Granny Buttons

Counting the pillars at Space Self-Storage

Every time I go through a canal tunnel that has ventilation shafts, I make an effort to count the number of shafts.  And every time, before I'm halfway through, I'm uncertain as to how many shafts I've passed.

Do you have the same experience?  You look up as you pass underneath a shaft, you see the blue-white brilliance, the shaft rains down on your grimacing eyes and open mouth, you realise you are briefly blinded ... and you've forgotten how many shafts you've passed.  You've lost count.  Was it five or six or seven?

(Incidentally, once while walking over 'tunnel top' at Blisworth Tunnel, I also lost count of the overground tunnel shafts. But I got some nice pictures in the autumn sunset.)

Last Easter I found a variation on this subterranean game. 

Regular boaters approaching Salford Junction ('Spaghetti Junction') on the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal will know of the long warehouse near Erdington covering the canal for 100-150 yards.

It has the look of something built in the 1960s, but I never found what it was originally built for.  However, nowadays it's the home of Space Self-Storage.  They promise:

.... a large secure facility with CCTV and central station linked alarms.

I'm not sure if the same security extends to the canal underneath, but I'd hope that yobs would think twice before lurking there for villainous intent.

To business:

As you motor underneath Space Self-Storage,  you'll pass a large number of concrete columns. But how many columns?

I first came this way eleven years ago, and have never managed to count the columns. 

Until this month.  This time, I jumped off the boat, got Christine to hold it in with the breast rope, and then ran back with a stick, banging it against every pillar.  Then I turned around and ran back and banged and counted 'em again.

There are 54.

I think there are, anyway.  But I'm still not sure!  If you've got nothing better to do, could you ring Space on 0121 327 7778 and ask the guy on the phone if he'd mind nipping downstairs during his lunch hour and counting 'em again, just to reassure me?

The Erdington Job

I can imagine a great movie coming out of this location, a sort of The Italian Job-style heist.  There'd be a fantastically valuable item stored in the Space Self-Storage warehouse, and a team on a narrowboat would pose as BW staff. 

They'd position a spud-leg dredger underneath on some pretext (perhaps a BCN Canal Cleanup), and drill through the overhead concrete overnight, steal the prize and transfer it to a passing narrowboat in the morning.

By mid-afternoon they could be well up the Farmer's Bridge flight of locks before the theft had been discovered, and the following day headed down the Tardebigge flight or on the Stratford Canal or even approaching Stourbridge - who knows where.

To extend the The Italian Job analogy, you'd have three narrowboats, each of 'em heading in different directions.  And all of 'em steered by chinless-wonder public schoolboys, just like in the film.

A side plot would involve counting the 54 (53? 55?) concrete pillars, but I haven't worked out that bit yet.  Perhaps it could be a sort of distraction, to make the police think the column-counters were hiding something, when in fact they'd be innocent, nerdy dupes. Or perhaps they could drill holes in the columns to hide the diamonds until the hue and cry dies down.

The only problem would be remembering which pillars they put the loot in.  No matter how they counted, they'd never remember.

Wheelchair ramp replaces lock mooring space at Weston Lock

In 'Here's where our money goes', Narrowboat World tells an astonishing story about a wheelchair ramp built onto a lock approach at Weston, near Shardlow on the Trent & Mersey Canal:

Many thousands of pounds are being spent on a wheelchair ramp at Weston Lock on the Trent & Mersey Canal that has no purpose whatsoever, yet taking away valuable mooring space

For the broad Weston Lock has no facilities for any wheelchair bound person,  with no surfaced towpath that would take a wheelchair.  As it is a long uphill way to the village, no person so bound would want to travel either way.  It is completely pointless.

... by far the worst is that the whole thing has taken up valuable  lock mooring space, leaving space for only one boat—as Christine's photograph shows—at an exceptionally busy lock indeed, with not even the sense to leave a couple of feet for boaters to get off their boats. 

