News & Diary  Archive 2005  Jan - Feb

    

Further travels can be found in Archives

 

January 1 2005	A most enjoyable Christmas on the boat has been followed by several quiet days broken only by welcome visits from Henk and Coby Schrijver on their boat Double Dutch - they came out from Trinity marina for a a short cruise and spent the night moored behind us - and from Sue Lane of Plodder and her daughter Kimberley.  Dave had driven them to Sutton Cheney wharf but was unwell so understandably ducked out of the seven or eight minute walk out to us.  Hope he's improving.  However, I've not been in the best of health either - the main reason for not updating this diary sooner. Fortunately the car has been a boon for getting us around, and the doctors at Stoke Golding are first class.  Blood samples have winged their way off for a series of tests that should produce answers within a week.  In the meantime we are staying at Sutton Cheney for a couple more days until the New Year holiday is over (the longest we've stayed anywhere apart from Barton Turns marina) and will cruise back to Stoke Golding on Tuesday or Wednesday before setting off for a longer trip up to Snarestone and the top of the canal.
January 11	At last I'm back on line ! The enforced silence of the last few days has been down to a broken outside aerial which has now been replaced thanks to swift service from the Boaters' Phone Company.  Without the aerial the phone reception at my computer desk is nil.  After the paragraph about doctor and blood samples written 10 days ago I can only hope any readers of this diary did not leap to the conclusion that I was on my last legs.  In fact the news from the doctor on Friday was good - nothing more sinister than a slightly high cholesterol level, but a week after Christmas was it surprising?  All tests were negative but I'm to see a specialist sometime in the next few months just for a second opinion, but neither Liz nor I think it's really necessary.  It might mean staying on the Ashby a little longer than planned but that's not too great a hardship.  Despite waiting on the results we've still managed to get on with life on the canal, travelling when the winds were not too fierce, not mooring under trees and not going too far away from the car.  Over the last 10 days we've also had some smashing emails that I've not had time to digest for this diary yet - so thanks to you all for your good wishes.  More follows soon ...
January 12	As I was saying ... some of the emails received over the holiday period are well worth a mention.  Our good friend Sarah Levick of Arcadia wrote "Thought you'd like to know that on one of my walks down from Streethay I came upon Shotley Shuffle. Having grown up about five miles from Shotley, I decided that I'd introduce myself so up I went and said, 'Hello, you know Snecklifter don't you?' and the rest was easy - see how you're bringing boaters together? They asked to be remembered to you and to say that they managed to rescue all the books! And Pat was also wondering whether Mike had managed to cut his hair yet?" The books were a bag of paperbacks that I tried to hand over as SS passed us at our Sutton Cheney mooring - inevitably most of them fell into the canal, were fished out by Pat and Kate and put to dry in their engine room.  The hair question referred to the new hair trimmer I had recently bought but found difficult to use.  Still do, but it keeps my beard reasonably smart.  Another email that illustrates just how easily people can be captivated by the Cut came from Derek and Di Buckley who live at Telford in Shropshire. Derek wrote: "I have been interested in narrowboats for 15 years or more since I went to an IWA festival in Birmingham. However Di did not share my passion, so over the years the boats went on to the back boiler.  Until, that is, last year when I told Di that I was going to have a week's holiday on a boat and if she did not like to come she could stay at home. I was going to do this before it was too late.  We ended up booking a week this June 2004 with Black Prince out of Chirk.  "I thought that the Llangollen would be a good choice for a first time -  not too many locks - and the rest of the summer of 2003 we went to several parts of the canal by car to check out the pubs etc.   Went to Willymoor lock (nice food and good guest beer) and to Wrenbury to the Cotton Arms (again good food). Di started to like what we were doing by now so decided to come with us and we also took our youngest son (25) as he also likes boating.  As you can imagine, the holiday was a fantastic success although we had our own reasons for why we liked it. Mine was the relaxed approach to it all with no pressure to get anyone here or there at a given time.   "After the holiday we found we had been bitten by the bug and have since had a weekend on the Shroppie and several visits to festivals. Any free time we have is spent at some part of the canal, even just walking. We have started looking at boats with the possibility of living on one when I retire, though our hobby stops us from making the jump right now - we show and breed Norwegian forest cats and as we have 15 of them I think one boat would be a bit small for all of us. But  we have stopped buying new stock for our breeding and hope that in time we will only have a few to take with us on our boat. We will have to be landlubbers for some more years but have made ourselves a promise that one day we will make that change."   And finally, a short report from Jenny and Martin Howes on Ashted bringing us up to date on activity at Wolverhampton Boat Club: "You'll be pleased to hear that again, this year, we had a mini cruise from the club - nine boats - up the Shroppie, making sure that the pubs are keeping their beer up to scratch!  We managed not to flood the engine this year. The secret is to drink the mulled wine and beer so that it doesn't add to the boats displacement - there seemed to be a perverse logic in that thought at the time. It's amazing how the same stretch of canal can present such differing scenes at different times of the year. We were treated to a kingfisher escort for almost a mile on the way from Chillington to Brewood. Without leaves, they are much more visible.  January promises to be a busy time at the club, with a further two week-end cruises, and a couple of 'in club' evenings.  Santa brought me a new digital camera, so by March we may be able to learn how to send you some snaps!"   Can't wait!

