Granny Buttons

Upper Avon Extension - crunch time getting closer?

A report in a local Warwickshire paper yesterday (by the euphoniously named Arryn Buggins) on a marathon 2-day session held by Warkwickshire County Council to discuss the Upper Avon Link. This is a long-discussed project to make the Avon navigable above Stratford Upon Avon to its junction with the Grand Union Canal, go under it via the Leam Aqueduct, and thence ascend via several locks to join the Grand Union.

This would provide a somewhat shortened link to the GU, and allow broadbeam boats to navigate simply from the Severn to Birmingham and the Midlands.

I was surprised to find (according to the newspaper report) there's substantial opposition to this project, for what is only a small extension to the navigation. Of course, I don't know any of the cons; I only see the prospect of reaching the Avon more easily from the North and East, and I can't think of a single English canal or river navigation that's had a negative impact on the landscape.

I suspect most people opposed to the project are as ignorant and biased as I am, albeit in their own direction.

Late addition: Adrian Stott of the Dutch Barge Association has taken a close personal interest in this, and has posted a summary today on uk.rec.waterways. It does not look good for those who'd like to take their boats from the GU down to Stratford.

It's not a difficult project, technically, and wouldn't be expensive. But there's strong and stony opposition from some surprising quarters, including the National Trust, and Adrian Stott reports BW, formerly a supporter of the scheme, as now having 'indifference' about it.

A pause on new posts this week

I'm taking a short pause on daily posts while I bring up to date my cruising logs, complete with photos, and a new series of photo albums and assorted lists. (I'm not going anywhere on Granny Buttons this week)

There will still be daily updates, but chiefly to previous posts. You'll receive these automatically if you 'subscribe' via the webfeed/RSS/syndication option. Otherwise I'll tell you here.

I've put photos on the Willard Wigan post, and on Tunnel Cutters.

I'm preparing two major photo albums: Gongoozlers, and Canal Animals. (I was going to call it 'Dogs', but too many cats and cows kept popping up!)

I'll also be freshening up the Boatroll with some more (and more active) personal narrowboat web sites, and creating a favourite list of general canal information sites and link sites, something that's long overdue.

(Life) Boating under the influence

Ain't that just the way? It's exactly 200 years since the Cromer Lifeboat Station was established, and so last night the Cromer branch of the RNLI were having a celebratory dinner-dance.

They'd not had a full-blown 'shout' - one of those thrilling launches of the lifeboat down the slipway - since March 3rd, and so it was sod's law that just as the party was getting into its swing, they got a full-blown shout. And half a dozen dinner-jacketed men dutifully raced to their stations and launched the lifeboat just about pub closing time.

As a rescue it was low-key, which is the best way, of course. A small yacht on Haisboro' Sands had lost its power and was simply towed in and tied to an anchor buoy near Cromer Pier, where it's bobbing up and down right now. No lives lost, just one red-faced yachtsman. And in a written report proudly posted in the station this afternoon, the crew declared that in their black tie (tuxedo) outfits they were probably the best-dressed lifeboat crew ever!

"I think they'd had one or two [drinks]", confided one of station staff to me today with a conspiratorial wink. I have no proof, of course, but it's hard to believe that on their biggest party for years they were all stone-cold sober. Drinking whilst boating, that's the theme of this post...

Rochdale Canal 'refurbishment' takes a pasting from local press

The Rochdale Observer reported this week that "Rochdale Canal, recently refurbished at a cost of £25M, was closed for 48 hours last weekend – because of a shortage of water!".

I think this is unfair. The Rochdale and Huddersfield canals were reopened in 2001/2 after a much-trumpeted £50M investment. At the time, this was heralded as a triumph of 'restoration'. But it wasn't.

One thing that my trip across the Huddersfield taught me was that these Pennines canals weren't restored - they were simply unblocked and reopened. In some locks there are still fifty year old lock gates (the typical life of a wooden gate is perhaps half that) and many stretches were actually restored years ago by the volunteers of the local canal societies and wergies, and are leaking or silted once again.

The implication of the Rochdale Observer story is that after £25M of 'refurbishment', it was a disgrace that the Rochdale should have run dry. Perhaps the problem is that British Waterways have oversold the whole restoration program? When asking for the money, they probably implied that we'd get 'new for old'. In fact, all we got was the bare minimum to get boats through - and we are still left with a big fifty-year backlog of general maintenance.

And there are still unsolved specific problems. Last week, the lockkeeper at Tuel Lane (he wryly told me that local boaters call him 'Uncle Nasty') says there's a major, untraced leak on the long pound above his lock, which puzzled BW engineers just can't locate. I don't know how much should be spent on tracking it down, but he suggested that BW have already spent large amounts on it without success, and I think he implied we might have to learn to live with it unless we can dig deeper in our communal pockets.

