Granny Buttons

Bull's Bridge Junction at night

 
Midnight-ish, Bull's Bridge Junction, Southall.

This was taken exactly 48 hours ago, and if I don't go to bed now, I'll have my third night in succession of four hours of sleep, so I'll have to tell you about it another time.  Yawn.

But I'm kicking myself for not staying out even later on Saturday night and wandering up the towpath to photograph the Nestles factory and the new concrete-and-glass canyon of flats being built just beyond.

They would both have made wonderful nocturnal subjects, far more exciting and picturesque than this near-bucolic scene of peace.

Incidentally, the bridge here must be one of the most photographed on the inland waterways, and I'm only the latest of a long, long line of boaters to stand here and admire the scene.

For example, compare the picture above with the identical scene by Bruce of NB Insanity Sanity.  The difference is light.  I always say, we don't photograph objects, we photograph light.

[Apologies for accusing Bruce's boat of not being in its right mind.  I hope Bruce doesn't mind either]

Any old boat

After the terrible double-stabbing the other day on the narrowboat at Stoke Hammond, I thought about how Granny went that way a month ago, a few days before the tragedy.

And I looked back at my photos to see if I'd photographed the particular boat mentioned in the newspaper reports. 

No, I hadn't.

But a friend who came with me on that day sent me some of his photos of that day, and by chance I noticed he had unwittingly photographed it. 

The photo above was with him holding the camera himself in his right hand, and the one below was after he turned around; something made him photograph it, he doesn't know what.  He didn't know the notoriety of the boat until I mentioned it a couple of days ago.

He wasn't familiar with canal boats, and perhaps he just thought it was picturesque.  No particular reason.

The photos were taken between Willowbridge Marina and Stoke Hammond Lock. 

This was apparently a long stroll from where the boat was moored when the tragedy happened, so it had moved in that time, but not far. 

It doesn't seem to be on an official mooring in this picture,  and one can deduce from the hull that it's not seen much cruising since the last blacking, and probably the blacking was some time back - and by zooming in I suppose Sherlock Holmes could deduce much else.

So many boats on the Grand Union are like this - hippy hutches, TV aerials, signs of long-term liveaboard, not much sign of cruising, not moored at a long-term mooring (whether or not they have one).

After my photography became digital I started to photograph many boats 'just in case' there was something I could learn about living aboard. 

When looking at the pictures later, I think 'why did I take that picture?  It's any old boat.'   And I delete most of the photos.

If I had a photo of everything I've ever seen on the canals - a full mental video of my life - I'd have a fantastically useful picture library.  But storage and indexing are everything.

Cider and Perry Month

CAMRA has officially designated October 2008 as National Cider and Perry Month.   

It's only indirectly related to canals, except that I write about the waterways and I love cider.

The CAMRA website has a list of cider and perry events here and I'd like one of them to be at a canalside pub, but unfortunately there isn't one.

The only canalside cider pub I know of is the Blue Bell Cider House at Hockley Heath, which I mentioned last Friday.  Are there any others, or at least others that can be commended for the treatment and selection of ciders and perries. 

(I don't include that execrable modern development, 'pear cider', which tastes like alcoholic Corona!  Remember Corona?  The one with the goosepimpled neck.)

Recovering photos from corrupted memory cards

I've just spent most of an evening trying to find a program that will recover photos on a corrupted SD memory card.

I've trawled through a dozen or so promising-looking programs, with names like File Recovery Pro or CardRecovery Plus, or whatever.

Many/most discovered the 'lost' photos, but frustratingly, they were all demo versions that tantalisingly showed you thumbnails of the pictures and then wanted you to pay money to retrieve them. 

Fair enough, perhaps, except that it would be a distress purchase and the money involved wasn't worth the pictures.   One of them wanted $70 - what's that, £40?  I think file recovery should be built into the operating system.

To the point:  I've just discovered Digital Photo Recovery from Art Plus software, and it worked on my SD card.  It's a bit slow, but you can leave it running while you do something else.  And hey, it's free!

They do nag you for a suggested $10 donation before you leave their site, but at least they don't hold a gun to your head.  And $10 is the right amount to ask for something you shouldn't have to pay for in the first place. 

Update:  I just discovered PhotoRec, and that's free.  It's not even 'guiltyconscienceware' and there's a pretty picture to boot.

No doubt you'll now tell me of a third free photo recovery program, and they'll be like buses, coming along all at once.   But don't pay £30 to recover a few snaps, that's just extortion.

Whitchurch Arm holds stakes

Proposal for canal revealed - Shropshire Star

An ambitious £1 million project to transform and restore Whitchurch’s canal with a waterpark could soon be under way.

