Granny Buttons

Woking Canal Festival.

The Woking News & Mail reports today on the Woking Canal Festival.  Strangely, I was reading this report and found myself 'woking', or wondering what I was doing reading it, as defined in The Meaning of LIff.

Swanfight at the OK Lock

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my extraordinary fortune of witnessing a swanfight at the OK Lock. Well, OK, Feakes Lock.   (The Tuesday Night Club has a picture of it on this page.)  It's rare to see this, but rarer still to witness it in such circumscribed circumstances.  I felt like I had a ringside seat at a cockpit. 

I'm intrigued that on Google, 'define:cockpit' brings up no cockfighting definitions.  The moment I watched the swans fighting, I sense it was a cockfight, a duel for me to watch. I'd never make a true cockfighter, because I didn't want to bet on the outcome. I wanted to save the underdog.  Underswan.

There were long moments when the underswan's head was underwater, and at one stage I grabbed the leading swan's neck to discourage him, but he noticed-not, and I thought it better not to interfere further.

Anyway, I've had the second film back, and while it won't win any bird photography awards, I'm honoured that its captured the feel of my experience, over four dozen pictures.  I loved the fact that not only did the two cobs fight, but occasionally so did the pens. 

It was delightful when the spotty dog appeared.  He really made the final scene.

Limehouse to Camden

Limehouse Marina to Camden Visitor moorings, 1pm to 6pm, with an hour's late lunch stop at The Narrowboat Inn, Islington, near City Road Lock. 

12 locks, 7 miles.  Crew:  Christine, Liz, and Liz's sons Michael and Nick. 

Tied up for the week adjacent to Myark, a boat I'd seen before in London in my travels.  But only after I left the boat did I read in this month's Waterways World about Simon, who lives aboard Myark and runs a  tree surgery business nearby.  Or as his website puts it:  "A flexible arboraculture and amenity horticulture                 business".

Simon is also the local moorings warden, so my boat should be safe. Assuming I don't overstay the 14day limit!

Three Mills to Limehouse

Three Mills to Limehouse in the sunset/dusk/dark on Easter Sunday.
6:30-7:30pm.  A couple of miles, and no locks.  And another half-hour of engine idling in Limehouse Dock so's my battery would get properly charged and my water hot for a shower.

A drink in the bar of the Cruising Association's Limehouse HQ afterwards, where I learned that yesterday and today was the weekend of the CA's annual Frostbite Race, and a half-dozen dusty remnants of the race were wagging their chins.  Two of them, far gone in their cups, had a takeaway pizza brought into the bar - a surrealistic sight.  Very pleasant and friendly, though.

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct restoration

Richard Turner-Thomas has written a fascinating book about the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct restoration last year.  He was the supervisor of works on the £1.3M restoration and kept copious notes and took photos throughout the work.

It's his first book, privately published and from the tale he tells of the effort put in and the pressure he was under, I suspect it might be his last!  He tells a tale of privation under great humility, almost sleeping rough to begin with, sharing a cold boat with his huge Leonberger dog, and being personally stretched by debts, having his tooth pulled with pliers over Christmas by the local publican, a near-disaster as a runaway boat threatend to overwhelm the works, and to cap it all the theft of his old car.

I spent the winter up to Christmas 2003 on the Llangollen, saw the start of the work and was disappointed at not being able to take Granny across this magnificent structure.  I wondered at the time how serious was the decay, since an inspection just a couple of years previously had cleared it as 'good for another 200 years'.

Well, the book shows it was a lot worse than they'd originally estimated, and plentiful photos show the decay before and the shine after.

The book's been self-published and could have done with a sub-editor, but really it's a marvellous record that deserves professional republishing.  Underneath the dry engineering story of the restoration there is clearly a great human story, one that Tom Rolt would love to have told.  In this book we don't learn enough about the author himself -  about his personal life and about how he came to have such an important position yet was reduced to sleeping almost rough and working around the clock for several winter months.

It's a fascinating and unique look at a one of the world's great canal structures, is a worthy memento of Richard's hard work and is well worth the £12 inc postage.  I think you can only buy it online.

Waltham Abbey to Three Mills.

Private Procrastination reporting for duty, Sah!

I keep putting off the 'log' part of my blog, and this (blush) is written more than a week after the event. Part of the problem of keeping an online log is my desperate inner need to say something new each time. 

If you are just reporting where you went on the canals, or what you did or saw, it feels like simple cataloging to me. I'm not a cataloger, by birth or inclination.  I'm no diarist.  A simple rote listing of events might be necessary and important to keeping a log, but it's not me. So it's taken me several days to summon the enthusiasm to write this and back-post it to the relevant day.

Anyway, 'today' was Waltham Abbey to Three Mills.  I took the boat alone from near Hazlemere Marina to  Enfield Lock, and paused to wash the boat while I waited for my sister and Janet Harris to join.  Janet is a near-twin, in that she is exactly one day older than me.  If we were ever to ever, er, 'get together', it's reassuring to know I would be her toy-boy. Point of interest: Janet's ex-husband is Keith Harris, whom I believe is now married to Orville.