Something about this strange story makes me want to investigate further.  It's a local lock, just a few minutes drive from me.

There could be a perfectly rational explanation - like a central government diktat to waste money that British Waterways are obliged to obey - but they could at least squeal when they do so.

I've called the BW local office to see if they can come up with a comment. They've just appointed yet another PR officer, whose initial comment was 'Granny Who?', but she's promised to look further into the story and come back with a quote that at least makes me sound more important.

The picture below shows the scene from Google Street View (click here to see it in the browser).

The bright side is that it's election week, so the local parliamentary candidates should all be good for a quote, slagging BW off.  It'll be fun to see how they try to tsk-tsk without losing the wheelchair vote.  It'll also be a chance to see if the local candidates even know that there's a canal in their constituency.

The M42 aqueduct, NB 'Monica' and two possible fates for canals

On Sunday night Granny stopped in a little wooded cutting just by the M42.  (Google Maps location here)

 

It was a peaceful night, thanks to the excellent sound insulation inside my narrowboat. 

Nevertheless, in the morning I wanted to capture the contrast between the sylvan setting I saw around me and the constant roar of traffic.

So I set to recording the scene, both traffic-free (above) and with a suitably emblematic lorry on the motorway bridge in the background (below, thanks to the 'King of the Road' haulage company.)

Moments later I was amazed/amused/astonished to see a narrowboat shell glide past, painted in red oxide and clearly on its way to a fit-out.  Really, this is too bizarre.  What's the chances of that happening - I mean, how it turns from a motorway bridge into an aqueduct - the moment I stop to photograph it? 

Anyone recognise the maker of the shell?  Perhaps it was on its way to Alvechurch Boat Centre, the New Boat Company at Hanbury, J.L. Pinder, or one of several other boat fitters-out in the locality.  It does have the 'look' of a hireboat, as most privately owned boats tend to have portholes at least in places, to grant a slight sense of privacy, particularly in the bedroom or bathroom area.

[Update April 30th: John Lucas, Operations Manager at Black Prince, writes:

"What luck to catch that!  It was one of 2 new Probuild hulls being delivered to us from their base at Napton, to us at  Stoke Prior by Barry Tuckey Transport.  The hull, by the number of windows, belongs to 70' Duchess 8 model narrowboat to be named MONICA and she will be out on holiday during June for her first voyage from our base at Chirk." ]

It's perhaps even more coincidental that as I photographed the scene my back was turned on a point of the Worcester & Birmingham Canal  where it crosses over a country road appropriately called 'Aqueduct Lane'.

This stretch of the canal is quite interesting for another reason.  If  you look on the map or aerial view above) you'll see a parallel 'arm' of the canal on the right, forming a sort of dead-end 'oxbow'. 

This was the old, original, course of the canal, a holdover from the construction of the motorway 25 years ago, when a short stretch was recut to avoid altering the height of the road itself.

Most of the original section was left in water, but allowed to return slowly to nature, and boats are (if not specifically banned) discouraged.

What I find particularly interesting about this furlong or so of old canal is that it's a real insight into what happens when canals are abandoned - just left alone, rather than used or filled in. 

If only every road crossing took account of old canals, made new cuts and left behind little parks, such as happened here. 

But I'd be interested to know what the fishing is like, how silted it now is, and if this short bramble-ridden stretch is 'managed' in any way, short of simply being left alone to ramblers and wildlife.

In the coda to Narrow Boat, L.T.C. Rolt described his fearful vision of the last of the disregarded canals as 'a weedy, stagnant ditch'.

I have a vision of the future, chum.

Comedy writer on Granny Buttons

Comedy writer Geoff Tristram is irritated by my post last Friday, 'Comedy writer on canals'. 

He writes: 

I call myself a comedy writer because I'm a comedy writer. I don't write serious stuff, or poetry. I also call myself a cartoonist because I draw cartoons. I hope that doesn't upset you too. I have ten comedy novels in the shops, which are called comedy novels to make people who are potentially interested aware that they are comedies, and not tragedies, rom-coms or political thrillers. It has nothing whatsoever to do with my wishing to inflict some idea upon you that my stuff is funny. I employ the same tactic that you do when you mention that your thing is about canals.