The real triumph of the Pennines reopening is not the 'refurbishment' - there was little of that - but the major public works on blockages like the Standedge Tunnel and the brand-new town development in places like Stalybridge.

Waterscape's tiny font is hard to read.

I think BW makes a good effort at its marketing. But for my quintagenerian eyes, the body text on its main site, Waterscape.com, is just too small. And it's not programmed to cope with any change.

Take the snippet here. Too small for me to read easily at normal size anyway, if I ask my browser to enlarge the font size it throws out all the formatting. I think the design doesn't take into account old codgers like me with presbyopia.

The waterways themselves are becoming quite a playground for early retirees. I wonder; how old are Waterscape readers compared with the average web user?

Late reflection: The gnarled, mixed-up text is probably an incompatibility with my computer (Mac) or browsers (Safari & Firefox). But even if it adjusts correctly on the PC, I still think the standard body text is too small and hard to read.

Logoes and emblems and the waterways

Call me slow, but I've only just noticed that the logoes British Waterways created for Standedge Tunnel and the Anderton Boat Lift have the same theme. One holds up a boat, the other holds it down.

It's fashionable to sniff at the extreme marketing of everything to the extent of creating fancy logos for them. Often this is justfied, in the sense that stylish squiggles are applied rather pointlessly to too many companies or products. However, when it's relevant to the 'product', and especially when it's a 'family' of logoes that resemble each other, I think it works very well.

And so it is in this case. Whoever was paid to create these logoes did a good job. I don't know how much they were paid, and perhaps it was too much. Or perhaps it was in-house, for free. But they are good and stylish images that 'brand' these places very well. It would be interesting to see if there are any of that ilk lined up for the other 'Wonders of the Waterways'.

I must say, I dislike the term 'logo'. The term is derived from the Greek 'logos', meaning 'word', and word is hardly the right description. In the old days they were simply 'emblems'. The Royal Standard is one traditional emblem, the portcullis of the Houses of Parliament another.

BW has a good track record in emblems, and its chief emblem, of a humpback accomodation bridge, with bullrushes in the foreground, is wonderfully emblematic of the character of the UK waterways. Other images of the UK waterways that could be 'emblemed' include the traditional working narrowboat, the lock gate (the Lichfield & Hatherton Restoration Trust uses this familiar image in their emblem) and the aqueduct.

GU cargo shock horror

Quelle horreur! The Grand Union Canal is to be used for what it was originally built for! The Watford Observer today reports that the GU will carry a lot of freight to/from a new Tube depot being built near Croxley Green. I presume this is for the stated 4 month building period, later this year. It estimates around 400 lorry loads being carried down the canal, rather than on the roads.

While nominally great news, I can't help raise a wry smile at the news report that "use of the canal is also beneficial to British Waterways as it prevents it from silting up". I hardly think silting is the worst of the GU's problems, and the new traffic may well lead to a lot of congestion and a water shortage for ordinary boaters. Still, be fair, who can complain? It's what the canal was built for. And a direct return to exactly how it was used 100 years ago when the adjacent Bakerloo Line was built.

The hobbler returns

After a week in the wild west of Yorkshire (and Cheshire and Lancs) I've managed to get back in front of a computer to post. I passed my target of reaching the end of the Huddersfield canal, and Granny is now at Sowerby Bridge, where the Calder & Hebble naivigation abuts onto the start of the Rochdale Canal.

Ironically - considering my last definition, about 'hobbling', I am now a hobbler myself, as Sean Gray perceptively observed when I met him on the towpath today near Sowerby Bridge. You see, a couple of nights ago I slipped and almost fell off the boat, and banged my leg in the process. The ugly grazes will quickly heal, and the shin pain vanished overnight; but my knee is swollen, I'm hobbling around as if my left leg is stilted, and its yet another battering that can only lead to knee ruin.

What was perhaps remarkable is that I continued to take a 15-ton boat up the Calder & Hebble on my own. It can't have done me any good, and by the time I tied up last night my knee was extremely painful, and I'm a real hobbler now! Knee injuries are so common that there's even a web site devoted to them: Knee Guru. Professionals kneeding to recap (sorry) their knee knowledge might prefer the expert's version: The Knee Foundation. Me, I'll just fill myself with Ibuprofen. But I see someone is looking for people willing to trial knee drugs based on pineapple!

I'll post my log shortly, but section it into the day each entry belongs. If you subscribe to a feed of this site, you'll get it automatically, but if you drop by to read it, you'll have to go to the relevant day to see it.

Salterhebble Basin to Sowerby Bridge

A short, sweet day today. Just a short hop of a couple of miles from Salterhebble Basin to Sowerby Bridge.

Met a friendly, cheerful couple - he's an avid bird photographer - on the towpath. Sean Gray has some beautiful avian images on www.grayimages.co.uk.