January 19	For winter, the last week has been hectic.  We left Stoke Golding around 8 am last Thursday and with only a short stop at Sutton Cheney for Liz to do a Safeway run, we kept going until we found an excellent new mooring just short of Congerstone. The following day we moved on to Shackerstone, intending to stay the full weekend but two crises broke at the same time - both the kind of thing that happens when you live in a house but made marginally more acute by the lack of access to help when you live on a boat.    Firstly, my desktop computer completely collapsed - problem either with the motherboard or the power supply unit.  I immediately contacted Lee on All Boys at Barton Turns and he agreed to check it out.  But we then realised that what had been a niggling discomfort for border collie Bess was turning into something more serious and at her advanced age (13) we didn't want to take chances.  So we came back to Sutton Cheney and Liz took her to a vet in Hinckley.  Diagnosis : a serious internal infection which meant an overnight stay and a major operation. Two days later she is recovering extremely well and we might be able to get to Barton Turns in another three or four days.   In the meantime, readers will notice that I have still managed to update this website without my desktop. A couple of weeks ago Liz treated herself to a "cheap" laptop and we have just managed to connect to the internet after days of fiddling about with Bluetooth and infra-red (neither of which has worked so far).    We are now moored close to Dadlington bridge and here we'll stay until Bess has improved enough to justify us moving on, although we'll have to stay in the area until her check-up in eight days time.  With the weather still wet and windy we're quite happy to do nothing for a while.  p.s. We are obviously now able to receive emails again.
January 23	We are still at Dadlington but I can report that the weather is beautiful - the sun is shining and the frost is fast disappearing - my computer is back in business thanks to Lee at Barton Turns marina, Bess is recovering extremely well from her operation, I feel good, Liz looks even better, and the engine is running well at the moment.  Just thought I'd cheer everybody up after the doom and gloom of the last few weeks.  I will be writing a fuller update in the next day or two but meanwhile my thanks to all of you who have sent suportive emails that have helped cheer us up.  Replies will be on their way very soon.
January 28	We are back at Dadlington so that Liz will be near the car when she goes to a folk concert in Lichfield tomorrow evening - there will be no long walk back along a muddy towpath in the dark.  But we have had a few days at Stoke Golding since the last update during which we topped up the diesel and made the inevitable visit to Safeway and local shops.  Other than that we've had a quiet time of it.  Bess has had her 10-day checkup at the vet and is back to her usual perky self and the rest of us are almost as fit!  Among the latest batch of emails was one from Andrew Denny of Granny Buttons, who has been having a tough time of it with his health but seems to be recovering and has certainly not lost his sense of humour, and another from regular correspondent Pat Bycroft - she and Mike have now sold their house and moved into rented premises while their boat is being built. "We are in talks with our boat builder and it all starts on Feb 28th," she wrote. "We are so looking forward to our retirement. Who says older age is dull?   Fools ... we know better.   Andrew Denny is trying to persuade me to Blog our boat build.  I had a chat with him just the other day and I may well do that.  He is such a nice guy to talk to - very helpful. "   Mike and Di Bridges, too, are in the midst of change.  They are having a second boat built by Heron and have put their first, Quinquireme, up for sale.  We only saw it the once but it looked splendid, with another excellent fit out.  I have put a couple of pictures on  Quinquireme For Sale so if any of you are interested you can contact mike@meesh.co.uk and he will give you more detailed info.

