archivemarchapril06

March 2	The weather has turned suddenly wintry this week, trapping us for a few days at the Stumps where we spent the weekend with our son Jonathan, his partner Jenny and our gorgeous grand-daughter Sienna. It's the first time I've seen her since November when she was only 10 days old and she's grown tremendously, especially in personality, responding to us as individuals rather than as blurred images in her peripheral vision. They bravely drove for six hours from Norwich to spend Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday morning with us before setting off back in the early afternoon. They stayed the night at a hotel in Prestbury (we thought it wiser they didn't sleep on *Snecklifter* with two dogs aboard - at least until Sienna is a few years older). Happily they arrived early enough on Saturday to see our good friend Brian Parker from Ashford in the Water who brought his marvellous black labrador Storm to spend the day with us. Neither Jenny nor Sienna batted an eyelid at three dogs milling around their feet. (Pictures of them all can be seen on Latest pictures and Sienna's page
	By Tuesday thick ice had returned to the canal so I delayed moving the boat to Higher Poynton to take on water. The ice cleared late afternoon but was back yesterday so I stayed at our excellent mooring at the Stumps until mid-morning when a brave boater came crashing past us, breaking the ice and encouraging me to cruise as far as Adlington. The noise of broken ice under the prop and the thought of returning to Adlington if there were no spaces at Poynton made me decide to go no further and, besides, this was a good spot for Elizabeth who had driven straight from work to a singing gig in Derbyshire. She was able to park the car safely and walk on roadway rather than dark towpath. Today there's ice again, not thick but covered with a sprinkling of snow so I have no intention of moving yet. If things improve tomorrow I'll take the boat for water and perhaps stay at Poynton over the weekend when Liz is away once more - visiting our old boating friends Coby and Henk in their Coventry flat.
March 6	It's nearly 10.30 am and for the last hour I've been sitting at the table staring out at the snow dropping on the widest part of the canal at Higher Poynton - and then flying back up again. An optical illusion, of course, because the water is so still it's reflecting the falling flakes, but it's still an hypnotic sight. Fortunately we are no hurry to move, even though the towpath beside us is very muddy. Over the weekend it has been frozen most of the time and as you'll see from the photographs of George Boyle and his wife Irene on Latest pictures the wide section here has been very picturesque.

March 15

Spent most of the week at Poynton and then cruised to Adlington on Saturday morning in time for a brief chat with Simon and Rachael Hillyer on Berwyn Newydd who had stayed the night there before returning to base at New Mills. They had emailed a week or so earlier to ask about ice on the canal before they set off on a week's cruise. We then set about preparing for an evening visit from Lucy Sendall and Steve Clark who live on Serendipity in Lyme View marina. We had invited them to a meal as a small thank-you for their help while we were still in the marina, especially keeping an eye on our boat while we were away at Christmas and the New Year and lighting our stove a couple of days before we returned. Liz cooked one of her marvellous lasagnes (accompanied by salad and garlic bread) and we followed that with chocolate cake and some of Lucy's delicious home-made biscuits. The company was good, the conversation ranged around all aspects of boats and boating and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

High winds then kept us pinned at Adlington until Tuesday morning when I took advantage of a short lull to cruise back to Poynton where I tied up in gusting wind, helped by above-mentioned Steve who had walked the towpath with his three dogs. While he held the stern rope I whipped down into the back cabin to pick up a mooring hook, managed to dislodge our folding trolley which is stored behind the rear steps and as I hurried back up them the steps moved back and deposited me on the floor of the cabin, luckily on my feet and without graze or other damage, The first time in four years that's happened and of course there had to be a witness - the story of most of my mistakes in my boating career! Overnight, the weather has worsened, with constant rain last night that turned the towpath into a series of almost-linked puddles, but we are in no hurry to move.

Meanwhile, we've been trying to absorb the awful news about Heron Boats and their apparent closure. We had been told about the problems a week or so ago but friends who were having new boats built at Heron had asked me to hold back on commenting in case it exacerbated the problems. I didn't really believe it would but decided to keep quiet for a while. Now it seems as though the worst has happened and the news of their closure has been on the internet for a while. It's a tragedy for the company and for its customers. Heron have never been good at keeping to promised deadlines (our boat took seven months instead of the scheduled three) but they have built many fine narrowboats and we have always been pleased with Snecklifter. We can only hope that things are resolved swiftly for friends and others who have boats unfinished at Mirfield.