The Whitchurch Waterway Trust has revealed plans to create a recreation area on the town’s stretch of the Llangollen canal, a move which could bolster the local economy.

... It is estimated to cost more than £1 million and would involve building new locks for the canal, to link the new lakes with the current waterway.

Trust chairman Andrew Richardson today said: “At the moment we are looking to collect all the stakeholders to make sure we get all their views and make sure they are catered for.”

Oh, good-oh, an excuse to print my favourite photo of the Whitchurch Arm.  No other reason.  I nearly didn't do it at all, because someone in the article used the word 'stakeholders', which I hate.

Just Heaven

Just Heaven means 'by Heaven, about Heaven'

It's the cruising log of NB Just Heaven by Steve Heaven, and it's one of those blogs that's a very nice personal (but public) diary.   I wish I could do one like that.

I like his post 'Just outside Worcester':

We had a pumpout at Brookline at Dunhampstead. Why the guy was so miserable when I was giving him £15 for 10 minutes work I don't know.

I like it because it's a good example of why blogs are such powerful PR tools.  Immediately, he's no. 3 in Google for 'Brookline Dunhampstead'.

JW Ultra-Marathon, Stratford to Bournville

Tomorrow, Saturday Sept 27th 2008, is the second JW Ultra marathon, where mad people train for their next heart attack by running from Stratford-on-Avon to Bournville, mostly along the canal towpath.

The JW Ultra is a new canal race, first raced last year.  I wrote about the first race here, and summed it up pretty well - there's not an awful lot to add.

Except to add that (rather appropriately, considering what happened to JW) the race's pet charity is the British Heart Foundation, and there are two checkpoints, both of them (gratifyingly) well-known canal pubs.

The first waypoint is The Navigation Inn at Wootton Wawen, while the second is (joy of joys!) the Blue Bell Cider House at Hockley Heath. 

What better place to stop and photograph the runners than the Blue Bell?  Here are my Cider House rules for photographing the race:

Use this viewpoint, but retreat back to the bridge and - keeping the sign on the right of the picture - photograph the runners just to the left of the sign, with a medium telephoto lens.

[Thanks to Scrumpyboy for the pic]

Invicta shows the way through Standedge Tunnel

Brian of NB Invicta has written a fascinating account of his trip through Standedge Tunnel last week.  See The Invicta Standedge Tunnel Report

It's 3,000 words, and in a stilted, formal style at odds with his normal cruising log - it reads more like an engineering report or expert witness testimony. 

Which I suppose it is. 

But boy, how interesting.

It's over four years since Granny went through Standedge, towed in convoy by the electric canal tug while I travelled in the tug's own cabin. (See Granny Buttons goes through Standedge Tunnel, 2004)

At that time I wondered why Granny needed to be towed, and the tunnel clearly didn't need the insistence on hard hats that we were told to use.  But I did as I was told (thankfully I wasn't asked to wear a lifejacket, or I'd have probably walked over the tunnel top).

Brian's boat has a traditional narrowboat engine - in his case, a 2cyl Kelvin.  He was asked to remove the traditional chimney, and the engine spurted its exhaust directly up to the tunnel roof - which replied in kind, with plenty of detritus on the cabin roof.

It was precisely because of his configuration - engine room, vintage engine, vertical exhaust - that he was chosen to test the tunnel.

The BW-assigned steerer was told to keep to the pedestrian 1mph speed of the official Standedge tunnel tug, and soon found steering almost impossible at that speed, coupled with his inexperience at handling a vintage-engined boat, so they agreed to speed up a bit.   

At which point the BW man handed over to Brian, as it was clear that:

... this combination of skills and familiarity of the tunnel and boat [respectively] by the BW pilot and the author became immediately apparent; and the passage continued without any cause for concern by either party.

(i.e. it was clear that the boat owner knew best!)

The electric tug behind asked them to slow down, so that it could keep up, but if they slowed down, they lost steering.

And they soon had a sterling demonstration of the tunnel cutter:

The lowest point of the tunnel gave no problems and the exhaust pipe that spit the exhaust flow to the sides could have been left on. As it was the vertical exhaust flow was bringing considerable amounts of debris down form the tunnel roof and covering the roof of the boat. At some points it became uncomfortable with dust flying in both the author’s and Fred’s eyes.

I'm pleased to say that I've found no more sterling description of a 'tunnel cutter' than mine own, four years ago - see Define: Tunnel Cutter.

(Billy Bubbles' description of a tunnel cutter runs it close, and is funnier.  But I win on points, because I have a photo.)   