January 31	We are back at Bosworth battlefield moorings with not a single boat in sight - not even on the towpath side near the aquaduct where there are normally two or three settled down for a week or two. Although we are sheltered by trees there is plenty of light to brighten us up.  With nothing in our diary until Wednesday or Thursday we left Sutton Cheney early this morning, watered and dumped rubbish at the wharf and intend cruising up to Market Bosworth before returning to Stoke Golding for the weekend.  The early stop here at the battlefield was to get in out of a very cold breeze (enough to chill the face muscles but not really strong enough to affect boat steering.)  But then we don't need excuses to take things easy!  Another cheering email from Ruth Tomlinson telling us that a start has been made on their boat, too.  She and husband David were doing odd jobs around the house last Friday when the phone went.  "It was the boatyard saying that if we would like to go down in two hours time we would see our baseplate being laid. Would we like?  We certainly would. We never thought that we could get excited about a sheet of metal being fork-lifted into a workshop - but we were. So we're off - at last."  The photograph they sent of the above ceremony brought back happy memories for us.  Will keep you up to date with developments.
February 5	Apart from a trip to Market Bosworth and a slow return to this mooring at Stoke Golding via Ashby Boats for diesel and gas top-ups, we have not had a very busy week and I have been torn between the thought that I should at least keep this diary reasonably up to date and a determination not to bore less-dedicated readers with constant repetition.   The weather has been mild and dry so that is hardly a topic worth development. I have at last seen a specialist who has confirmed there's nothing wrong with me (apart from growing older by the day) but that is definitely not worth expanding because people can take only so much about others' illnesses before impatience begins.  And our very few visits to local hostelries (we're cutting back until we start cruising the system again) have covered old, familiar territory.  Mind you, the flat Bass at the George and Dragon is still nectar.  The only point I would make about our swift and sympathetic treatment by both the local doctors' surgery and by specialists in Hinckley etc is that it should reassure those many would-be live-aboards who have emailed us and expressed worries about this aspect of life on the Cut.  We might have been lucky but wherever we have travelled in the last three years the NHS has never let us down.
February 11	I'm back.  After a four-day break staying with our friend Brian Parker in Ashford in the Water, I have come back to Snecklifter to find Liz coped perfectly well as a boat and dog-sitter, a role usually filled by me. She managed to feed the dogs and water them without me, ran the engine twice a day to top up batteries without me, got coal in from the cockpit without me.  Luckily she reckons she still needs me to steer the boat so I am not entirely redundant, yet.

I have not been without canine company, however. Pictured left is Storm, the four-year-old black labrador that Brian found to fill part of the hole left when Duke, his lovely St Bernard, died recently.  Storm is as marvellous as he looks, very affectionate, superbly trained and good company when Brian took advantage of my presence to take a long day out shopping in Manchester.    There were also friendships to renew with Joy and Clive Thrower, Linda Pelc and John Thorpe over a pint of Bass, and Linda drove me back to the boat on Wednesday, joining Liz and me for an excellent lunch at the Hercules Inn, Sutton Cheney.