Postscript : Shortly after posting the above I received the following email from Gary Peacock, Marketing Director at Ledgard Bridge Boat Company:

"With the sad demise of Heron we have taken on the completion of a couple of boats that were on the water unfinished and transported a third completed one. We also managed to find jobs for a few of their former staff. If any of your friends with part built boats require any advice or assistance we will be pleased to try and offer any help we can. Although we were only half a mile from Heron we were never really in direct competition and it is a shame to see another boat builder fold with the loss of peoples' livelihoods that causes. I just hope that not too many customers will lose money. The three we have dealt with so far have been reasonably fortunate but their boats were complete or fairly near."

Gary can be contacted on 01924 491441 or http://www.ledgardbridge-boatcompany.com/

March 29

The failure to update this website over the last week is not down to coyness or even laziness. Admittedly there has not been much to write about except the weather, especially on Monday when I took on water at Higher Poynton in spite of strong wind and then cruised to High Lane where I could turn without endangering other boats. The trouble was that on my return journey to Poynton I was travelling into the wind and the rain grew more and more dense, lashing into my face and making the 30 or 40 minute trip one of the worst I have experienced on the Cut. Never again! We had already been at the Poynton mooring for over a week but another day or so there was unavoidable. This morning the rain cleared, the wind dropped and I was aware of the sun vaguely in the background so I brought the boat back to the Stumps as soon as Liz had left for work.

No, the reason for my silence will be familiar to regular readers : I had yet another computer crash and it has taken me several days to get it running with a new hard drive. The old files for the website were lost, of course, so I have had to backload from the internet and slowly rebuild the pages and material added since my last backup in February. I know. I tell everyone else to backup regularly and fail to do it myself. In future all data is going to be saved on an external drive so I can disconnect it if anything goes wrong and then reload when Windows is sorted out. If anyone out there spots a serious error - missing picture or whatever - please let me know.

The main news on this first day of our fifth year is about our future plans. The changes in the home page blurb will already have alerted the observant to our decision to continue on the boat for another two full seasons and two more winters. After that, in early 2008 we plan to move back to live in Derbyshire, where we hope to rent somewhere away from that county's well-known honeytraps. The boat will be sold in time - we hope - for the 2008 season. The decision about the timing is more Elizabeth's than mine but I can't really argue with her conviction that it's best to make the move while we are both still fit enough to choose the right moment. I would happily stay on board for at least another four years - the first four have been marvellous - but Liz is worried about illness forcing us to pack it in at an inconvenient time.

More immediately, we stay on the Macc until the end of April for Liz to finish her part-time work contract and then head south through the Harecastle to the Staffs and Worcs and down the Severn where we hope to meet an old schoolfriend of mine from South Wales. Then we head up the Avon to Stratford and back to the Ashby to spend a month or more during the height of the summer. We had intended to start our journey at the end of this month by heading north to Middlewich and then down the Shroppie but the shorter route through the tunnel should make up for much of our "lost" month. If we return to the Macc next winter we will, of course, come back via the Shroppie which we both love so much.

April 5

Although George didn't make it with Alton at the weekend (he emailed to warn us that he had engine trouble), we stayed on at Adlington rather longer than intended - the rain and wind convinced us that moving on for the sake of it would have been shortsighted. But early Monday there was another break in the weather so we turned at the marina and cruised back to the Stumps where we have settled until the weekend when George will almost certainly be on the move again and able to top up our diesel and coal supplies. Besides, the sun has shone for most of the last couple of days and heavy frosts overnight have made the muddy sections of the towpath a little more tolerable. If the rain holds off for a while the path should dry out completely.

The other noticeable change this week has been the dramatic increase in the number of hire and share boats on the move. A few had ventured forth last week but they are now coming past us in pairs at regular intervals. The season has started and we are still here in winter quarters. But that will change over the next three weeks as Elizabeth's job comes to an end and we move closer to Bosley locks to make our getaway at the end of the month. In the meantime we are still receiving lots of emails from boaters new and old, including a surprise and very welcome missive from Vicki and Ian Harley on Pem No 6 who we met in our early months on the Cut and have seen only briefly in passing since then (more detail in my next update).

Among the other interesting ones were these:

Steve, Julia and James of Even Balance wrote: "Just thought we'd introduce you to the newest member of the Cory/Bacon family. She's an 11 week old Cairn terrier called Jess. We've had her for two weeks and she has become very much part of the family very quickly! On the evening we got her she walked into the house,had a quick look round and immediately started playing. Her first boating experience will be in the Easter hols when we plan to spend 10 days heading down towards Braunston and onto the GU."

We think she's an absolute delight. But then we are dog-daft!

