Granny Buttons

Maffi Mushkila

Have you seen Maffi's Boat Blog?   'Maffi Mushkila' (Arabic for 'No Problem', now where have we heard that before?) is the nom-de-clef of someone who's blogging the build of his new narrowboat at Ledgard Bridge.

The boat's coming along nicely, and there's a section for it on the official Ledgard Bridge site. Apparently Ledgard even now has a webcam in the workshop focused on the boat, but I don't know if that's Maffi's idea or theirs.  A webcam trained on a narrowboat build is a 'first' to me. 

Unfortunately it's not working at the moment (a webcam that's not working is NOT new!) - it's only showing Ali Baba and his camel. He writes here that he's having trouble deciding on a name. Help him out, will you?  I'm sure we can come up with some word alluding to the Bedu's constant wandering.

The arabic references aren't accidental. 'Maffi' is an ex-RAF chap who seems to have put down spiritual roots in Arabia but has come home to retire English water.  Clearly a wadi just can't compare to the cut.

How did I find out about Maffi?  Simple. He's already got me on his blogroll, and someone's just clicked through from him to me, and I spotted it in my visitor logs by chance.  I'm honoured!

Still offline in Dell Hell - very sorry

I regret I'm still offline due to a failure of the Dell 'automatic' system restore feature on my computer last week, and Dell's continuing failure to deliver system CD disks, not only by Friday as they originally promised, but by today as well.  I'm having to borrow a few minutes after work to post this.

This is a great frustration for me. I haven't got time to describe all the fascinating things I've seen about the waterways - neither firsthand at Braunston (last weekend and this weekend), nor via the web.  Nor can I comment on them.  For example, Saturday's Daily Telegraph had an article by Paul Kingsnorth about the Oxford boatyard controversy, which I wanted to comment on (can't find the link right now, sorry).   And the Glasgow Sunday Herald ran a feature about a guy who 'hitchhiked his way around Scotlands waterways', as did The Independent.

I also haven't got time to comment on the report by the Nottingham Evening Post about the grandiose restoration plans of Grantham Canal Society, and the Yorkshire Post's news about the Bradford Canal.

I wish I had time to find out more about the new blog 'Finding the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal', where a chap has set out to describe his exploration of the canal (thanks to John Hartill for spotting that one). Only two entries so far, but if you visit and click up his vistor counter, you might persuade him to explore further.

I want to find out more about BW's appointment of ARUP-EDAW (consultants to the 2012 Olympic bid) to investigate restoration of the Northern Lancaster canal.

DId you see the story the US magazine Motorboating has just published on the Erie Canal?  Betsy Haggerty explored all 524 miles of the NY State canal system for a book she's writing, and summarised her venture here.

Stephen Rees-Joes is planning a canal hotelboat holiday with a difference, says the Western Mail: a horse-drawn boat on the Montgomery Canal.  11 miles of water and nine locks. Well, it's not truly a hotelboat holiday.  It's a spin-off of his existing Bywater Holiday Cruises operation, where you cruise on the boat in the daytime, with overnight stops at nearby guest houses and hotels. 

More news: BW have just announced their new office in Brentford.  Reception will be open 9am-1pm, and 1.30pm-4pm.  I presume that means Mon-Fri, and not weekends nor holidays.  They call this a 'new, more accessible waterside office'.  Not to me it isn't.  Weekends and lunchtimes and tea-time (5pm) always seem to be the only time I ever get a chance to call in to buy the things they sell, and their offices always seem to be closed to me.   

They've also announced  'a new operational yard at at Adelaide Dock', which they call a 'win win situation'.  I presume that means they are planning to use it in a real operational sense. If I had time I'd tell more about the rumours I'd heard.  The two 'wins' presumably were both for BW, and weren't for any of the companies negotiating to take over Adelaide as a working boatyard.

