Granny Buttons

Newbury to Kintbury

Newbury Victoria Park to Kintbury.

A short day.  Only started at noon, trying to enjoy Newbury as much as I could.   Reached Kintbury at 4.30pm, after stopping for lunch.  What a delightful stretch, and what an excellent place to pause for a couple of days.  Christine and I caught the train back from the nearby Kintbury station - she to return to London, me to nip back to Norfolk for a couple of days wage slavery.  I

'd like to write more about Kintbury - it seems like a delightful dormitory village - but I'm in the process of switching over computers, and blogging is very research-intensive and I'm dashing all over the place this week.    Interesting points:  it appears to be the home of a horse-drawn boat, the Kennet Valley, and there's a recommended pub/inn/freehouse - The Dundas Arms - which has its own informative website, but also gets good reviews from many other sources.

Happy birthday, David Griffths!

At 5pm tonight I saw day hire boat Cygnet, festooned with balloons and 'Happy 50th Birthday' bunting,  moored opposite Granny Buttons at Victoria Park, Newbury.  I went over and introduced myself, and asked who was celebrating.  Turned out to be David Griffiths, an IT manager for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and his family. 

My comiserations, David!  I underwent the same sea-change a couple of years ago.  Hmm, Cygnet is somehow an appropriate venue for the party when you make that change from the ugly duckling of youth into the swanhood of middle age.  Our insurance costs plummet, for one, and ye gods, we are now eligible for Saga Holidays.

Actually, I felt no different inside when the moment came, and two years on I still don't.  Although I do sometimes look in the mirror in the mornings and think to myself 'hey, who's that old bloke? I don't recognise him.' 

But I'm a hollow crust of a childless bachelor.  With a cheerful, friendly and cheeky family like that around him, I doubt David will be able to run and hide from reality the way I do!   But he's wearing up better than I did.   

Incidentally, day hire boats are a great way to celebrate your birthday.  Here's another one I spotted a year ago near Hopwas on the Coventry Canal.  I think this one was Whittington Grange, from Streethay Wharf.   It was a 65th birthday, and they were just as unremittingly festive as the Griffiths family.

Greenham Canal Services

A big thanks to Pete & Val Taylor of Greenham Canal Services for keeping an eye on Granny while I was away, and to Mike Beveridge of Enhance Software Solutions for such an open greeting when I arrived there a fortnight ago.  Mike was the first-ever boater to say hello when I moored up, based on recognising Granny Buttons from reading grannybuttons.com

Whilst you never get a second chance to make a first impression, I don't think first impressions always count.  If they did, advertisers wouldn't need to repeat ads and your granny wouldn't need reminding of things every few minutes.  However, the greeting you get from local boaters is crucial to your impression of a place when you are just passing through, and Pete & Val were helpful there.  The reception I got on May 15th was instrumental to my feelings about Newbury now.

GCS is a sort of stop-&-shop place, a service station of the canals, rather than a full boatyard.  It offers the usual bunkering & victualling, pumpout and chandlery etc, and a brand new dayboat hire (Cygnet, one of the smartest and best-designed I've yet seen on the waterways)

I was interested to hear that they get their coal delivered by water from one of the many coal/diesel boats on the canal.  Unlike most boatyards, if you buy coal from Greenham Canal Services, you are also supporting the boats - well done Pete & Val!

Crick, return to Granny and the Newbury Fringe Festival

I'm back aboard Granny after a fortnight, and ready to resume the passage to Bristol.   Trouble is, Newbury is proving such an attractive place I'm hard put to tear myself away.   Of all the medium-sized towns on canals, this one seems to embrace it with more charm than any. I'd planned to set off for Hungerford today, but Christine's late arriving to join me, so I'm wandering the town, just enjoying it while I wait for her.

I drove down yesterday via the Crick Boat Show, of which more later.   140 miles to Crick, a flying visit to the Show; £8 entry and 2 hours at the show, followed by another hundred miles to Newbury.

Happens that this is the weekend of the Newbury Fringe Festival.  It's got an extremely professional web site - would that more festivals (and certain waterways ones, to boot!) had such informative sites, complete with an easily-printable programme.  I'm told that the Feltre Flag Wavers are one of the highlights - worth hanging around for them, I'm told.  This is the serendipity of cruising the waterways - the special days and little festivals you stumble across in the towns of England.  I'd never heard of the Newbury Fringe Festival until a couple of hours ago.  Now I'm here till tomorrow, I'll try to post some photos of it tonight. 

And Granny has moved just a few yards to the delightful Victoria Park moorings, in a setting which a latter-day Georges Seurat would be happy to paint.

Granny's weekend.

Plans for the Bank Holiday Weekend:   

Saturday:  Crick Boat Show.  Then driving down to Newbury to rejoin Granny Buttons.
Sunday: Newbury to Hungerford.
Monday:  Hungerford to Pewsey.

Down with unreliable and hard to use macs...

So many of my posts in the last few weeks have been lost, thanks to my computer crashing.  If you are wondering why I've been quiet, that's more than partly the reason.  I'm really fed up with this.  I'll be glad when my new Dell Inspiron arrives, hopefully next week.  In the meantime, I'm sticking razor blades in apples, and I don't mean fruit!   I don't mind people liking their own computers  but I was suckered into 'switching' to another format, and I've been regretting it for a year or more. 