My leg's only slightly better after last night, and I'm still hobbling. A leisurely breakfast at McDonald's, reading the papers, and then I set off for Sowerby Bridge. 2 1/2 miles, 1 hr, no locks.

After collecting my car from Slowit, cleaning the boat and loading up, I realised that my leg really needs a couple of week's recuperation. So here I'll moor for a couple of weeks in the basin, a paying guest of Shire Cruisers, overlooked by the popular 'The Moorings' pub.

Now to plan my assault on the Rochdale Canal!

Cooper Bridge to Salterhebble

Today was Cooper Bridge to Salterhebble, with a two-hour lunchtime stopover at Brighouse, and thirty minutes of throat refuelling at Elland. 8 1/4 miles and 16 locks, ten of them single-handed with an increasingly gammy knee. 3 hours to Brighouse, 6 1/2 more to Salterhebble.

Gee, this was the hardest, cruellest day's boating I've ever done...

Milnsbridge to Cooper Bridge

Today I went from Milnsbridge to Cooper Bridge, mooring for the night between Locks 3 and 2. Six miles and eighteen locks, including the last eleven on the Narrow Canal. A tiring day, punctuated by a long afternoon break at Aspley Basin. Quite rainy in the morning, cheering up by the time I reached Aspley Basin, with a comfortably bright afternoon and dusk. The last six hours were spirited, thanks largely to the friendly company and help of Graham & Mrs (name?) White and their son Nick, whom I first met coming up Lock 23W less than three days ago.

Slaithwaite - how do you pronounce it?

"They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce", Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad.

Passing through Slaithwaite, I've been told a variety of ways to pronounce this town's name. Oddities of pronounced placed names are nothing new in Britain, but rarely have I encountered as much discussion as about 'Slaythwayt'.

On his Waterways Guides Updates site, Greg Chapman records the following:

Ronald Haigh, interviewed on the BBC TV programme "The Impossible Dream", made the "ai" in "Slaith" a long sound as in the "a" in "add". The narrator of the same programme, while normally pronouncing it with a shorter "a" sound, as in "away", when discussing pronunciation, suggested "Slow-art", with the "ow" to rhyme with "cow".

When people frequenting news:uk.local.yorkshire were asked how it should be pronounced, the most popular response from locals was "Slowit" (the "ow" to rhyme with "cow"). One went as far as quoting Arnold Kellett in the Yorkshire Dictionary (ISBN 1 85825 017 X). Next most popular was "Slawit", but it all seemed to depend upon where, in the county, you were raised.

Martin Underwood related this story:

I was on a train that stopped at Slaithwaite. The guard was announcing the station as we approached. In his normal, homely, West Riding accent, he referred to it as "Slowit". Then, as an afterthought, he said "By the way, that's the place that Namby Pamby Pampered Southerners think is pronounced as" [exaggerated posh accent] "Slaythwayt". The whole of my carriage collapsed in fits of the giggles.

Marsden to Milnsbridge and beyond

Today I descended from Standedge Tunnel North End to Milnsbridge on the outskirts of Huddersfield. 11hr30mins, 31 locks, 4 1/2 miles. One of the longest day's cruising I've done - this doesn't include the three hourse I spent fetching my car and exploring the Standedge ridge.

I left around 8am, stopped at Slaithwaite to return to Uppermill by train to fetch my car (passing through the Standedge hill by rail tunnel in three minutes!), returned to leave the car at Slaithwaite and set off by boat again to reach Lock 12E at Milnsbridge well after 10pm.

Granny Buttons goes through Standedge Tunnel

Standedge Tunnel stands out as one of the most extraordinary experiences of my cruising around England. Few of us forget our first tunnel, but it's seen-one-seen-all as far as most canal tunnels are concerned.

Not so Standedge. It has great variety of appearance in its 3 miles, and there's drama and human interaction in passing through it, too. Little wonder that it ranks as one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways. Some say there should be twelve, and Standedge is on that list too. Martin Clark's website has a good - nay, excellent - pictorial history of the tunnel, as well as the story of its restoration.

They tow your boat through via an electric tug. In the front is the passenger vessel, with a single driver at the open bow section, crocodile-file (two-abreast) seating for twenty in the glassy cabin, and an open stern deck. On the passenger vessel is a driver, steering with a couple of joysticks as though it were a long but unexciting video game, and a guide whose nominal purpose is to be trained in first aid. However, his chief job satisfaction is in giving you a history and running commentary.

Behind is the stubby tug unit, with another steerer, and, behind that, they tow your narrowboats, up to five in a snaking chain tied closely together, each boat separated with an inflatable fender.

Each towed boat is also covered with thick, coarse unrolled rubber, and astern on each (except the first) stands a British Waterways man whose sole job is to fend off the unforgiving rough stone walls of the tunnel with his boots. And they must do this for up to three hours at a stretch. This last job must be the least satisfying of the entire Standedge caravan...