Strange how things can be misconstrued isn't it? Thank you for quoting it though, albeit in it's abbreviated form. And as to the sarcastic bit about less a column and more a novel, or whatever it was you said, isn't that a sad indictment on modern society that no-one feels they have the attention span to read more than ten words in a row?

The reason I am a little miffed is that you seem to have enjoyed having a little snipe at me, even though we have never met, for no reason whatsoever. Or was it because I guessed correctly that your wife has a bushy beard and an accordion?

I also note that your column went on and on and on. Okay for you, but apparently not for me.

Seriously though, thanks for quoting it, but why the bitchiness beforehand? Not needed.

GT

Thanks, Geoff! 

Firstly, I must apologise in my original post for not linking to Geoff's website, which I meant to do, and forgot.  Very remiss of me.  Here it is: 

www.geofftristram.co.uk -

and see also

Geoff Tristram on Amazon UK.

Next, I didn't know that the phrase 'comedy writer' was self-styled.  I thought it was the newspaper that had used the term. 

Geoff is embarrassingly perceptive about my wife - how did he know?  Is there a secret camera somewhere?  I haven't let her outside my bedroom since I married her and blew her up.

I'm not sure why he says my "column went on and on".  It's not a column it's a blog post, and (excluding quoting his own piece) was only 260 words. And there's no sarcasm in it. He might be confusing it with cold observation.  Sometimes people also confuse sarcasm with irony, and I confess there's a little bit of irony in this post.

Even in this post (the one you are reading now) Geoff's quote is rather longer than these words of mine.

However, well done to Geoff for getting a second bite of the publicity cherry. 

Geoff, can you recommend one of your comedy books for canal users?  And have you got a blog of your own? 

I always recommend that if someone is unhappy about what another blogger has said, they should rebut it with a blog post of their own - and always link-link-link to what they think is wrong.

Blue 'Bonanza' sky for Midland Chandlers

Oh, go on, just one more picture of the new Midland Chandlers building, a nice optimistic photo, looking all ranchy and Western against the first big blue sky of the delayed English summer.

And not a jet contrail in sight, although I did see a jet taking off from the nearby East Midlands Airport shortly afterwards.

Maybe I'll get a discount now.

There are chandleries at the bottom of my garden

The Midland Chandlers Willington branch at Mercia Marina is now open.

The marina itself is so large - the remnant of a giant pit dug to provide spoil for the nearby A50 interchange with the big Toyota factory - that although the chandlery shop is located within the marina boundary, it's actually closer to my house than to the moorings on the far side.

You'd think it would be a recipe for disaster for Granny Buttons, or at least for my bank account. 

Well, you'd be right.  Who needs canal boat chandlery online when it's at the bottom of your garden, and it's the biggest selection under one roof in the UK?  

The building itself is a cut above the dull brick 'Tesco vernacular' (how I love that phrase) architecture of the other Midland Chandlery branches, although that's perhaps largely due to the cedar wood facing.  Underneath the varnished wood, however is the conventional breeze-blockery of much modern building, simply because it's efficient and economical.

 

Yesterday I waited in vain for a boat to pull up alongside the chandlery's personal jetty so that I could show a genuine customer arriving by boat.  The plus-side of not having a boat alongside the  jetty was that it allos you to see the derelict towers of the old Willington power station in the background.  I like capturing the towers in my photos of the marina - it adds a sense of 'place to what could otherwise be rather generic marina photographs.

On the other hand, I had to ask one of the guys in the shop to move his beaten-up old Tata pickup van so I could get a proper view of the 'chalet-style' front. 

We might well find in future months that such a clean, empty view is a rare sight during opening hours, so I took the opportunity while I could.