	Anyway, it's back to normal this week with Liz taking off to see our son Jonathan in his new home in Norwich, leaving me with boat and dog duties for four days. If the weather is reasonably fine I might well take off myself, cruising up to Sutton Cheney and emptying rubbish etc, just to reinforce my superiority - if only in one single skill area of living aboard.  Meanwhile a number of encouraging emails have arrived.  Some of you at least still read this diary even when there is little new in it.  One of them, from Gerrard and Jane Cox of n.b. Belle, suggested that I outline future plans to fill the news gap.  Given a fair wind we intend leaving the Ashby mid-March and heading for Straford on Avon and Gloucester to visit Roger and Sue Morgan who keep their boat Ballard at Napton. We will then head back north to the Bridgewater via the Shroppie and the Middlewich arm which we missed last season, and then to the Macclefield and Peak Forest canal. Our plans also include taking the Anderton lift down to the Weaver, but that will depend on whether it's working properly. I would like to have gone the full route north to Gargrave and Skipton which featured so high in our first couple of months aboard but Liz says she can't face the Wigan flight again.  Gerrard and Jane - and their menagerie  - sound as though they are still enjoying their boating. "You may remember our young parrot," Gerrard wrote.  "Well he now has quite a vocal repertoire including singing songs taught by Jane and he loves going on the boat as it is constant company barking along with the dogs."  One other email worth quoting from, if only to make you all as envious as I am.  Keith and Stephanie Collins who we have met several times on their boat Definitive, now moored at Barton Turns, wrote from Tenerife where they are wintering: "Weather here is changeable - expecting temperature today to be around 20c  so a bit better than UK at the moment. We over-look the bay between La Gomera and Playa de San Juan and this morning it was a real pleasure to see dolphins frolicking in the bay."  Ah well, back to the moorhens and Canada geese for us.
February 17	Another routine week except for more emails to cheer the dark days, plus a cutting from the Hinckley Times sent to us by veterinary surgeon Terry Dunne who carried out the recent operation on Bess.  When Liz took Bess in for her 10-day check he asked if she minded his taking a photograph but we had no idea why until the cutting arrived at Sutton Cheney wharf. It can be seen on Bess in the News. Our thanks to him for sending the cutting but also for giving Bess a new lease of life.  Good news, too, about Liz's health - two specialists in two days have checked her out and all is well. We have the all clear to carry on cruising from mid-March and I will be issuing no further medical bulletins!  Several now-familiar boats have passed while we were at Stoke Golding and more recently at Dadlington - one of them Sarah-Kate with regular correspondents Mike and Jo Edwards (last seen at Atherstone in October).  They are having a few weeks on the Ashby during which we hope to introduce them to some of the delights of the local hostelries. We start tomorrow with lunch at the Hercules in Sutton Cheney.   Among the emails was a lengthy one from Frank Auffret that I felt was worth quoting in some detail because I receive a lot of queries about how we connect to the internet etc and I am by no means an expert.  I understand the GPRS system we use at the moment but not much else.    Frank wrote: "It's a while since I last sent you an email, but now that I have my own boat Midnight in the water I have been catching up on your cruising log. I spent 13 months fitting out and trying to keep the Internet business running in between woodwork, plumbing, painting and wiring but I eventually launched Midnight at Selby last August. Summer floods restricted cruising but I made Skipton before coming back to my moorings at Ripon on 1st September. Been there ever since but aching for the longer days so I can get down to York and beyond.    "Reading your troubles with Bluetooth prompted this email.  I used to connect through a laptop/mobile with similar issues, but recently bought a Vodafone red card - £150 and £20 per month for 5mbs (far too much even for a web developer), 1mb/month is less expensive  - can't remember how much - and very adequate if you remember my previous messages on image compression) ). I have seen a few offers recently so they are available a bit cheaper if you shop around. Installation was very easy and connection is very reliable and very fast in a 3G area otherwise it's GPRS (no noticeable difference between GPRS and a 56k dial up). Now that you have a laptop this is an option you may like to check out.    "On the subject of email, in particular, spam. One of the problems you have is that you publish your email address - and others' - on your website exposing them to those robotic harvesters. Once they get you it's time to change address. My last address was getting up to 1000 spams a day and even though I used Mailwasher (www.mailwasher.com) it was costing me half an hour each morning. One way to reduce the usual rubbish is to use an HTML web form with your email address hidden away in the script or better still in a text file above the root folder (I use PHP almost exclusively these days) and since affecting similar changes my new email address has attracted not one spammy message."  A second email a week or so later added "Just checked the Vodafone site and there's more options available now including a pre-pay card (which I must investigate further as an alternative to the £20 per month I currently pay)."   Frank is certainly right about periodic change of email address.  Regulars will have noticed I changed mine a couple of months back and receive virtually no spam at the moment.  The main contact email address published on the website, of course, is a holding address only and all correspondence is re-routed to my Yahoo address which is easily changed.
February 22	We have had a busy five days that have included two meals out - lunch with Mike and Jo Edwards of Sarah-Kate at the Hercules and then on Sunday an enjoyable meal with Derbyshire friends Lesley Swain and Alison Farthing at the George and Dragon. Suitably full of bonhomie we left Dadlington yesterday morning, took on diesel and gas at Ashby boats and then made our way up the canal through wind, snow, sleet, hailstones and rain (though not all at once) to this excellent rural mural near bridge 44, a short distance from the villages of Carlton and Congerstone. With stoppages for diesel and water, the journey took the best part of five hours and that's the longest we've done all winter.  If the weather is as icy as forecast, I'll hunker down for the next four or five days while Liz gets herself back to Derbyshire for some folk-singing and visits to old friends.  Future plans could now include tackling the Wigan flight, thanks to a couple of offers we'll find it difficult to resist. The first arrived from Pat Bycroft (within hours of my writing about Liz's reservations) offering to travel up the flight with us if her new boat is finished by then. She may be over-optimistic but it's the immediacy of the thought that matters and when I told her about it Liz was very touched - though whether she was persuaded remains to be seen. The second offer came from regular readers of this diary Liz Barman and Carl Gordon-Loveridge of Blackstone who we've met several times on the Cut but only in passing.  Liz wrote: "Carl and I are members of a group who regularly help our friends up and down the Wigan flight during the season. It's our favourite flight, we know every lock personally! You may remember meeting Keiran (from Grog Blossom) when you were on the Llangollen in September 2003 - he is part of our team and loves lock wheeling. If you want to cruise the Leeds Liverpool we (and Keiran) would love to help you up the locks (and back down again if you need us). We can only do weekends and we are not available when we are cruising or at August bank holiday as we will be at the Inland Waterways festival at Preston Brook. All we ask for are bacon butties and tea/coffee at the top! The Wigan flight is nowhere near as bad when you have a team to make sure that the next lock is set ready for you. It took us 6 hours to go up the flight on our own one year, but when the lock team are out it usually takes no more than 3 hours."  The bacon butties are the least we can offer in face of such generosity but even if we don't take them up on it we hope to see Liz and Carl on the Bridgewater - their home canal - when we should have time to stop and chat for more than just a few minutes.  And we are certain to meet up in person with Pat and Mike Bycroft when their boat is launched.  Their emails have been a central part of our three years cruising.  Finally, some great news from Susan and Dave Lane on Plodder.  Their daughter Christine is going to make them grandparents later this year (September/October) and as you'll see from pix I have taken of them over the last year or so they are so young!