But there's another boatyard, down at Brentford, that's fighting for survival.  Nigel Moore says that his boatyard at Ridgways Wharf ('Brentford's oldest remaining boatyard' - I think he really means 'ONLY remaining boatyard') is threatened by development, and is appealing for support.  You can find out more and sign his petition here, and contact him on [email protected].   

Wish I could tell you of my outing to the Boat, Caravan & Leisure Show at the NEC on Saturday, all the goodies I saw (and bought) there, and my trip from Braunston to Hillmorton yesterday.   But I've run out of time and I have to get back to work.  Looks like I won't be fully back to updating Granny Buttons for a couple of days at least.

I'm halfway through Narrow Dog to Carcassonne, and it's a treat! 

Lots of other things I'd love to write more about, each one being a single (and researched) post with pictures.  Oh dear, it's frustrating being offline...

Braunston to Hillmorton

Today Granny cruised from Braunston to Hillmorton Top Lock.  Left Braunston Turn visitor moorings about noon, arrived Hillmorton Top Lock around 3pm. 

The only event was finding one of Clifton Cruisers' hire narrowboats blocking the canal, where a pin had torn free.  I called Clifton cruisers, and a friendly bloke came out with a replacement pin - just as the men who'd hired came out of the pub after a good lunch. 

I was planning to cycle back with my new folding bike, but I was delighted and thankful that a friendly couple (whose names and boat name I've now shamefully forgotten, good grief, what's wrong with me?)  gave me a lift back to my car at Braunston.   I'm really grateful, thanks, Sir & Ma'am!

Granny's offline temporarily

I've got problems getting online this week, and won't be posting for another day or two.  I've lost my home broadband link and am having to completely reinstall my computer.  Sigh. 

Narrowboat going cheap - falls off the back of a lorry

Pixelpixie alerted me today to the case of the narrowboat that fell off the back of the lorry on the M1 in Leicestershire last week, as seen here on BBC Leicestershire.  The Towpath Telegraph being what it is, I suspect there are now few canal boaters who haven't heard the story.  Poor boat.  Poor owner.  Poor lorry operator.  Even poorer insurance company!

According to Jim Shead's 'boat listing', this boat is:

KARIAN - Length: 31 feet 2 inches (9.50 metres) Beam: 6 feet 9 inches (2.06 metres).Metal hull power of 20BHP. Registered with BW number 507670 as a Powered.

(I've been meaning to mention Jim Shead's boat listing.  Apparently every boat registered with British Waterways is listed here, and Jim's clearly an information packrat, recording every breath he ever took and every meal he swallowed, so it's probably true.  I've heard that it's downloadable from the BW web site - although darned if I can find it. Jim won't say where he gets the information (although his cruising logs sometimes almost seem to record every boat he cruises past - try this one from last August).  My boat is certainly here, and your boat is presumably here too.)

Having your boat transported by road is a nerve-racking experience, especially when you've grown attached to it.  Granny Buttons was lifted out of the water in August 2003 (the very week that I started grannybuttons.com), to get around a canal breach.  It was at British Waterways' expense, so I was grateful. 

However, as I tailed Granny Buttons ten miles across the Lancashire countryside, I was dismayed to watch it bounce around on a flatbed trailer at great speed.  Later I discovered cracked wall tiles in the kitchen and two doors and a couple of cupboards that never shut properly again. 

That day, so unnerved was I that disaster might happen, I chanced a photograph as my beloved boat overtook a tractorload of hayricks - and I seem to recall that Granny Buttons was doing around ten times the official BW speed limit of 4mph.  I had kittens when I saw it pass that sign saying '12ft height limit, 2 miles'!

So I can feel great empathy with the owner of NB Karian.   My only surprise is that there's so little evident damage in the photographs.  Narrowboat hulls are enormously strong (and the smaller the stronger), although I'd hate to put a boat back in the water uninspected after such a spectacular event.  I bet Karian's internal doors and cupboards don't fit properly now!

The Observer has a widith canal trip story

'Award-winning travel writer Tim Moore' today has a widith story of a canal holiday in the travel section of the Observer:  "A Narrow Escape In North Wales". 