In the meantime the construction company's staff were doubling up as horticulturalists, planting a large number of ground-cover plants at the back of the new building. 

I'd photographed the builder watering the tree (below) before I actually realised that it looked like he was relieving himself!

And that's enough Midland Chandlers for a while.  They aren't paying me for this, and I don't get any discount, I promise!

A personal memory of Tom Rolt

I posted this picture by Max Sinclair (featuring Tom Rolt) nearly 3 years ago, but Max has just sent it over in high-resolution, in a better scan:

L-R: Paul Hocquard (vintage car restorer), Tom Rolt in cap, Sonia Rolt, Jocelyn Sinclair, the two Rolt  boys, and (right) car historian John Stanford.

Max writes: 

In September 1961 two members of my Rubery Owen staff introduced us to the Rolt Family when they brought them to Ashwood Canal basin for a day out on my recently acquired narrow boat Vesta. 

It was a gorgeous day and everyone enjoyed the 'voyage' on the Staffs and Worcs Canal.  Sadly this was Tom's last trip on the canals but it seemed to bring memories flooding back for both of them. We subsequently visited them at Stanley Pontlarge to talk locomotives and waterways.

... The day ended with a young Rolt falling in and Sonia jumping in to rescue him. With a chilly ride home in prospect Jocelyn wrapped them in the new curtains she was making
for our lengthened cabin.

So began a lovely friendship and Sonia told me last week she was looking forward to the Droitwich opening. She attributes her bad knees to jumping down onto the boats in the locks, while my bad hips are due to cycle racing thousands of miles annually in the 1940's/50's.

Many thanks, Max!  When I met Sonia last week, she clearly recalled that day, although thanks to the Sinclair's politeness she hadn't realise the emergency 'wrap' was a brand new set of curtains.

The C and S are silent

In a comment on my post Valete Canaltime, salvete Canal Boat Club Alf Overton makes the point that:

Are you aware that the 'C' in canaltime is silent when spoken? !!   Perhaps that's why they have changed the name ??

Tee-hee, little boys can't resist the joke, can they?

If you are looking for the original silent 'C' in 'canal' you'll probably find it in Manchester's Canal Street, at the heart of the city's 'pink village'.   For many years the authorities have fought a losing battle with little-boy pranksters who regularly blank out not only the letter C on the street sign, but often also the accompanying S.

 

Last month Ian Smith emailed to say that the same spirit was at work in my home village of Willington, where the road from the centre of the village going off over the canal is known as Canal Bridge.  

Thanks, Ian, I hadn't noticed that!  You kindly sent a picture as proof [right], but I nipped down and got my own picture of the sign close-up [below], before any zealous council functionaries came to correct it.

Mind you, the date embedded in Ian Smith's photo is 13th October last year, and my own picture was taken fully five months later, so the council can't be all that zealous.

Incidentally, I bet the councillors and public works staff in Scunthorpe are grateful that they don't have a canal running through their town!

Humdinger's humdingers of subject lines

Bill and Debbie of NB Humdinger are amongst the first boating bloggers writing about the departure of the 'Cressy Cruise Re-Enactment'. 

They kindly namecheck me in their post:

For completeness, and because Andrew Denny says you should always include a photo in your blog post, a picture of the man and the boat themselves.

Bill/Debbie, many thanks for citing me as an authority! 

Although for a moment I thought you were going to put a picture of me and my Granny on your blog, so my self-importance was quickly punctured!

However, I'm not sure I ever thought it a hard/fast rule.  (To always put a picture in a post, I mean, not to puncture my self-importance, but it won't harm to do the latter.) 

But sparing use of pictures can make a blog livelier, particularly if it's done as an occasional inset of one or two pictures with text wrap-around, as here.

What does help to make a blog more readable is to stay focused a single subject in a post, ideally with a relevant subject headline that sums up the post, rather than simply straining for a pun.   And Humdinger certainly succeeds there. 