Near the Marsden end of the tunnel Invicta gets trapped against an underwater obstruction.  It's only got a 2' 6" draught, and it's clear that the problem is a combination of an underwater 'ridge' in the channel, the lower water level at the front (due to propellor 'suction') and the low water level overall.

But they get by, thanks to legging and poling.

The other chief conclusion is that Brian feels his standard 'flat beam' headlamp (which is kindly designed not to dazzle oncoming boats in wide tunnels) would be inferior to a conventional main-beam headlamp, since Standedge is a one-way tunnel and thus you can focus (literally) on the way ahead.

In summary, Brian recommends 'self-steer passages', because, inter alia:   

It will greatly reduce the pressure of water supply on the on the Diggle and Marsden flights when up to four boats are ascending the flights all at one time.

If a passage of the tunnel can be made on any or a number of designated days in a week and the lock flights left open during the day boaters can arrive at relatively random times.

They can enjoy the villages of Marsden and Diggle more and bring more income to those communities (especially Diggle, where they arrive at 12.00 noon and have to descend the locks at 13.00.)

It would also greatly reduce the financial expenditure of BW compared with the present method of tunnel passages.

Amen to that last one.

But amen to the previous one too.  In fact, I'd applaud it if they could build canal basins on that particular summit and encourage many more boaters to tarry longer and explore the area.

There's one small error.  Very small.  He says Invicta was "the first private boat owner to steer a boat through the tunnel since 1944 when the canal was abandoned", but Rolt and Aickman and their friends took a boat through in 1948.

One museum, two and a half locations, and stakeholders

 
A couple of weeks ago NB Bendegedig wrote about visiting the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port.  They bought a mooring ticket for the boat, which gave them access to the museum while moored up. 

And they enjoyed it, except for the dog-unfriendliness which made them keep their dog Ben aboard while they looked around the indoor exhibits.

'One museum, three locations', is the NWM's strapline.  The locations are far-flung  - the other two are Stoke Bruerne and Gloucester Docks.

Yesterday came news that the whole operation is being 'reorganised', according to a Waterways Trust press announcement:

The Trust’s strategy [is] to centre core museum staff at Ellesmere Port, with Gloucester Docks and Stoke Bruerne being managed as satellite operations, and to bring costs in line with resources.

You'd think that this meant Ellesmere Port is being enlarged, but no:

Visitor numbers and subsequent income have been declining at the site for a number of years ...

... Stuart Gillis, Museum Director, said: “It is with considerable regret that we envisage a number of redundancies of Museum staff at Ellesmere Port.

... The changes will however provide a firm business footing for the museum, enabling us to move forward and to build a strong future for the Museum working closely with our staff, partners and stakeholders.”

I hate the way that these days any bad news is tempered by an announcement that 'stakeholders' are involved.  Who or what are 'stakeholders'?

When it comes to something of charitable status, surely anyone is a 'stakeholder', which makes the term almost meaningless. 

But in the original legal definition, a stakeholder is someone neutral, someone disinterested, someone who holds something on behalf of others but has no opinion themselves about the outcome.  It's perhaps pure coincidence that the meaning turned on its head during the Blair years.  Nowadays, Professor Van Helsing would be a stakeholder if he saw Dracula in his coffin. 

The trouble with Ellesmere Port, from a boater's point of view, is its out-of-the-way location, like an appendix of the Shropshire Union Canal.  And its lack of boating facilities.

As Bendegedig mentions, there isn't even a sanitary station or pumpout, which meant they had to quickly flee back to Chester to do their ablutions.   

I think they should turn the basin over to boat moorings to encourage visitors and make it less empty.  (I'd say 'marina', but you know how I hate that word.)   And even a boatyard or boatbuilding business would make the site less of a 'heritage ghost' and truer to its nature.

Bendegedig's blog post explains they saw no boats, other than their own, on the move between Chester and the Museum.  As the photo on their blog shows, the basin's still as empty as it was five years ago when Granny was last there (pictured here).  Perhaps emptier.

Slow news day in Stafford, expert quoted

I like the way a narrowboat theft was reported in the Stafford Express & Star yesterday.

The headline said 'Canal boat is snatched', but lurking above it was the confident assertion 'Expert predicts vessel will soon be recovered'.

The expert is Terry Darlington, and suddenly I'm envious.  I want to be quoted as an expert at narrowboat theft too!

There's not much to go on, so it's not much of a story.  The boat name isn't revealed, nor the format, nor the engine or window type - only the fact that it's "British racing green in colour with a maroon band and the number two on its hull."   This (and the rest - not much) is on the Staffs police website.