Neville Wells in Derby sent this shortly before setting off on a cruise later this week: "That is excellent news about your extended stay on the waters. Maybe an ownerships type scheme would be useful when you sell Snecklifter, for those times when the pull to the cut is too great to ignore? I can't imagine how it would feel going back to a house after six years in a 58ft by 7ft home. I know when we have been on Sylph for just a couple of weeks the house feels large on returning (it's the loos I miss when I'm on the boat. Strange but the sound of a flushing lav seems right somehow!) Sylph is situated just above the Lapworth Flight on the northern section of the Stratford Canal at Swallow cruises this year so we will have some interesting new waters to visit. We went on her in mid-February for our wedding anniversary, just a long weekend on our own. The space felt much more fit for two than the norms 4 or 6 we cruise with. The canal iced over on the first night and we were woken by a game boater ice-breaking for the rest of us to follow. What a noise it made as the boat came past. We cruised down to Napton and walked up to the church on the hill to get the fine views. All in all a great weekend, and we did our first wide locks (A question - when entering & exiting do you open both gates or just one - we started with both but opted for just one as we got more accustomed to the locks. Also we learnt to open the boat side paddle to fill - is this right as it seemed to hold the boat more steady.)" It certainly worked for us, Nev. We never open two if one will do.

And finally from Cassandra Wade and her partner Mike Booth who live in Dukinfield, Cheshire : "Just a quick email to say we are still following you. We cheat a little bit though; I tend to leave it for a while and then print a whole batch off and read it all in one go. I’m impatient and like to know what’s going to happen next. I think that’s why I don’t like soaps… or could it be because they are naff! When we first thought about moving onto a narrow boat as live-aboards we heard about your web site and read it non-stop for about a week. Now, more than a year on, we have finally started to move towards it. We have sold Mike's house and mine is under offer so we have been up to Liverpool Boats and put our deposit down. Also we had a trek up to Rufford to the new marina opposite Fettlers wharf on the Rufford arm off the Leeds-Liverpool and have secured our moorings. It seems like it's all going so fast now. We haven’t read any of your news for the last six months so I’m printing them off and having a Sneck Fest! P.S.We are calling our boat Argy-bargy so watch out for us 6/9 months time." We're looking forward to it, Cassandra.

April 7

There's a news story in today's Yorkshire Post about the collapse of Heron Boats and the devastating impact it has had on the dozen or more boat owners who have paid out a lot of money for work not completed. And yesterday I had another email from Roy Buckland who has been keeping us in touch with developments to say his boat is now safely at Ledgard Bridge so I can feel free to comment without making matters worse. From the start, our good friends from Australia, Audrone Berzanskas and Richard Dyason have been telephoning us regularly and have visited us twice over the last month or so - and I know they have been going through hell. Thankfully, however, in the last couple of days Audrone has sounded much better and has even been able to laugh over the phone. Roy has demonstrated his sense of humour by heading his emails with "the great heron Boat escape" and signing off as a member of the "Heron survivors club". It's been remarkable to see how bravely they have all coped - I'm not sure that I wouldn't have been seriously ill if our build had gone so badly wrong.

Talking about "ill", I've been down with a heavy cold the last couple of days, not enough to disable me but sufficiently contagious for Liz to ring our Shroppie boating friends Chris and Dave Owen-Roberts to postpone their visit to us tomorrow - at least we'll be travelling towards their area in a month's time so we should see them then. In the meanwhile I hope I'm okay to greet George Boyle on Alton. He emailed to say that Alton 's engine sprang back to life on Wednesday and will be with us this weekend.

Finally, a postscript to my computer crash saga. One of the programs I lost was Diskeeper which I had paid for and downloaded from the internet a week or so before losing everything on my hard drives. Foolishly I had not backed the software on to a cd rom and when I went back to emails looking for the link to download it again I couldn't find it in Yahoo's archives*. It was not just the lost money I regretted. Diskeeper was recommended to me as a much better way of defragmenting hard drives than Windows own version and I had been so impressed with a trial version I gladly paid for the full home edition. Anyway, two days after thinking it was lost, a routine follow up email came from Rachel Gamble at Diskeeper asking if I was happy with the way the software worked and had I any problems with it etc. I wrote back immediately, explained the position, gave the number of our receipt from the financial company handling the sale and hoped for the best. Within half a working day a reply came from customer services manager Leah Johnson giving me a new link. It worked. And so does Diskeeper. Thank you, Rachel and Leah.

* But I still can't understand why the first email vanished from the archives. Even though I saved a copy of it to one of my troublesome drives, the original should still be up there in the Yahoo ether. Shouldn't it?

April 12

Our front page shows us still at the Stumps but we have been on the move since the last update, cruising to Adlington for an overnight stop and then to Higher Poynton for water, rubbish bins etc. I brought the boat back here late this morning and we'll settle down (out of the mainstream) while the Easter boaters get on with their holiday travelling. Another couple of weeks and we'll be on our way as well.