For example, it's mostly about their boat, so the most recent subject lines are:

Cressy Cruise Re-enactment

Brass and the Stove 

Stove, Plinths and No Taps!

Plumbing

Doors

It’s a Proper Boat Now! 
[about how the boat has suddenly seemed nearly finished]

Something’s Happened to the Floor! 
[about the beautiful inlaid flooring]

Towpath Talk & Lack of Blogging  
[about being featured in Towpath Talk]

All of them accurately describe the contents of the post.

Ownerships in trouble

Shared ownership narrowboat scheme Ownerships appears to be in trouble, following the death of founder Allan Matthews in February.

While (in theory) joint-owners do hold title to their narrowboats, there are a number of extra investments they make - such as the right to sell back their shares, or the money held in management funds - that seem to be at risk. 

One owner has told me he expect to lose a fair bit, and for the boat to cost a lot more to maintain than he'd anticipated:

I fully expect to lose my option to sell back my share to Ownerships, and to lose the money I loaned them to be able to have 'free management costs'.

We've always been told that the boats themselves are 'ours'; I expect as a group we'll be saddled with the full maintenance costs [regardless of the proportion of the boat that Ownerships owns.]

When another shared ownership scheme, Challenger Syndicateships, capsized a couple of years ago (leading to a 10-year ban on holding directorships by Challenger's founder Ed Rimmer), many people said that Ownerships was a paragon of how the shared ownership system should operate.

Now the 600-or-so owners have all this week received a joint letter from Ownerships' 'Executor and Finance Director' Anthony Trueman, asking them all to attend a meeting on May 8th in Stevenage:

The task of unravelling the audit trail of Ownerships Ltd has been far from easy. Having completed this process I would like to hold a meeting with all parties who have invested in the Free Management Scheme, the Marina Investment or Fradley Investment Schemes and those who joined the Buy Back Schemes.

I cannot express strongly enough the importance of everyone attending this meeting.

The Ownerships Owners Forum today has been buzzing with reports of a possible collapse.  Meanwhile, Peter Scott has written an overview of the company's complex business arrangement here.  I can understand neither head nor tail, so perhaps shared ownership is not for me.

For many years I envied shared ownership schemes for spreading the costs of boating.  Now it makes me feel glad to own my boat outright. For all the extra that it costs me, I know where I stand.

For many people there's satisfaction in being part of a fleet (like the bakers' dozen of Ownerships boats at the Braunston Ownerships Show, above). 

But I'm a loner by nature.  Being on my own makes me a 'Number One', but for me that feels better than being stuck in the 'number twos' of uncertain joint ownership.

Comedy writer on canals

An article in the Stourbridge News this week - 'Comedy writer Geoff Tristram on canals' - contains quite a few good insights into waterways users.

However, it's asking for trouble to openly describe someone as a 'comedy writer'.  It's as if the words can't speak for themselves and the reader needs to be told 'Ahem, this is supposed to be funny'.

The trouble is that when you say someone's a comedy writer, you are saying 'funny, ha-ha'.  But the point of good comedy writing in newspapers isn't that it's funny,  but that it's true - at least in a greater sense -  only with a happy ending.  You can't be a comedy Gestapo and tell someone 'Vee haff vays of making you laff'.  The humour is what we find inside ourselves as we read it.  

However, two thousand words isn't a column, it's an essay, and even Mark Twain would struggle to hold a newspaper reader's attention at that length.  The article needed, as I mentioned another time about Towpath Talk, an editor with a crueller blue pencil.

Nevertheless, I can never get enough invective about anglers, and I enjoyed Geoff Tristram's contribution on this subject:

The average angler is an antisocial, unshaven creature who prefers the company of maggots to his fellow man. It is as if God had granted him a mere thousand words to last him a lifetime, and he doesn’t like to use them up unnecessarily by wasting them on pleasantries such as ‘Good morning’, or ‘Sorry, let me move this roach pole off the tow-path so that you can get by.’