It's yet another Black Prince trip - presumably one of the free weekend ones that travel writers get - because he only goes from Chirk Marina to Lllangollen and back.  Barely half the distance that Harrison Ford travelled, in fact.  In the late summer of 2003 I walked from Chirk to Llangollen, and still found time to shop for souvenirs before getting the bus back by teatime.

Tim Moore has had other holidays with his family on the back of the travel supplements.  Only last month they were all in Madeira on behalf of the Times.  Lucky kids.

Still, it's great press coverage.  Well done to Drifters PR agent Lindy Thingie.

Braunston to ... Braunston

Today I moved Granny slightly. I was planning to go down to Cropredy this weekend, but at short notice I needed to go to London for a trade exhibition. Ever dutiful about not overstaying on visitor moorings, I travelled overnight to Granny simply so that on Saturday morning I could move it at least a little way. I also wanted to refuel my heating tank with diesel. Braunston Marina is currently charging 57p/litre, which is - ouch - almost £2.59 a gallon in real measures (and £2/11/10 in real money). Ivor Batchelor's price on Mountbatten is 'only' 49p, so no contest really.

When I'm refuelling Granny Buttons, I always compare the price with what George Boyle is charging from his fuel boat Alton. OK, he's up on the Peak Forest & Macclesfield canal, but he's consistently low-priced and thus a good guide as to what the local source could be charging. I don't think I've every filled my tanks at a lower cost than George can offer.

[One fuel boat operator I spoke to is scornful of Alton's price. This guy once claimed that George has nominally retired, and thus doesn't have to include his own wage costs and thus is effectively undercutting them. I don't know how he can undercut them when he's a week's cruising away. I only know that Alton always seems to be reasonably priced. How do I know? Because he blogs all his current prices, on http://furnessvale.blogspot.com/. He's the only working canal boater with a blog (as far as I know).]

After refuelling I moved Granny around the corner to the very limit of the 14 day moorings. Strictly I should have moved her according to the continuous cruising guidelines, which means dozens of lock-miles away, but I don't think it'll annoy the local BW moorings warden (and it won't be the first time I've done it, as I've 'fessed previously. But BW are usually easygoing about this - the object isn't to fine you, but to be fair to other boaters. And with Braunston locks closed, the need for moorings here in winter is smaller than it might be.

I'm more worried about the fact that I haven't yet received my boat licence certificates, despite paying automatically by direct debit. It's still showing '12/05 in the window.

APCO brochure

The Association of Pleasure Craft Operators (APCO) has a good 52 page brochure on boat holidays, downloadable as a PDF here.  If you've never taken a canal holiday and don't know where to start, this will help.  It's got a list of almost all APCO members, and loads of colourful ads showing the waterways at their best, together with an A3 map of the British inland waterways system.

I don't need boat hire, but I found it especially fascinating for its outline history of canal pleasurecraft hire.

Doug Savage's corn-fed Chickens

Doug Savage has been scribbling chicken jokes on Post-It notes for a year, and publishing them on his blog Savage Chickens.  I only recently discovered them but I'm subscribing to them daily.  They are corny as hell (corn-fed, you might say) but, then, so is Granny Buttons. 

And sometimes they hit home hard!  Delightful!  I've subscribed in my feedreader.

You'll be wondering, at this point, what my related waterway link is. Well, I was interested to learn that Chris Leah, the founder of The Wooden Canal Boats Society, started life afloat on a pair of chicken hutches.  The story here shows how he moored his floating chicken hutches alongside Lilith, how that particular decrepit old boat ("the owner may have suspended the normal laws of physics to enable it to float") inspired his imagination, and how he thereby saved it.  I saw Lilith at Manchester during my 2004 Rochdale and Huddersfield canal trip. Even then, I couldn't help but think there was something magical about the way the boat held together to keep the water out.  But the picture I took at the time has magically disappeared.  I don't know what happened to the floating chicken hutches, but never mind. Lilith is still afloat.

