Granny Buttons

Congleton to Bosley Top Lock

A short section, from Congleton to the organised moorings at Bosley Top Lock, simply to find a secure place for the week.

Set off 11am. Stopped only a mile later to photograph one of the gorgeous 'snake' bridges, the sort that are so emblematic of the Macclesfield canal. And then we stopped to buy some milk, only to realise that it was Bank Holiday.

We reached Bosley Locks 1pm. There's a considerable distance between Congleton and Bosley Locks, a distance that looks half on paper. It's the elastic of complacency, the shock of realising that a distance or a task that you thought was a walkover was, in fact, twice the task and, in feeling, was almost unending.

Perhaps this is due to my memories of the last time I came this way, in 1995. I was with Christine in a 40ft boat, and when we reached the bottom of the Locks we found them padlocked. My plan was to turn at the locks and return to Congleton, but unfortunately the winding hole was above the first lock. So we were force to drag the boat backwards for two miles before we could find another turning point. This weekend I kept on thinking of those long two miles and still remember them clearly.

So today we ascended the twelve Bosley locks with no trouble, and the friendly company of a league of gongoozlers. The locks lift the canal 120 feet to the summit level of over 520 feet above sea level, one of the highest SUMMIT POUNDs on the English waterways system. The best views are to be had about three or four locks from the top, and there are magnificent views across the broad valley of the River Dane to the mass of Mow Cop, with its 18thC sham ruin atop, built by and for the master of Ramsdell Hall, the canalside mansion that so impressed Christine yesterday.

The top of Bosley is a community of long term moorings, made more desirable now by a new full-services block, featuring pumpout, shower block and other facilities. It's a boater's dream, with all the facilities they need; less so for the community of ramblers and afternoon walkers who would probably prefer a shop to buy an ice cream on a Sunday afternoon. But a beauty spot like this would probably be diminished by commerce. Some of the permanent moorers have manicured and prettified their moorings; one has planted flowers such as foxglove, and the effect is artificially delightful, like those goth black hairstyles that are cropped in parts, but retain extravagant long sections of brilliantly dyed hair.

We found a perfect mooring at the end of the permanent section, in the company of other transient boaters, some of whom where taking the opportunity for painting, woodwork and other maintenance. I feel safe here.

Stoke on Trent to Congleton

On Friday I had an emergency call from British Waterways to say my boat had been found floating in the canal, but that it was pulled in by security staff at the local Royal Mail call centre.

After attending the Crick Boat Show on Saturday, I found Granny Buttons indeed securely tied, on the off-side, by the Royal Mail Call Centre at Stoke. I won't have a word said about Call Centres now; they are wonderful places! The young weekend security guard helped me to my boat and refused any notion of a tip or the offer to buy him and his colleagues a drink. I'm most grateful to them.

Christine and I cruised up to the winding hole and back, and returned to Festival Marina, mooring on the towpath. In the morning we found ourselves cast off once again by oiks, although clearly someoe had tried to retie us with the breast rope. I am tempted to think of a chain and small padlock to prevent this.

In one short day we went from Stoke on Trent Festival Marina to Congleton.

This stretch delivers a great variety of canalscapes, from the industrial archaelogy of the pottery industry, where Wedgwood made his start, past the ruins of the British steel industry, lakes with waterfowl, the long, claustrophobic Harecastle Tunnel, the canal flyover of the start of the Macclesfield canal, and the long, almost lockless stretch to Congleton, which varies tween arable land, cattle fields, elegant mansions and even golf courses.

At Harecastle the canal plunges right throught the heart of Kidsgrove Hill, whose iron ore stains the canal ochre red for a mile in both directions. Tied up on the far side of the 3000 yrd long tunnel, my crew Christine and Ray walked across the hill with me. We missed the strictly original 'boathorse road', where it's advised (by whom?) to avoid the gypsy encampment in the middle. Gypsies? Travellers? Who knows. I feel silly for mistrusting the route. But at least we return over the hill, and it's a charming walk in places.

And now we are on the Macclesfield canal, which has a thriving canal society with a most helpful canal map. We took Granny from the junction at Red Bull through to Congleton, where we moored at Dog Lane Aqueduct for the night.

The Macclesfield canal is a very late one, in the great scheme of canal building, and bold in its route. It concentrates almost all its locks in one intense flight at Bosley, crossing a very undulating countryside with some suprisingly muscular engineering - including some spectacular aqueducts. Christine fell in love with Ramsdell Hall.