(I might regret this post tomorrow. But i'm feeling unforgiving, so I'm switching off comments, sorry)

Timothy West breaks his leg.

I've made several posts in the last week, mostly comments on news I've seen, where the browser has crashed after researching and writing a fair amount of it.

The latest was from the Chester Chronicle, on discovering that my notable boater Timothy West had broken his leg.  Somewhat ironic, considering he's an ac-tor.  This most recent post was lost when my computer just crashed, so I'll just briefly recreate it.

GARDEN centres, supermarkets, a child's nursery, a dressing room during the final moments before a play opens - these are all situations I have come across while interviewing actors.

But never before have I spoken to someone sitting at the side of her husband's hospital bed.

Until now, that is, and the doubtful accolade of being a first in that category goes to that classic British star of stage and screen, Prunella Scales, who has been married for over four decades to the equally renowned Timothy West.

'Tim slipped on wet grass on the tow path near our narrowboat and broke his leg and he had to have a pin in it and now he's on crutches,' she explains.

'Fortunately, it hasn't interrupted any of his work,' added Prunella who, aged almost 73, is preparing to visit Clwyd Theatr Cymru from Thursday, June 2, to Saturday, June 4, to perform An Evening With Queen Victoria, described as 'a portrait in her own words'.

   

Nantwich locals fight the 'Swanley Armada'

The Nantwich Chronicle reports today about 'furious residents [who] have vowed to fight on in a bid to halt the 'Swanley Armada'.

Interestingly, the story has the byline of Alan Jervis, a familiar - nay, famous - name in waterways restoration circles, having won the Cyril Styring Trophy in 1998.  I'm not sure if he's given up volunteer work to finally earn a crust as a local paper hack, or if that's another Alan Jervis entirely.  But Jervis's don't exactly come in six-packs in this Kingdom.  (Well, beer doesn't either, it comes in four-packs, but the American metaphor has stuck)

Snipe & Taurus for sale

I moored up on Monday night at Hampton Court, below the beautiful Tijou Screen, and was delighted to see the next morning that the hotel narrowboat pair Snipe & Taurus had arrived.  They do look terrific in their highly polished brass, carefully cleaned paintwork and whitened ropes.  And business, owner Derek Fearnley told me, was good, very busy indeed.

I was surprised, then, to see this week that Snipe & Taurus are up for sale at the end of the year.  Their web site explains why: they are planning to start cruising a luxury widebeam Dutch Barge hotelboat next year, with only four passenger berths. 

It'll be pretty luxurious by the look of it. The new barge is called Gallinago (Latin for 'Snipe').  With such a high crew/passenger ratio, it's perhaps understandable they won't be running a pair of the boats, even though the Snipe's scientific name is Gallinago Gallinago.

Three Men In A Boat at Boulter's Lock

I was delighted to catch three men in a boat at Boulter's Lock, near Maidenhead, on Wed 11th May.  I think they forgot the dog!

This modern-day scene is an interesting contrast with the famous late-Victorian painting of Boulter's Lock by Edward Gregory, now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool .

The Thames in the footsteps of the famous

When I last came up the River Thames, in the dog days of that summer before the ghastly "9/11", I remember thinking there was a gap in the market for a guide book that would be called 'The Thames of the Rich & Famous'.   

It would guide boaters on what to rubberneck when they went past places of history or fame, or simply where the celebrities lived.  There are so many exotic and fascinating places to see on the Thames.  It has a glamour that the canals cannot match, even if the canals have more character and atmosphere (and they do).

Anyway, I'd been off the Thames for two days before I remembered that only last year I bought a book that did exactly that.  And bugger me, on my four days on the Thames last week, I'd completely forgotten about it, and have only just come across it again.

The book is 'River Thames: In The Footsteps Of The Famous', and it's written by Paul Goldsack and published by English Heritage and Bradt Travel Guides.  You should really have this book to hand as you sail up the Thames, and I can't think of a better soundbite to illustrate this than the following.   In a section called Wind In The Willows Country Paul Goldsack writes:

Some people say that Lullebrook Manor in Cookham's Ferry Lane was his inspiration for Toad Hall, but that's not entirely true, because Toad's mansion was a Kenneth Grahame amalgam of several stately riverside homes, each of which I shall point out as we travel up-river.

It's hard to imagine a style of guidebook writing that could rivet you more.  But, as it suggests, you'll need to be travelling upstream to make the best of the narrative.  I'm kicking myself for not remembering earlier that I had the book aboard.  Too late now. The book seems to be beautifully researched, too. 

Paul Goldsack, the last I heard, was living aboard a Dutch Barge near Medway, so he, too, is a boater.