He will, however, be more than ready to part with a few of the coarser, Anglo Saxon ones in his repertoire should you accidentally ride over his £500 carbon fibre fishing rod on your mountain bike, because he left it across what he regards as his private tow path, and you didn’t see it in time. At times like this, he can even become quite articulate, albeit in a menacing way.

Worst of all is on match days, when the path resembles a never-ending line of NCP car park barriers, with hundreds of huge roach poles barring the walker’s progress.

I wonder where I can read the angler's reply, the invective about boaters? 

Anglers are mostly men of few smiles in my experience, and still fewer comedy words.  They are good at invective, though.  I'll never forget the one in September 2006 on the Grand Union near Milton Keynes, who expressed himself at Granny Buttons in maggots, mealworms and sweetcorn.  I was picking out the wriggling things from my cabin all day.  Hilarious.

Valete Canaltime, salvete Canal Boat Club

It looks like Canaltime has changed its name to Canal Boat Club. 

The 13-year-old claret-and-blue of the traditional Canaltime colour scheme could possibly soon be gone, replaced by something akin to the ugly garish bright blue used by the British Waterways workboats for ten years.

That ugly 'garish' is not a criticism.  Bright, gay, 'ugly' primary colours were always characteristic of the old working boats, and few boats are working harder now (at least during British Summer Time) than Canaltime.

Canaltime is a timeshare operation, not a shared ownership scheme.  Part of the appeal is that you don't own a share in the boat,  you own the right to use one of 150+ boats from a wide variety of locations around the Midlands.  Another appeal for me is you don't have annual meetings and sticky compromises about where to base the boat during the coming year or what weeks you are entitled to use the boat. 

The first and most frequent question most Canaltime customers are going to ask about Canal Boat Club is, "Why the name change - what's happening?" 

You won't find the answer to this on the FAQ page - neither the old Canaltime FAQ page nor the new Canal Boat Club FAQ page, although their contents are similar.

The old Canaltime website seems to focus on Sawley Marina near Nottingham, and Sawley is missing from the new CBC marina list.  Perhaps the business has been split up?

I mentioned here how I started 'Canaltime-spotting' ten years ago, although my hobby didn't last long.  There are, after all, only about 150 boats.  But the hobby could get a new lease of life along with the new livery.

Canaltimers have a reputation (unfairly, I think) of speeding and of being erratic steerers, prone to collisions. 

So it was unfortunate for me that when I first spotted a Canaltime boat in the new CBC livery at Alvechurch a couple of weeks ago (Marjorie Nott, No.51), I was quite so distracted that I ran - BANG! - into the nose of a nearby Alvechurch hire boat sticking out into the canal. 

No fault of theirs - it was mea culpa entirely and there was plenty of room and time for me to miss the other boats.

The chap at the wharf was quite nice and polite about it and not at all annoyed.  And fortunately I didn't see any outward sign of damage, although I photographed it just to be on the safe side (immediately after I'd photographed Marjorie Nott in her new livery).

Perhaps he sensed that after 11 years of single-handed boating and still unable to avoid a collision, I had the makings of a good Canal Boat Club customer!

[Updated to correct the Canaltime FAQ link - thanks, Halfie!]

Sonia Rolt and the LTC Rolt book cover collection

I'm still reacting to the awe I felt when visiting the Rolt home at Stanley Pontlarge on Sunday, and the kind help Sonia gave me in researching that 1946 voyage I mentioned earlier.

 

One bonus was to learn of the fine work of Rolt enthusiast Peter Roberts, who has photographed every single book cover Rolt ever published. 

He recently presented Sonia with a complete set of pictures.  There must be over a hundred prints in the collection. She is delighted with the result, and says she'd love to see an exhibition of the art of his book covers. 

She briefly related tales behind some of these pictures - for example on the book Waterway, where redundant wartime gas mask straps were put into operation as chains for the chimneys of working narrowboats (below/right). 

I've heard such tales in the past, though usually apocryphally. 