To Harecastle - and beyond

My route this weekend: I'll go up to to the South portal of Harecastle tunnel on Sunday morning, then walk over Harecastle Hiill, taking the route of the old canal horses. I'll walk back and take the boat through the 1 1/2 mile tunnel, thence on the Macclesfield Canal to Congleton on Sunday night. On Monday I hope to reach Macclesfield.

Bandit country

Yesterday morning I had a call from British Waterways, saying Granny Buttons had been found adrift in mid-canal at Stoke. This sort of call is always heartstopping. Luckily, I learned that staff at the nearby Royal Mail Call Centre had pulled it in and secured it properly. And it was still solidly padlocked and not burgled. And now it's under their security camera. Big, big thanks to them!

Being cast off by oiks and vandals wandering the towpath is always distressing. It's a fairly common problem, and all the more annoying when you are actually sleeping aboard. Last January I was overnighting in Gas St Basin, and asleep at 3am, when I was cast off by drunken oafs who stomped over my roof whilst jeering, cheering and whooping. I was near-naked in bed, and by the time I got my trousers on and put my head outside, they were long-gone and GB was in mid-canal.

But yobbery like this is nothing new. It's always been the boatman's lot, and the places it occurs are known by boaters as BANDIT COUNTRY.

Eily Gayford, in The Amateur Boatwomen, records a boatman in the 1930s who was presented with his plated dinner on the SLIDE by his wife, and just as he was about to tuck in, the boat went under a bridge from whence descended a lump of horse manure onto the poor man's plate.

Spitting or drooling was - and still is - also a problem. Gayford recalls that her old skipper Daphne (it was an all-girl crew) had a technique to thwart any young tearaways they spotted planning to make spitting mischief. Just as Daphne approached a bridge with such boys on them (for they always were boys), she'd ask them a question. Usually this was something simple, like 'what's the time?'. The boys would immediately look at their watches and forget their mischief. And by the time they'd collected their wits, the boat would be under the bridge and away.

Crick Boat Show

I'm off to the Crick Boat Show this weekend, and then to Granny Buttons for the weekend. A month ago I planned to write a whole bunch about waterways festivals and exhibitions, and it never took off. Sorry.

Anyway, The Crick Boat Show is one of the two biggest British waterways festivals on the calendar. And if you are thinking of buying a canal boat, it's a must-come. Most of the main boatbuilders are there.

The big exception of boatbuilders, year upon year, is Stowe Hill Marine. For several years they've had the clever concept of hosting a gathering for their own boats, in their own moorings. This not only avoids the cost of exhibiting at Crick (typically a thousand pounds or more) but brings a host of enthusiastic Stowe Hill owners together to beat you into submission with their own enthusiasms. They are a bit like Apple Mac evangelists.

I've tended to find Stowe Hill craft a little ungainly in their lines, but the quality is good, no doubt about it.

The Space Doctor

Amy Finley Scott is really working on the wrong continent.

She's a Space Doctor. She works in the encompassed claustrophobia of "the geometric puzzle that is the New York City apartment -- a place of perhaps 700 or 800 square feet with books and beds, computers and Cuisinarts and a television, and three or four humanoids -- and conjures space where none exists."

So says the Washington Post in a fascinating article on how to fit a quart of city living in a pint-pot of a New York City apartment. There are good ideas here on how to fit into where you never imagined you'd fit.

And yet...

What I did on my TV interviewing job

I'm fond of saying that too many canal stories have the tone of a school essay, entitled "What I did on my holidays". There's certainly little to match the magisterial authority of LTC Rolt's Narrow Boat.

When BBC TV took A Journey Through The Heart of England on NB Waterscape.com, they had a superb opportunity to make a fascinating daily blog. But it appears that TV journalist Sarah Campbell was too tired or short-timed to do little more than a 'what I did on my TV interviewing trip' kind of essay...

Lady Elgar Log on the Severn

Trevor Pavitt, busily blogging on his narrowboat Lady Elgar, raced down Shakespeare's Avon in a couple of days and has tonight reached the River Severn. He (Trevor) and she (his Lady boat and his lady wife) are now poised to tomorrow reach Worcester, the childhood home and retirement place of Sir Edward Elgar.

