Granny Buttons

Trent & Mersey modern milepost

T&M Milepost no.12 (or is it 13? or 80?), nr Coach & Horses Bridge nr Willington, Christmas Day 2006. 

I love the texture of the paint on the metal in these close-ups. This is one of the replicas installed in the 1970s as restoration gathered pace, but somewhere I have a closeup of an original of 1819.  It would be interesting to compare how the modern paint has settled on these two surfaces, separated in age by nearly 160 years.

I stand corrected

What a great little boat name!  Little Haywood, Trent & Mersey Canal, 3rd Feb 2007.

Re my spiteful barb last week about Narrowboat World, I must apologise.   As Tom (writing in his nom de folie of 'Victor') thoughfully explains this week:

Andrew publishes a site by the name of Granny Bloomers or something or other, in the form of a blog with RSS feeds. Which put in its basic form allows everybody to use everybody else's material adding their own, often suspect, interpretation. ... But dear Andy, anyone can have a blog and anyone can include RSS feeds—thousands do—it's simple stuff, which hardly makes them the last word in technical achievement!

What is technical achievement my dear boy is using the very latest in CSS authoring and secure Linux, which for the readers mean a secure, virus free download, something that you most certainly cannot guarantee. That's a technical achievement, not that of being a blog and allowing our material to be pillaged by such as you—much of which is the copyright of our subscribers, something else I feel you do not understand.

Thanks for explaining so clearly, Tom.  I stand corrected. I guess I have a lot to learn.

Prettiest canalside house in England?

Trent & Mersey Canal, near Woleseley, Staffs, Sept 2005. 

Golly, this must surely be one of the prettiest canalside houses in England.  And with one of the friendliest occupants, ready with a cheery wave for boats at the bottom of his garden in the late summer afternoon sun.

 

Quaker Street wants suggestions on hiring a boat

Jez, who writes Quaker Street, a blog with a Quaker perspective, asks:

So, say you want to rent a narrow boat. Where do you look exactly?  Anyone have any suggestions?

Ah, the tough questions first.  This one's hard not because I can't find an answer, but because I don't know which answer to give.  I feel like a millipede, not knowing which foot to put forward first. 

Actually, I wrote about this very subject only last Friday, with a couple of suggestions, depending on whether you want exercise or relaxation.

Start with the hireboat trade association, APCO (the Association of Pleasure Craft Operators) who will be happy to advise.  Also try the Hiring A Boat page on Waterscape.

Being a Quaker, I doubt if Jez will take any suggestions from fellow-blogger Sarah on NB Warrior!

Camouflaged narrowboat

Near Devizes, June 2005.  A great subject, a poor opportunity for me to photograph  it, and poorly photographed.  I suppose that was because - understandably - I didn't see it until I had almost passed it.

But at least I have a photo that I can tag with the words 'narrowboat', 'camouflage', 'parasol'  and 'bizarre'. 

IWOOT 'Stealth Boat'

Tixall Wide, Dec 27th 2006.

Dead cool, I thought, that black and white toy boat. Goes like holy toledo, like a tart in a rugby scrum.  Father and son both had smiles as wide as Tixall as they played with their Christmas toy.

The toy is the Stealth Boat, now available from IWOOT ('I Want One Of Those' - slogan "Stuff you don't need, but you really, really want").  Normally it's £39.95, but it's £10 off for the next week (i.e. £29.95) if you enter the special code FEB7OFF into the offer box when you ordeer.

It may be Stealth in name, but it's far from stealth in nature, as this twin motor speed boat screams along at an astonishing 30kmh 20mph! This big sexy black beast is 73cm 29" long and all power. Unlike the petrol driven pro-RC models that take hours of tinkering with for just a few moments of enjoyment, the Stealth Speed Boat will dash round your local pond at ludicrous speeds for up to half an hour from a single charge - no doubt terrorising all and sundry, and leaving all other RCs (and quite a few ducks) floundering pathetically in its wake.

I can vouch for the ducks. Granny couldn't keep up either.   Of course, conservationists and BW patrollers will probably frown, and I doubt the boy and his dad had a boat licence, but it was great fun for them.

Simply enter the offer code FEB7OFF into the offer code box on the top left hand side of the shopping cart page (don't forget to hit the submit button) and it will automatically deduct £10** from your order.

(No, I'm not getting commission.  I just thought it was a cool way to use up my photos from Dec 27th.)

4,000 mile trek beats GU Canal race

Runners complete 4,000-mile trek across the Sahara - Sports Illustrated

Three ultra-endurance athletes have just done something most would consider insane: They ran the equivalent of two marathons a day for 111 days to become the first modern runners to cross the Sahara Desert's grueling 4,000 miles. ... In less than four months, they have run across the world's largest desert, through six countries -- Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya and finally Egypt.

Marvellous.  This puts the 145-mile Grand Union Canal race to shame.  The GUCR (which I wrote about several times last year, the most recently here) is a race from Birmingham to London.  One winner of the Marathon des Sables, the annual Sahara ultra-marathon, last year told me she ran the GUCR "to cool down" (!)

Now, there happen to be about 4,000 miles of navigable waterways in the UK.  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  Is anyone willing to try? 

APCO website

APCO (the Association of Pleasure Craft Operators) relaunched their website last month.  It's a fairly good backgrounder to UK canal and waterways holidays.  If you've not taken a hireboat holiday before I'd encourage you to spend an hour a few minutes reading it.  Start with the Boating Holidays page. 

It also includes a detailed official BW map of the waterways.  (Unfortunately it doesn't have a RSS/feed and they've missed out the chance to raise their profile by blogging their news).