The passage: 11am- 5.30pm, including an hour's break below Pickett's Lock. Pickett's Locks was proposed a few years ago as one of the proposed centres of the Olympics, should London win its bid for the 2012 Games.  That idea collapsed (with much embarassment of stout party) but apparently it's still going to be a £16million athletics training centre.

I'm not sure about the Olympics, but apart from being a place to pause on the straight dash down the Lee to London, I'll always remember Picketts Lock as the site of a great gig early in the hot summer of 1976 by the rockabilly cultsters Crazy Cavan 'n the Rhythm Rockers.

For a good guide to the scenery, see this page at Lee Valley Online.

Trips with my sister are always a privilege.  The trouble is, they usually end up as banquets.  She disappears below quickly, submerged beneath pots, pans and bacofoil, and bish-bash-bosh, she's whipped up the next idea to appear in Gordon Ramsay's books.  I'm always startled how easy she makes it look, even aboard the tight claustrophobia of Granny's galley.

I was startled to see the number of orthodox Jews perambulating riverside today.  Lindy explained that it was Saturday, so it's the Sabbath.  That's the day when they aren't allowed to drive, cook or enjoy themselves, so by religious law they have to walk on the riverbank and look bored.

We mooored up at Three Mills again in the late afternoon sun, in the exact spot I moored almost three months ago, on January 3rd 2005.  That time, I left the boat, drove back to Norfolk, and had a heart attack overnight.  I didn't see the boat again for almost three weeks.  Boaters are always superstitious, so I guess this makes it my lucky mooring.

Lucky mooring indeed.  I got to see Dr Who tonight, the first time in 20 years.   Ah, that takes me back even further in my mind.  When I lived in Trinidad as a kid, we lived next door to a Chinaman called Dr Hu, and he worked for UNO.

BW's 5-year progress report

DEFRA has released a report on the recent performance of British Waterways.  "British Waterways has turned a liability into a much-loved national asset", concludes Alun Michael, Waterways Minister.  Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?  He's hardly going to say they've failed, or that would mean he has failed too.

The report is a 51-page PDF, available here.  I haven't read it properly yet, but a couple of things stand out for me.  Firstly, BW's aim that:

Our ambition is that by 2012 we will have created an expanded, vibrant,  largely self-sufficient waterway network used by twice as many people as in 2002.

The report agrees with that vision.  But I wonder if they are including boaters in that figure.  I can't see the canals finding space for twice as many boaters in seven years time.  Well, certainly not in the South-East.  Not without an expansion of off-line mooring, and a little more husbanding of water supplies. 

The report asks 'What is British Waterways for?'  Its answer:

To manage, maintain and develop its network of waterways and  docks for the wider public benefit.

Well, pardon me, but surely 'waterways' implies roads for boats?  If it's for anglers it would be British Fisheries, and if it was for ramblers or cyclists it would be British Waterside Trails, and if it was for regeneration it would be British Waterside Properties.  Of course it's got to be for everyone, but at the heart of it all - or the 'core competency' as the report's jargon has it - is boats and navigation.  Without boats, it's a linear national park, nothing more.  Waterways are aquatic roads - they go places. 

That's my knee-jerk response.  I'm looking forward to reading it in detail, though.

Butty Lyra now Knot Crazy at Saul Junction

A year ago I wrote about the butty Lyra.  Clive Field, director of the Saul Canal Festival near Gloucester (fast becoming one of the biggest annual waterways gatherings), tells me that Ken of HTC Trading sold Lyra last year, and she's now moored at Saul Junction.  And here are a couple of Clive's photos to prove it. He writes:

Last summer I met a chap at The Cape of Good Hope at  Warwick. He was keen (though sad) to sell his butty Lyra. I put him in touch with Ben Selfe of NB Knot Crazy. They did a deal and Lyra was 'lorried' to the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal. 

Ben is a member of the International Guild of Knot Tyers and has recently been granted a permanent trading mooring at Saul Junction.  He uses the hold as a workshop.  Ben will be open for business during the Saul Canal Festival on 1-3 July 2005.

Knots have always been a confusion to me.  As you might guess, I only know one, and that's the granny knot, and on Granny Buttons that gets me by, just about.  But faced with my inability to tie  any knots that I can actually undo, the real mystery is why there isn't an International Guild of Knot Untyers.  That would be far more useful to me. 

I don't know about you, but I often find that the most interesting and ominous things in a photograph are in the background.  And so it is here in the second picture, where there's a huge construction crane just peeking out of the top-right margin of the picture.  Could it be helping to build the fast-expanding Saul Festival's new permanent international skyscraper headquarters at this once-peaceful and bucolic canal junction?

Hammer & Tongs on an intergalactic cruise in their office on the Regent's Canal

What connection does the forthcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film have to do with the waterways? 

Not a lot.  Except that the movie's director Garth Jennings has his office aboard the business barge Poppy, moored at Eagle Wharf near Sturts Lock on the Regent's Canal. It's the HQ of Hammer & Tongs, the video company he formed with partner Nick Goldsmith.  Screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick records that quite a few script meetings took place here:

So in May of 2003, Nick Goldsmith and Garth Jennings came on board. I flew to London with Derek Evans from Spyglass to have three days of intense meetings at their office which, as it turned out, was a converted barge sitting in a river somewhere in Islington.