There's a certain honour in this. Call me Sherlock Holmes, but I would deduce (or at least suspect) that Trevor's boat's name is at least a slight nod of honour towards the composer I consider England's greatest.

Whether or not Trevor and his Lady have time to tarry in Worcester, you certainly can. Here is a brief but interesting tour of Elgarian Worcester. Click on the 'an Elgar Tour' button, and choose 'Worcester'. Or explore other areas of the beautiful county of Worcestershire that the original Lady Elgar and her husband called home. I hope Trevor will shortly trouble himself to tell us why the boat was named as it was.

Boat of the week - Roger Fuller tug

When you are looking to buy a second-hand canal boat, a few names stand out as having 'canal cred'. One is Roger Fuller, who crafts exceedingly traditional-looking boats to a very modern spec at his factory in Stone, beside the Trent & Mersey Canal.

There's a Roger Fuller traditional 'tug' for sale on Apollo Duck this week, and it looks very - well, very traditional, with lovely lines and an interesting spec inside, including a huge Lister 6-cylinder engine.

You can tell a Fuller boat at a casual glance from the large machined-metal 'Five Towns knot' logo on the front bulkhead. Fuller is perhaps better known for his stylish shells than his fitouts, but I've heard said that anything with the Fuller name on should be a good investment.

Curiously under-reported aqueduct accident

According to a Walsall local newspaper report, the historic James Bridge aqueduct is at risk after a lorry slammed into it a couple of weeks ago.

What makes this particularly curious is that although the substantial road underneath, Bentley Mill Way, has been closed to traffic for safety, the canal above appears to be still open for water traffic. Or at least, British Waterways hasn't issued any announcement about it.

Says the local Express & Star newspaper:

It is more than two weeks since a lorry smashed into the aqueduct on Bentley Mill Way but the damage has now been declared so severe that experts are refusing to re-open a section of the route. They fear that any slight impact with the bridge could make it collapse.

Internet Boaters' Database

The Internet Boater's Database, perhaps the largest list of online canal boaters anywhere. It currently features 118 boats, about half of which have their own web sites. You can add your own boat details if you wish.

The IBD was devised and hosted by Martin Clarke, whose Pennine Waterways site is probably the biggest and most updated canal site of all. It's certainly essential homework for anyone, like me, planning a trip up the Huddersfield Canal and down the Rochdale Canal.

Martin has also created three hilarious parallel 'catalogue' sites: Worst Pop Records, Unusual Place Names, and Spammers' Names.

The Unusual Place Names list was perhaps inspired by one of my favourite books, The Deeper Meaning of Liff. It features oddly-named places in the UK, but sadly omits my favourite: Breaky Bottom in Sussex. Although as the name of a geographical hollow and a six-acre vineyard, perhaps that doesn't count.

A curious narrowboat journey

BBC Breakfast TV is sending a narrowboat, converted as a TV studio, down the canal from Birmingham to Stoke Bruerne this week in the run-up to the council elections.

I guess they are using the canal as a metaphor of strata through the rock of Middle England, for the local and council elections on 10th June.

But the first report, in the heart of Birmingham, is full of how the 'British Muslim community' is likely to vote - complete with vox pops from BritMus psephologists canalside at Brindleyplace.

This rings strange to me...

Lady Elgar Log

It's strange, but I've always found keeping a diary - and by extension, a cruising log - very difficult. However, I've never found trouble in commenting on the passage of others.

And so it is in this case, where I'm postponing news of my own progress to comment on another's.

Trevor Pavitt is daily blogging his progress on his own boat, Lady Elgar. Today he's reached the Wilmcote flight on the Stratford Canal. Here is his progress today. I've added a photo here of Kingswood Junction, along which he passed - probably around late morning.

I think it's a very good description of a long-term canal trip. If you are wondering what you might do in passage across the English countryside, this could be a typical day.

BW's floating property deals

There's a story today in the Financial Times about "British Waterways promoting floating offices in City":

The arrival of Britain's first floating offices could give the terms flotation and offshore new meaning. Converted barges are soon to be marketed to small companies as the latest in trendy locations on the back of the growing popularity of waterside developments.

British Waterways, the public sector body that owns the canal network, is looking for tenants to take space in water-borne offices in several locations, mainly in London. It believes that entrepreneurs will leap at the chance to be surrounded by water.

Well, yes they will. But should they be given the chance? It seems to me that putting a static barge in a mooring place is effectively filling in the canal for the length and width of a boat.