Timeshare narrowboats

Michelle wrote from America this week to ask my advice about taking a timeshare narrowboat:

My husband and I (Americans) are trying to schedule a narrowboat holiday through our timeshare next year (April 2007) ... We have a week to cruise.  I have read some articles by people who really worked the lock system and traveled quite far each day, but we are looking at something a little more relaxing.  Is there a route that would take us to see some interesting sights, at a leisurely pace, with a minimum of locks?  We are not in poor shape, but really do not want to put that much “effort” into a sequence of locks (unless of course the payoff is magnificent)… Basically, what is a good “beginner” route that will familiarize us with narrowboating and show us a good range of sights (touristy stuff fine) but be manageable for us?

She's presumably looking at an RCI Timeshare exchange.  The best-known of these is Canaltime, the biggest operator on the canal system. There are a few other timeshare exchanges, though dark rumours continue to float around some of them.

Canaltime's Market Harborough base (Union Wharf) ought to be fun. Two hours of mastering-the-tiller cruising experience, two hours up the Foxton staircase of ten locks (what an exciting introduction to the waterways!), then several hours of flat cruising (including two long tunnels. 

The next day, the descent down another staircase, another exciting tunnel, and a few more locks to Braunston. Then there's only three more locks near Rugby, and you can cruise to the centre of Coventry, or along the Ashby Canal.  You don't need to reach a destination; you simply travel hopefully. When you reach the end of your third day, you just turn around to allow yourself to return in time.

Of course, there are so many other bases and opportunities. You could approach the same territory from a different direction, starting from the Canaltime base at Alvecote.  That way you'll have fewer locks (eleven to start with, and the same back down) but you'll do those on the first and last afternoons, and probably not need to do any others.   

The magic words in Michelle's emails are "...unless the payoff is magnificent".  Well, if it's payoffs you are after, try starting from the Blackwater Marina at Ellesmere, on the Llangollen Canal.  You'll only do two locks (the same two that Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart did in 2004).  And the most magnificent payoff on the waterways is probably crossing the Ponty (don't ask me to spell it) aqueduct, with a night in Llangollen being a good end to a stunning day. 

My very first introduction to the waterways, in 1989, was puttering across this 1,000-long aqueduct, above the sports field pictured here, and watching a cricket match being played out 100 feet beneath me!  Magical.

But be warned - the Llangollen Canal can be quite crowded during UK school holidays.  Check before you book as to when these are, and try to avoid them.

So many other possibilities, but that's a quick start for Michelle.

Go West, Narrow Dog!

When I mentioned Terry Darlington, author of Narrow Dog to Carcassonne, in a post last month, he quickly found it and added a nice comment here.  He writes that he's been researching another madcap (my own description!) adventure:

...down the Intracoastal Waterway from Virginia to the Gulf of Mexico. We are off in June and if we are spared, 'Narrow Dog to Indian River' will appear in 2008. I can find no record of a narrowboat in the US before, but would like to hear of any.

Well, Terry, you'll certainly be at the head of a very short queue to publish a book about a narrowboat in America.  But you aren't the first person to take a narrowboat over to the New World (and I'm not counting the broadbeam boats that Fox's of March built for the Erie Canal), nor even to write about it. 

David & Gill Freeman freighted their narrow boat Xanth over to Canada in 2000, and have a fascinating website here: A Moving Story - describing the process.  It's a great read, but what impressed me even more than the words was the picture of Xanth in the hold of the freighter.  It's a 50-ft boat and it's broadside across the hold.

I rang David & Gill to check the current facts and learned they still run a B&B canalside (called Toybox B&B) on the Rideau Canal.

And NB Xanth is - guess what - a guest bedroom.  It sits at the bottom of their canalside home, and, five years, on they still love the Rideau Canal.  Yes, you can stay overnight on a real English canal boat on the Rideau Canal.  Can you take a cruise on it in the morning too, I wonder.