There's not much news but plenty of emails to report on. The first of them must be the "missing" one from our friends Vicki and Ian Harley on Pem No 6 - mentioned above in the April 5 entry. It suddenly showed up in our inbox a couple of weeks after it had apparently been transmitted and I found it only by chance. "We have finally bowed to technology & are in contact with the outside world!" wrote Vicki. "It is quite scary. It's five years since I retired & eight years since Ian did, so the brain cells aren't quite as sharp as they used to be! In fact, they seem to be dying by the thousand at an alarming rate. I did think I wasn't bothered that we weren't on the internet but having undertaken my new, all-absorbing hobby of genealogy, it became increasing difficult to proceed. Going to the library is OK but is not always convenient when I fancy doing some work on a rainy, winter afternoon in the middle of nowhere. On my visits to the library, I have kept my eye on your website, to see what you have both been up to! After spending the last two winters in Kings Marina in Newark near Nottingham, this has been our first winter "out on the cut". It has certainly been different. I loved being at Newark & made so many new friends. My family lives there, it is a lovely market town with all amenities so to go days without seeing another has been quite hard. We have spent last year & the winter around Tamworth, the Ashby, the Coventry canal & Braunston. We haven't done much cruising as we have been trying to catch up on some maintenance jobs. Ian has painted the outside of the boat. Quite a big job for someone who has never attempted such an undertaking. He has made a wonderful job & she looks lovely. The signwriting is still to be done but that is a job for better weather. We are going to Oxford & the Thames later in the year. Hope we can now keep in touch electronically!" Vicki, Ian & Bella & Tia, the boxer dogs.

Two regular email correspondents have contacted us - another entertaining read from Sarah Levick of Arcadia which I have reprinted almost in full in From Our Friends and two shorter but equally welcome messages from Rose Philpott on Tickly Two on the K & A. (Her early days are charted on Rose Afloat. In her first email Rose writes: "We are having the sides of our boat coachpainted with its new name and our names. We are going to have the writing in red panels leaving the rest in its original Oxford Blue. It will look so different and then will have our stamp on it. The bottom has been blacked the week before last and we have replaced the fenders as well. The yard said we have a well-made boat and the hull is in very good condition, .... credit to Heron...... so sad they have folded. Like you we have noticed an increase in traffic and the hire boats are out and about. It is nice to see others passing by. We were thrilled by the number of times we saw the kingfisher in the early Spring and now a swan is nesting just a short distance from us. Last year she did not have a brood despite sitting so she might be in luck this time."

In her follow-up Rose adds:"Just to say that we have returned from our weekend on the boat and the fire has packed up again. We were breathing clouds of condensation out of our nostrils and mouths from under the quilt! My son came to the boat for the first time - he was feeling guilty as we had had her a year and he had not seen her. Now he is smitten and cannot wait until he can come again. Trouble is, he is a weekend sportsman, but this year he is not captain of the cricket club so can give up a weekend or two. We went along the canal to the Barge Inn at Honey Street where there was a blues guitarist playing and a great atmosphere. The sun shone and we were without coats - a real treat, but by the time our roast chicken was ready and we were snug below it was pouring with rain."

As I said above, the main email from Sarah Levick can be read elsewhere but I must answer here two questions she asked about our plans to end our journeying in a couple of year. They worried me a little: "Is it just about making the move at the right time for you? Or are you seeing or experiencing things that make you think differently about the cut?" The answer is emphatically yes to the first question. Life is still good on the Cut and no-one planning to make the move should think our decision means that conditions for liveaboards are deteriorating in any way. This is especially important for other regular correspondents like Dot and Derek Canvin. "We are in the process of packing up our life in New Zealand for the next four or five years and coming over to live on Gypsyrover from October (only 6 months to go). A lot of our inspiration has come from you guys," Dot writes.

In their turn, emails like her's and many others mentioned elsewhere have helped inspire us as well, especially in keeping this website going. Liz and I look forward to meeting the Canvins in the next 18 months or so.