'River'?  Nearly right, Karey.  If the new movie does have a spiritual home, it's here - Earth, England, London, Islington - afloat on one of those garish, girly, florally named and decorated tubs (the others are Lilly, Rosie and Daisy).  I'd guess Poppy was the nerve centre for the film's production. And frankly, I think it's the place for exactly the sort of Islington party that Zaphod Beeblebrox gatecrashed and stole Trillian away from Arthur Dent:

Hi, is this canal boring you?  Why don't you come with me?  I'm from a different waterway!

Before the new movie took up all of their time, they used to have a webcam running here, but it seems to be offline now.

Granny's Easter plans

Granny is headed for Limehouse on Friday, and along the Regent's Canal to Little Venice on Saturday.  I'll tarry there for a week, before heading out west to the Grand Union canal for a couple of weeks.  I'll then return to Little Venice for the Canalway Cavalcade.

Pumpout ponderings

Last year (gosh, I think it was the year before, how time flies) I wrote about an expensive toilet tank pumpout of £15.  'Nigel Boatdweller' has just come across this post and commented today: "It's beginning to become an average price sadly. Just removed two 40 gall' tanks from my boat and replaced with a Thetford for that very reason." 

Well, whilst the average price of a pumpout is undoubtedly rising, it's still rarely at £15.  But I've been struck this week by the standard price of £6.30 charged by BW's automatic pumpout stations.  They are operated by a card you buy from local waterways offices (when you can find an office that's open - they aren't open at weekends whenever I'm near them).  That 6.30 seems like a base price, but it's still well over the marginal cost of providing the facility. 

Considering that sanitary stations are free, it seems to me that £15 pumpouts - even £12, even £10 pumpouts - are simply a cash cow, a makeweight, a way for boatyards to top up the profits that they are lacking in other areas.  Part of the reason they enjoy this privilege is because most BW sanitary stations discourage self-pumpouts, warning that the stations are not designed for it. I'm not sure quite why this is - most self-pumpout kits I've seen are too weedy to overflow out the bowls of sanitary stations.

I guess marina operators would argue about the cost of installing all that extra equipment.  Well, they can't be much more expensive than building basic sanitary stations, with all the attendant planning permission, construction and sewage costs that are going to be constructed for Portapotti users anyway.

The principal supplier of boat pumpout systems on the inland waterways of the UK is Lee Sanitation, and they have a good site with a lot of useful information about marina pumpout systems.  I don't know if they do any self-pumpout kits; the site seems geared to the commercial operator who wants to set up in business (presumably stinging the boater for £15 a time). 

Perhaps Lee Sanitation are trying to discourage people from carrying around their own pumpout equipment, the better to protect the Amalgamated Union of Pumpout Owner-Operators.  If you type 'self pumpout' into their site's search engine, it comes up with "No results. Did you mean half pump-out?"

Water water not everywhere

According to UK TV weather reports last night, this year has been the third driest winter on record with only 69% of the average winter rainfall across England and Wales.  But there's a skew across the country, with the South-East and West of England having only 59% of average precipitation, and reservoirs lower than is comfortable for spring.

Boaters need to worry about this.  Certainly British Waterways and The Environment Agency do.  The canals haven't had a national drought for ten years, so perhaps we are due for one this summer. My plans are to go on the Kennet & Avon in May/June, so it will be just my luck (once again) to be headed slap-bang into drought territory.  The K&A can get short of water on the summit level at Devizes especially.

Yet the Environment Agency reports a slightly rosier picture of rainfall and water levels than the fretting TV weather mavens.  Here's the EA picture of reservoir stocks at the end of February, here's their page on average rainfall reports, and here's the page for the ongoing water supplies situation in the UK.

Sending Tesco to Coventry

The Coventry Evening Telegraph today says that the local new Tesco store near Hawkesbury Junction:

...has come under fire from angry canal boat owners who say discarded shopping trolleys could scupper their vessels.  Complaints have come pouring into the Evening Telegraph about the number of trolleys from the Arena-based store which have begun to litter Longford.

....Wayne Rogers, chairman of the Friends of Hawkesbury Junction, says the supermarket chain is jeopardising the safety of canal boat users and endangering wildlife by not enforcing the measures.  The 51-year-old narrow boat owner, from Ernesford Grange, said: "We knew this was going to happen as soon as the store opened...If a narrow boat's propeller hits a trolley it will cause at least £2,000 damage and I for one would sue the store if it happens to me.

This is a heavy dose of creative indignancy in my view.  It's rubbish (excuse the pun) to suggest that running over a trolley causes that sort of damage.  That is, unless you are a QC on holiday charging £400 an hour and you consider that ferreting down a weedhatch with wirecutters for five hours is billable time.   

600 not out

I just noticed that my last post ('Park & Ride for Linlithgow') was the six hundredth since I started Granny Buttons about 18 months ago.  There's a lot I'd planned for this site that I've not even begun to accomplish (webcam, full waterways glossary, regular 'boat of the week' etc) but I'm contented that it's still going regularly.