I asked David about the name Xanth, and was amused to hear it was named after the Piers Anthony novels which his wife loves.  Regular readers with elephantine memories will remember that I first came across Piers Anthony when I discovered one of his books (Night Mare) left at a Huddersfield Canal lock the year before last.  I loved Night Mare (a delightful and daffy novel) but for me it was a one-off.  Until David mentioned Gill's love of Piers Anthony I never thought of reading more, and now I'm tempted.

NB Xanth, went west in a ship's hold.  More extraordinarily, Canadian naval architect Bryan Crutcher actually built and sailed (built and sailed!) his narrowboat I Frances eastwards, from Canada to England in 2001. 

Mind you, Bryan hasn't written about his adventure.  His extraordinary tale, which I wrote about here, was told here (pdf) by Brian Goggin of the Irish IWA, with extra detail (and picture) from Martin Thingie Clark here on the Pennine Waterways website. 

Last I heard, I Frances was still on the Pennine waterways while Bryan sorted out personal affairs back home in Canada, although he plans to resume a European cruise sometime.

Bryan Crutcher has some useful tips which I must pass on to Terry Darlington before he signs the shipping manifest for his own boat.  Terry can read them here.

Terry Darlington has what Americans call The Big Mo (momentum) behind him.  Everyone's expecting the next book. He's done his research too, and points out that preparation is everything.  Incidentally, in his comment, Terry Darlington draws two morals from his experiences.  The one that worries me the most is:  "Never believe a word anyone tells you."  Gulp!  I hope you'll believe me.

Terry won't be the first Englishman to describe his experiences on the canals in America either.  Not by a long way. Guess when the first one was?  Would you believe 1851?  That predates Mr Dashwood's trip From The Thames To The Solent, on the Wey & Arun Canal, by seventeen years. 

And if you include stories of English people on American canals (as opposed to stories by Englishmen), there's a sad tale here of an Englishwoman whose head was crushed by a low bridge on the Erie Canal in the 1830s.  They had low bridges on the Erie Canal too.  Ouch.

brrreeeport granny buttons

I'd be interested to know how many of my regular readers know why I've just created a post with the 'word' brrreeeport in it. 

Token waterways link (every post on Granny Buttons has a link with something to do with the waterways): The Huddersfield Examiner's report on what's happening with Standedge Visitor Centre.

Veil of honesty

There's a 25ft narrowboat for sale on Apollo Duck today that must break all records for honesty in sales terminology:

[The engine and gearbox are] ...in visually poor general condition and both have been flooded by bilge water. Exterior: decorative condition is very poor - faded paintwork, extensive rust corrosion. Hull above the waterline in satisfactory condition with no visible damage. Condition of the hull below the waterline is not known.

.... Internal fit out is to a poor general standard with pine tongue and groove lining above a carpet finish. Cabin floor is soft rotted and partly missing. Jotul solid fuel stove in poor condition. ... Refrigerator and water heater may be unserviceable.

What amuses me is the boat's name: Veil of Ignorance.  No, really, what are they trying to hide?

Jacob's Purse counts good chippies & pubs

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner yesterday reported that a couple who are retired publicans are cruising the waterways and compiling a list of good fish & chip shops and good pubs.   David and Beth Woodhead, formerly hosts at two pubs in Honley (a village about five miles from the Huddersfield Canal at Slaithwaite) are now retired and living aboard Jacob's Purse, a narrowboat currently on the Macclesfield Canal.

Jacob's Purse is presumably named after the Woodhead's last landlordship, the Jacob's Well pub.  I wonder why they called his boat by this curious name?  Perhaps they received a handsome 'purse' from the  brewery to retire after they got into a little spot of bother back in 2000 when they refused entry to a bloke dressed as a woman, who wanted to use the loo, I mean transvestite, I mean transexual?  I wonder if the guides will contain any hints as to the dress code expected by the chippies and pubs?   Especially in the heat of the summer, when men take off their shirts and women wear short skirts.