 

Granny Buttons bangs the drum for Moldova in the Eurovision Song Contest

Granny Buttons is really looking forward to the Eurovision Song Contest.  Her vote is strictly generational.  Douze Points to the Moldova entry: "Granny beats the drum-a":

I love so much doba making boom-boom
Now get your body moving, just follow the tune
It’s a real magic- big mama play her drum-a
She’s flying into trance like an Indian shaman    
Who is the “Beatles”, who is Peter Pan
Who is the gypsy Hendrix -
She don’t care, that misses L
I smile, I cry when I see that crazy baba
Dizzy tempo dizzy let’s go my music-mama

Refrain:

Granny beats the drum-a
Granny beats it hard
Granny beats the drum-a with the mallet in the big house!

Perhaps it loses something in the translation.  I do hope it's not being sung in English. 

Breaking news: Moldova's granny came eighth.  The Kingdom gave it a measly deux points, but neighbour states Romania and Ukraine treated it to the full douze.

Waterfront Quarter development offers opportunity for Huddersfield Narrow Canal

The Huddersfield Examiner reports today (and in half a dozen other stories this week) on a huge development scheme proposed for the city.  Dubbed 'The Waterfront Quarter', it has been billed as the town's biggest-ever regeneration project:

The £200m scheme - unveiled to Kirklees councillors this week - calls for offices, flats and shops to be built on a triangle of land bordered by Chapel Hill, Manchester Road and the River Colne. Most of the site is occupied by Sellers Engineering and Kirklees Council buildings.

A large part of the development will be on the line of the newly restored Huddersfield Narrow Canal, built underneath the Sellers Engineers works in a cut-&-cover tunnel only five years ago. 

Martin Thingie's Pennine Waterways site has an excellent pictorial record of the building of this new, snaking 1/4-mile tunnel.   The tunnel is of no great beauty, but when built five years ago it was at least useful, practical and hidden underground, and allowed Sellers to continue their successful textile machinery business without interrupting the canal's restoration.  The aerial view here delineates the land involved.

But for boaters, here's where it gets interesting.  The plan envisages Sellers relocating elsewhere in the city, and for the new development to open out at least part of this new tunnel, widen the canal channel (probably not by much, if the artimp above is any guide), raise the water level - presumably by restoring an old lock further down - and create visitor moorings alongside retail and leisure space. All overlooked by a 200ft Skylon-like folly that's been called 'the Spike'

I guess there are bound to be some drawbacks.  Somewhere.  But that tunnel is so soulless, and the ground above it so ill-used (they *make* things, for heaven's sake, how 19th Century is that!) that I can't see it being anything but a benefit for boaters. I await the IWA's opinion with interest.  The Huddersfield Examiner's opinion: 

"...a scheme that is so breathtakingly daring that it cannot be taken in at one sitting. Nor should it have to be. At these stakes it deserves a long, cool look.   But what we can say right now is that this is a prime site, very close to the town centre on at least one major arterial road.

At the moment the site is, at best, under-used and such a large-scale development could give a new impetus to the modern, newly-confident Huddersfield we have seen emerging in recent years.  That is an exciting prospect, assuming that the developers and Kirklees can get the balance right. Get it wrong and it would stand as a permanent rebuke.

Official Sellers Engineers press release here.  "We see the future of Sellers Engineers in a modern industrial estate setting", says Sellers' chairman David Armitage.  

Hmm - with all the money this development will fetch 'em, I bet they do.  There's no public response from British Waterways yet, though.

On The Waterfront this weekend at Sheffield

The Sheffield Star has a story today about this weekend's 'On The Waterfront' festival at Sheffield Quays:

In its previous life as an industrial and commercial transport hub, Sheffield's canal basin was a hive of activity. But in the 10 years since its restoration as Victoria Quays, the area has been very much a quiet backwater, marooned from the city centre by six lanes of traffic heading to and from Park Square. Now organisers of this Saturday's On the Waterfront family fun day at the Quays hope the event will mark the start of a renaissance, bringing a regular bustle of visitors to the waterside oasis.

When Granny Buttons visited Victoria Quays a couple of years back, it did feel a bit like the quiet before the party, and I wondered why that was.  Many of the elements were already in place - the residential elements, the waterside bars, the easy atmosphere for children, the boater's facilities - even a neat pair of floating widebeam boat apartments.  I must have run out of film, because I only got one crap photo from my weekend there (pictured).

The Sheffield Star article suggests it was the traffic holding it back.  (Sheffield is one of those cities, after all, where the 1960s town planners out-Luftwaffered the Luftwaffe) :

Simon Ogden, Sheffield City Council's city development manager, said the need to improve public access to the Quays is one of the main reasons why the inner relief road is being built around the back of the Wicker.

"By 2007, 80 per cent of the traffic passing in front of the Quays will disappear. It will be a high quality paved area, with only vehicles requiring access allowed," he said.  "At present the shops down there are a bit isolated, there needs to be more attractions to draw people down. The Quays needs bright lights and open doors. That's why the council is opposing the conversion of the ground floor of the Terminal warehouse to offices – it was always intended to be a café/bar. When the traffic has gone, it will be an attractive location," he said.

The On the Waterfront event is part of a wider initiative by Groundwork Sheffield to enhance the city's river corridors and raise public awareness of their importance.

Links:
Official On The Waterfront city council overview and timetable here.
Waterscape's Victoria Quays page.
Vin Rigby's nice set of photos of Victoria Quays.