There's a list of all the member companies of APCO, but crucially it doesn't include links to their websites - only their names/addresses/email addresses.  Actually there is a list of websites, but you won't find it easily - for some reason it's at the extreme bottom right of the members page, partitioned into regions. 

As a trade association APCO has to be fair to all its members, so don't expect it to answer some of the common questions I get, including the main one:

"I've never been on a canal holiday before. Can you recommend a route/hire company?"   

My current two suggestions for a week's holiday for beginners both feature narrow locks, because I think narrow locks need a little less expertise:

1:  For exercise-lovers - lots of locks and sheer variety - try the Trent & Mersey Canal from Preston Brook to Stone and back.  88 miles, 96 locks.  If you don't reach Stone, turn around after 3 days to allow time to get back.

2:  For the pleasure of just relaxing in the countryside with the minimum of physical effort and plenty of time to sightsee, try the North Oxford/ Ashby/ Coventry Canals.  95 miles over one week at barely 6 hours a day, with only one small stop-lock (done twice).  And you can easily cut short your trip if you want to spend time sightseeing - such as on Bosworth Field.

I'm sure other people can recommend their own introduction for beginners.

Pinning together an 8-part story on the Erie Canal

Afloat on the Erie Canal - Buffalo News

This is the final chapter of an eight-chapter serial story about the Erie Canal that started in NeXt on Jan 3.  Last week: The Shamrock was found canal-worthy, and Uncle Patrick prepared his crew for her Independence Day voyage.

Now this is another story that needs a bit of sleuthing to pin together.  The Erie Canal in its heyday was probably as active and as profitable and as traditional (it even had its own songs)as any British waterway.  And a fictional story about the period must be worth reading.

But without the previous episodes, the final one doesn't make much sense.  I can't find the first seven on the Buffalo News website.  Can you?

Save our waterway protests!

Does this, this and this mean that these can now be called off?

Caen Hill lock flight cafe available

Canal cafe up for lease - Gazette & Herald

British Waterways is looking for an enthusiastic caterer to take over its café at the top of the Caen Hill flight of locks in Devizes.

Estate agent's details on the property are here (4-page detailed pdf).  Aerial view here.

...  A statement from Warminster-based estate agents Cooper and Tanner said: "British Waterways are keen to hear from enthusiastic and budding café owners to take over the business.  Available as a going concern, to include all the modern cafeteria equipment, furniture and effects, it offers a real opportunity for that entrepreneur full of self belief, drive and a touch of flair."

This one comes with a £12,500pa rental overhead.  In its present format I doubt it'll be a printing press for money, since Sunday-afternoon walkers aren't high spenders and it might be a very seasonal business.  But opportunities to take over such high-profile sites don't come too often.   

I wonder if it'll be possible to get a liquor licence.  The estate agent's details don't say.  But a full restaurant could be quite attractive in such a location. 

The pretty King's Lock Tea Rooms near Leicester  closes for the winter, but they do a thriving weekend evening bistro trade with a BYOB approach to wine.

Towpath fires

Towpath fire near Boundary Lift Bridge, 11th March 2006, South Oxford Canal.

In the last few years the ugly scar of towpath fires has become increasingly more common.  I presume they are caused by boaters throwing out cinders and ash from their fires, but who knows. 

But is it a threat; is it more common? Search for "towpath fire" and there are only 7 results on Google today, none of them relevant. (One of the hits is for one of my Flickr photosets nicked for another website, which is flattery I guess).  I suppose this will be more of a problem in the heat of a dry, hot summer.

Baking fresh sourdough bread on a narrowboat

On The Fresh Loaf, an online community for people who love craft baking, a narrowboat owner called Andrew (no relation) asks a question about baking bread on a canal boat:

Has anyone here heard of or used a cooking device called a Remoska? They are supposed to be miserly with electricity and operate like a small oven - I wondered if I could do bread in one like the NYT method, but self contained?

The reason I want to know is, I shall be spending about 3 months a year on a narrow boat. There is electricity, but the cooker runs on calor gas and I don't want to use the oven more than I need to - but I can't do without my sourdough bread!  So any advice on energy efficient baking will be much appreciated!

Lakeland sell the Remoska in the UK.  At 500 watts and 240v it would quite quickly drain a battery bank, although it would be practical if you baked your bread while you were on shoreline or running the engine and had an inverter.  You could use a bread machine instead, although I guess artisan bread lovers like Andrew would raise their hands in horror at the thought. 

London author wants to live on a canal boat

Last October I mentioned how author and travel journalist Carole Cadwalladr wrote an article in the Observer last October about a short four-day trip she and friends had on the River Lea.  And they all enjoyed it, they really did, even though as Hackney residents it was almost in their own backyard.

She must have enjoyed it more than she realised at the time, because I see today that she's advertising on Apollo Duck to buy her own boat to moor in London:

Cash buyer for London boat
I'm looking for a mooring or a boat+mooring in east/central/north London. It must be possible for me to stay on it at least two nights a week but apart from that I'll consider whatever you've got.

Residential moorings in London are vanishingly rare, but it's quite possible to get one where you are allowed to stay on it two to five days a week but must leave the marina at least a couple of days a week.  Or must not stay aboard more than a couple of nights a week, the terms can vary.  The point is, you aren't supposed to live there.  Some marinas call these 'pied a terre'. 

A couple of years ago I met some boats out of Willowbridge marina who were moored under those circumstances, and they said their little flotilla would cruise out of London together for convivial weekends on the Grand Union or the Lee or the Thames.

Carole might be so lucky.  Perhaps she'll immerse herself in waterways life and, thus cultured, will add to the canon of waterways fiction.