottish & Newcastle.

I'm rooting for Brains - my prejudice is that they are most likely to be a traditional type of pub, inexpensive, with a fine range of traditional beers, and not geared to branded drinks and the Wacky Warehouse type of children's entertainment theme. But then, I'm not a family boater with children squawking about where to stop for the night.

Define: VALLEY

Valley isn't a well-preserved term on the waterways, but it still pops up in some guides and location maps as one of the contrarian terms of the old boatmen. For valleys were what we now call embankments. It's not such an odd term, perhaps. After all, the embankment *would* be crossing a valley, and perhaps the boatmen were simply referring to where the canal actually was (i.e. crossing a valley).

Lady Elgar Log

Trevor Pavitt has started a blog for his boat Lady Elgar.

Depending on how you look at it, he's either no. 2, 3 or 4 on the boating bloggers list. He's about to set off on a summer cruise - probably to the Nene, he says - and is definitely the first to blog regularly instead of creating 'trip reports'. Welcome to my boatroll, Trevor!

Standedge Tunnel disaster confounds locals

Local news report today tells of an accident alert at Standedge Tunnel. The story itself is solid, although hardly dramatic. It was simply a training exercise to be prepared for any disaster in the 3-mile-long tunnel. Or rather, tunnels. Aside from the original canal tunnel, two rail tunnels - one now disused - pierce the Saddleworth Moors, all connected, and a fire or gas leak in one, say, could impact in the others. It would be deliquent of British Waterways not to be prepared.

The spin on this story was that local Marsden residents were said to be confused. I suspect the reporter, seeking a dramatic angle - any angle - saw a local old bystander staring in bemusement and asked 'what's going on here, then?', and the codger probably replied 'eh?'

'Ah, a confused local resident', the reporter jotted down, and lo, he had his story.

More about the new Brindleyplace restaurant boat

Interesting story over the weekend on icBirmingham about the Pitstop moorings and the proposed restaurant boat which I wrote about last month. I also wrote to the Worcs and Birmingham and the BCN canal societies about this in March, but never got a reply.

The British Waterways response in the latest story interested me.

Define: WIND

It's an ill wind that blows no canal boat good. To 'wind' (as in the wind that blows) is to turn a narrowboat in a turning point or junction, so that it's facing back the way it came. It's a rare spot on the canal that a full-length canal boat can turn in, other than in these dedicated 'winding holes'.

Unfortunately, Sod's Law being what it is, the wind usually does blow no boater good, especially when he's trying to wind. It's said that 'winding' got its name from the way early boatmen would employ the wind against the boat to help turn it. I'm less than convinced. As often as not, the wind can work against your boat in a tight turning spot.

If the name came from the methods boatmen used to help them turn the boats, I'd say it was more likely they'd have called it 'shafting'!

I know I'll be gainsaid on this by the more wizened canal hands, but I suspect it comes to us from the same route as windlass

Define: WINDLASS

The winding tool for operating most lock gears. They are often (but erroneously) called 'lock keys' by beginners, and linguistic inertia being what it is, the term has crept into more general use. this is a problem, since many locks have their own (security) locks, to discourage vandalism, and it's clearly a recipe for confusion to have two types of 'key' to work a lock, not to mention the two types of lock!

Define: WING WALLS

Wing walls are the brick or stone walls at the tail end of the lock.

Define: WOOLWICH

Woolwich boats were (are) a class of steel working boat built at Harland & Woolf in Woolwich, London.