But just apply a coat of primer overnight and without other details (e.g. whether it's a trad or cruiser, portholes or windows, or the length) the stolen boat could be mistaken for any other.  Even (oh, perish the troubling thought!) Granny Buttons.

[Thanks to Tony Blews for the alert/scan, and to PC Orson Blewitt for the best matching policeman's name since I don't know when.]

Update:  Brian of Harnser below comments that it was reported on Canalworld over the weekend, and they uploaded the flyer shown here.  The boat's called Monterey Colton, and it's a 58ft semi-trad with all-portholes at the rear and windows at the front.

Interestingly, reports say it was seen being reversed out and taken, but not noticed as missing for several days.  Was it on the visitor moorings at Wolverley Bridge?  I've left Granny there in the past, and it's a lonely spot.  Gulp.  I hate leaving a boat unattended.

Tube train over Grand Union at Watford

 
Midnight on the Grand Union, from Cassiobridge Lock, Thurs 18th Sept 2008.

I never get tired of watching trains go over bridges at night.  In this scene, the motor/butty pair on the right lends a traditional note to this modern scene. 

The butty, by the way, is Ara, so I assume the motor is Archimedes, of Candle Bridge Carrying Company (purveyors of coal, diesel and accoutrements to the canal nobility and gentry).   

The first time I came down the Grand Union from the midlands, nine years ago, I remember meeting the then-owner of Ara at Braunston.  Then, it was paired with Callisto, and it was my very first meeting with someone who owned a moty and butter. 

I'll always think of Callisto and Ara together, not only for that memory, because they are both 'Star Class' - i.e. named after stars (yeah, I know, Callisto is a moon).

But I always thought that Archimedes was a far more appropriate name for a cargo narrowboat, considering that cargo capacity was worked out by the water it displaced.

Still, Star Class boats are far more appropriate for night photographs.

Knots, Splices and Rope Work

No need to buy a book about knots, when there's a perfectly good one available for free to download from Project Gutenberg:

Knots, Splices and Rope Work by A. Hyatt Verrill

This 1917 book, from the 'Editor of the Popular Science Dept, American Boys' Magazine', ought to tell me all I need.  And knots surely haven't advanced much in eighty years, have they?

[Thanks to Chris Hardman for alerting me to this jewel of Project Gutenberg] 

However, if you want something a little more 21st-Century, try Animated Knots by Grog.

I've mentioned before how awful I am at knots.  Knotting's uphill work for me.  I can't even do an everyday hitch to tie up at locks, and I still haven't learned to tie my shoelaces properly.  (I use, what else, a granny knot).

I tie up Granny securely enough, but it's always a job to untie her when I set off again.  I think both Grog and Verrill would want to wash their hands of me.

The Rochdale and Watford Observer

Town’s reputation could sink in the mucky canal - Rochdale Observer:

Letters written to a boating magazine slammed the canal, with one letter writer saying Rochdale Canal was the worst experience he’d had in 40 years of boating.

British Waterways removes up to 50 tons of rubbish from the full length of the canal between Hebden Bridge and Manchester every week, 15 tons from the stretch in Rochdale.

Alan Carter, business development manager for British Waterways, says it is looking at ways to prevent people dumping litter in the first place.

... "However, we are facing a difficult struggle to reduce the levels of rubbish deposited along some sections of the Rochdale Canal.  Litter is a social issue which requires a unified approach by authorities and communities."

(Which 'boating magazine' was it?) 

Granny is at Cassiobridge at the moment, just above the lock, and now I'm local to Watford. So I was interested to read, on the very same weekend:

The high cost of waterways’ waste - Watford Observer

Thames Lock Keeper's cottages

Does the Environment Agency need to wring cash from the rivers? - Daily Telegraph

Nice little polemic today from Telegraph columnist Jim White, criticising the decision of the EA to sell off (or rent out) the lock keepers' cottages on the Thames:

... Dave, the lock-keeper, has worked this stretch for 26 years. He is responsible for the splendid floral displays.

He, when the sun decides to break through, sells ice creams from a cooler. As he opens the gates for you he will tell you about the lore of the river, about the currents and eddies. If you want to know where the nearest riverside pub is, and at what time they stop serving food, Dave is your man. He is always there. But then he doesn't have far to commute.

He lives in the little cottage alongside the lock, the one with the well-tended vegetable garden. The one he has just been given notice to quit. The one his employers have decided to rent to the highest bidder.

Last I heard, this decision had been postponed.  But I suppose Jim White's story is based on news the lock keeper gave him in the last few days, and perhaps the fast-collapsing house market won't put off the Environment Agency.