April 17

Almost the end of another Easter holiday and we've managed to get through it without going anywhere or doing anything extra-special. This is a tradition dating back to the early years of our marriage when Liz and I decided Bank holidays were not the time to be out on the road in a car or, now, moving on the canal in a narrowboat. Plenty of others are doing it. There has been a stream of boats past us while we have settled down in front of the snooker, walked the dogs or entertained visitors. Yesterday Lucy Sendall and Steve Clark from Serendipity who were so helpful to us in Lyme View marina stopped for an hour or two for coffee/tea and some tasty croissants provided by Lucy. This time they brought their three dogs Mary, Paddy and Dinah who settled down in our cockpit and were no trouble once they'd had a few doggie treats. (They can all be seen on Latest pictures ). Today we had another short visit from folk-singer friends Geoff and Kath Deighton from Derbyshire who had spent the long weekend at Poynton Folk Festival. And the one disappointment was that Audrone Berzanskas and Richard Dyason had to cancel their visit on Saturday because Richard was not well, no surprise after all they have gone through in the last month or so.

Later this week we will return to Poynton to water etc and then will turn south and slowly make our way to Bosley locks to head down them as soon as Liz finishes work on April 27. Meanwhile there are some new pictures on Sienna's page for those who can't resist - there's a small taster to the right!

P.S. I have just received an email from Dawn Stead who asked me to link to her Canal Interactive site on http://www.freewebs.com/canalinteractive/. I agree with every word in her coverage of the Heron collapse and have added her site (a forum for liveaboards) to my Links page.

April 23

After a short weekend stay at Poynton when we took on water, a gas cylinder and rendezvoused with George on Alton for the last time this winter we have come back to Adlington where tomorrow we are meeting two friends from Ashford in the Water - Brian Parker and Ken Purser. Ken is recovering well from a stroke but can't walk huge distances so this mooring close to the road that leads into Lyme View marina is perfect for him. We'll have lunch at the Miners and, depending on the weather, we'll move down to the Stumps for one night and then on Tuesday I will take the boat the eight miles down to Gurnett Aqueduct, poised for our getaway on Friday.

The trip up to Poynton on Friday was a memorable one, for me at least. The other principal in the drama probably won't remember a thing.

As I brought Snecklifter under bridge 16 I spotted a lamb in the water, unable to clamber back up the metal pilings on the farm side of the canal. I cut the engine immediately and drifted slowly as the lamb began to swim towards me, spluttering and disappearing beneath the water every few feet. Three or four times I tried to grab it as it floated around the stern and eventually as it bobbed around under the fender I caught it's ear and hauled it on board. Amazingly it showed no fear, just stood there shaking the water off as I sent Bess below. I then drifted over to the pilings and as soon I got close enough, lifted the lamb under its sides and gently threw it on to the thick tufted grass. Within seconds it was suckling at its mother and I was trying to suck the stern free of the mud. We floated away comparatively easily, however, and I finished the journey in high spirits - it's not often these days I get a chance to do my St Michael of Assissi bit (usually have to be satisfied with M&S).

The trip down from Adlington was the longest I've done since we settled on the Macc for winter - three and a half hours from setting off to settling down after mooring - and, of course, I had to travel alone. This was no hardship in the sense that there were no bridges or locks to tackle but I'll be glad to have Liz back aboard again from this afternoon - and not only to make cups of tea. (I managed with a flask this time).

As I pulled in to the long metal piling moorings at Lyme Green I spotted a boat with a familiar name - Jalizcazane - and was quickly hailed by Jack and Anne Day who had emailed me a few times before their boat started building at Heron. They both come from the Rotherham area so we had plenty to say about Sheffield, South Yorkshire and the boating they have done over the last couple of years. They can be seen on Well Met on the Cut.

April 28

After six months of near-idleness on the higher reaches of the Macclesfield we have left winter quarters behind and travelled at an amazing pace down to Kent Green bridge - amazing for us, I mean. We moored last night a couple of bridges above Bosley locks, left this morning before 6.30, entered the top lock at 6.50 and were out of lock 12 in little more than an hour and a half. We were lucky, of course. Most of the locks were set for us from the previous evening and the last four were set by a helpful relief lock-keeper, Bernard, who usually does the joinery work on the section.

Anyway, the sun was shining, it was still early when we reached Congleton so we kept going and were moored at Kent Green in time to walk to the Rising Sun for a lunchtime sandwich and a pint of Pedigree - a pub we discovered on our way up the canal last year and enjoy visiting for the quality of its beer and food and for the friendliness of its staff. We even had time for an hour's snooze before our good friends Sue and David Lane of Plodder with their daughter Kimberley called in for tea and coffee on their back to Manchester after a holiday in Nottinghamshire.

Tomorrow we plan another early start and hope to be well on our way up Heartbreak Hill by mid-morning. Yes, readers with keen eyes and good memories will notice here that we are no longer heading directly south through Harecastle tunnel. We thought about it again and again and decided that we had time to take the longer, prettier route. Hence the temporary need for speed. Be assured, we'll back to our slower pace as soon as we get anywhere near the Severn.

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