But Sonia lived and breathed this period ("It was such HARD work" she said), and she bears first-hand witness to the facts.

It occurred to me that - quite apart from a conventional static exhibition, it would make a fascinating video to run through each cover in sequence, and have her tell these tales as a voice-over. 

Somewhere there's a YouTube video - or even TV programme - in all of this, I told her. 

"Well, you'd better hurry up then..." she said, with a gentle smile and an unspoken hint. 

As I looked out over the charming garden, Sonia told me about the bumpiness of the lawn, and why it's still kept that way.  Apparently it used to be a pear orchard, with the fruit used in the production of perry.

 

I'm not sure when the trees were uprooted - possibly long before Rolt himself lived there as a child in the 1920s.

But the roots and the contour of the perry-orchard lawn remain, as a reminder of the garden's former purpose.

It's especially noticeable as the sun sets on fine summer afternoons.

 

 

 

 

Following in Cressy's voyaging footsteps, or looking over Rolt's shoulder

The day Tony Blair signed the Northern Ireland agreement, he memorably said 'I feel the hand of history on our shoulders'.

I felt that I was looking over history's shoulders last Friday when I studied a dog-eared, nondescript hardback notebook in the library of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum.

It was the log of Cressy, the most famous narrowboat of all, and it was the raw timber from which LTC Rolt fashioned his book Narrow Boat.  

And how privileged and thrilled I felt to peer over Tom Rolt's (metaphorical) shoulder!

For example, see the page below from July 29th 1939, the first day or two of that historic voyage:

Next week the IWA-sponsored Cressy Cruise Re-Enactment sets off from Banbury, in the footsteps of Tom and Angela Rolt, celebrating Tom's centenary and the nine months gestation of the book.

But the log spans the entire 12 years of the couple's life aboard the boat, and indeed the founding of the IWA several years after 'the Narrow Boat Cruise'. 

I was studying it for clues to what I think is a less celebrated but more significant 9-month gestation.  This was the time between Rolt's first meeting with Robert Aickman in 1945  and the voyage they took together, starting on April 14th 1946, when they looked at the waterways together and discussed the founding and future strategy of the Inland Waterways Association.

I've written before about that voyage (see The Cressy 1946 Voyage - and incidentally Rolt always called it a 'voyage', not a 'cruise').  

It was thrilling to see the first mention of Robert Aickman in the log, in Rolt's own pencilled hand, in what was the first entry for over three years:

To me, this moment - this first-ever canal narrowboat trip by Aickman - is arguably more significant for waterways restoration. 

My argument is that if Narrow Boat was the spark for the revival, the Rolt-Aickman voyage was probably the kindling.  Without the two men meeting and taking the 1946 voyage, the book might have simply served as an epitaph for the canal era.

I made copious notes (and many more photographs).

But I followed up Friday with an even more spectacular and productive Sunday, when I had the good fortune to spend three hours with Sonia Rolt herself at the Rolt's Cotswold home where she let me see copies of her late husband's letters to Aickman, covering that period.

In those letters I learned much more, including the preparation they made.

And before meeting Sonia I spent an hour with Max Sinclair, the driving force behind the Droitwich Canal restoration and personal friend of the Rolts.  He gave me much valuable background information.

I can't stress enough how honoured I felt this weekend!  Many thanks to both Sonia and Max for your generous time and hospitality.  And thanks to John Powell, the indefatigeble librarian at the Museum, for making available the log to me at such short notice.  The Rolt Collection  is a valuable resource for any waterways historian and the library .

The purpose behind all this is to research, make, record and photograph my own trip around the waterways, trying to look at it through both Rolt's experienced and Aickman's innocent eyes.   Or perhaps more profoundly, to look over their shoulders.

And because Ron and Mary Heritage are recreating their own version of the Narrow Boat voyage (Rolt always called it a voyage, not a 'cruise'), I thought I'd follow the 1946 route instead.  In my case I'll probably do it on my own, monkishly, to avoid being distracted by friendship and good company.