Five reasons a house is better than a boat. And five reasons a boat is better than a house

We have spent the week travelling the Leeds and Liverpool canal across West Lancashire, finishing up in Reedley Marina, near Burnley. We have moored in a marina because it is a safe place to leave the boat while we spend ten days back up in Scotland. Despite spending more than half the year living on our narrowboat, we still own a house for the winter months and have returned to get a few jobs done. I have a dental appointment, a blood test and a big birthday to celebrate.

Narrowboat Thuis in Reedley Marins

Arriving back at the house has made me think of the five things I prefer, living in bricks and mortar to on the water:

1. A house is so much bigger. On a boat we have to think carefully before acquiring anything because the space is so limited

2. Our house has a bath. The shower on the boat is great and after a day’s boating the water is toasty warm, but I do like a long soak in the evening.

3. When things break it is usually less catastrophic. There are things I need to fix around the house but they are not critical. When I reversed the narrowboat into a wall this week, the rudder was knocked from the “cup” it sits in and the whole boat became unsteerable. Fortunately my son Martin was with us, and jumped into the canal to reseat it.

4. We have a car in the drive. When we are on our long cruises we don’t use our car because it is simply too difficult to keep moving the car to be near the boat. This may be better for the environment, but it does make things more difficult when we need to get anywhere away from the canal.

5. The full fibre broadband to our house is super fast. We do like to have fast internet, for browsing or streaming. On the boat we have three different mobile networks on our phones and the wifi router to try to make sure we have good access, but sometimes in cuttings and out of town, it can be a problem.

There are also good reasons that living on a narrowboat is better than living in a house.

1. Life on a boat is simpler. We don’t have so much “stuff” and we have learnt that we don’t need it. We shop locally. We talk about simple things such as where we are going tomorrow, and what to have for tea.

2. The views are stunning. Our house is on a Main Street with road noise. Our boat can be in a different mooring every day, Last week we passed through some pretty run down industrial canals in Blackburn and Burnley, but we still found one of the prettiest moorings between the two towns, on an embankment, next to a golf course, with incredible views across to the Pennines.

3. Exercise is part of our lives. We don’t have to think about needing to go to the gym or for a run. After 21 locks, we are pretty exhausted and it feels good.

4. The dogs are more settled. Lulu in particular, runs around the house sniffing at walls and barking at pigeons. On the boat she just jumps onto the sofa next to Mandy, and cuddles.

5. The community on the canals and rivers is more friendly. We have good neighbours in Scotland, but travelling along, locking together or just meeting people on the towpath, everyone wants to help, everyone has a story to tell. By nature I am pretty antisocial, but not when we are on the boat.

I guess we are very lucky to have the house and a narrowboat. But if I had to choose, I would choose living on a boat. It is a good life.

0

And the ducklings have arrived!

One of our delights when narrowboating is to see the many baby birds on the canals and rivers. Ducklings, Cygnets, Goslings, Cooties (baby Coots), and other chicks all arrive during our Spring travels. One thing I have never understood is why they all arrive at the same time. Two weeks ago we had seen none – just a few birds on nests. Then last week we began to see cooties and this week the canal is full of ducklings.

This family seem to prefer not to swim

I understand the benefits to the birds of young growing up as the weather warms up, but why do they all arrive in such a short space of time? In three weeks time there will be no more new ducklings, but lots of goslings and cygnets.

When I lived in a house, I was largely oblivious to seasons. Apart from it being cold in winter and hot in summer, I did not notice the changes. On the boat we see so much more. As well as ducklings, this has been the week for bluebells and wild garlic. The sides of the canals that were bare when we headed into Liverpool are now festooned with the flowers.

And May will bring a big seasonal change for me, when the jeans go back into the wardrobe, and the shorts come out. Those first few weeks with the pale white legs will be scarier than any wild birds.

0

Enjoying Liverpool

Usually when we are on our big narrowboat trips we have a couple of days off each week, when we don’t move the boat, and either do “jobs” or chill out. But this week we decided to take six days off and moor in Liverpool docks.

Mooring here is one of the wonders of the waterways. The docks were designed for great ocean going ships and so our narrowboat is dwarfed by the high docksides and massive bollards.

To get here we came down four locks from the main canal, and then steered through about six historic docks, passing many famous landmarks of Liverpool.

While here I have done a number of tourist things, including visiting both cathedrals, a stately home, and the houses where John Lennon and Paul McCartney grew up.

We also got to spend time with our niece Zoë and her new fiancé Guy. Zoë helped us on the journey here.

I think the thing I have enjoyed the most is just being moored quietly in the very centre of one of England’s great cities.

Thanks for a great week Liverpool. We will be back.

0

What do you need if you have an empty pound?

On a canal, the length of water between two locks is called a “pound”. On a lock flight this might be three or four boat lengths long. Sometimes it might be shorter. There is a pound on the Staffs & Worcester canal that is just a few feet long (there is a side pound where all the water goes when you empty the top lock). There are “long pounds” on canals that are very flat. For instance last week we had a forty mile pound on the Bridgewater.

Once or twice a year we find a pound is empty. Last year there was a mile long empty pound near Gloucester after a hire boater went through the bottom lock one evening and left all the paddles up. The year before we grounded in a pound overnight on the Aylesbury canal because of leaky lock gates. This week we have faced three separate empty pounds. The first was about a mile long in Wigan, caused by vandals. The second was about half a mile on the Rufford arm, caused by a lazy boater leaving paddles up. The third was a short planned “dewatering” by the Canal & River Trust (CRT) in order to inspect blocked culverts.

So what do you need when faced by an empty pound? The first and most obvious thing is a lot of water. Somehow you need to fill the canal back up to at least four feet in depth. If you think the canal is maybe twenty feet wide, and the pound is maybe half a mile long, that is an awful lot of water. You have to bring that water down from higher in the canal, maybe using bywaters that go around some locks, and sometimes by opening paddles on the locks themselves.

The second thing you need is time. You need to fill that water without draining the pounds higher up. For this reason, CRT prefer the work to be done by their staff rather than boaters. A short pound may take just an hour or two to fill, but the Wigan and Rufford problems this week took a day each.

The third thing you may need is special equipment. On our boat we carry a windlass to open lock paddles, a CRT key to open water points and swing bridges, and an anti-vandal key to open the handcuff locks used to prevent bad people causing trouble. CRT staff can remove other padlocks and open special paddles to let in water from other sources such as rivers and reservoirs. Again this has to be done very carefully to prevent flooding.

By far the most important thing you need is patience. There is no point getting cross about what has happened. It won’t help. There is no point trying to get through before the water has fully filled, because you will get stuck. Instead, we just wait it out, and look for the best. In Wigan I found a nice local butcher that I would have missed. In Rufford we just moored up and watched a couple of films.

If you are in a hurry on a narrowboat, you have chosen the wrong lifestyle. We are lucky enough to be retired. For us, narrowboating is not just about the wonderful places we go. It is about the journey to get there – however long that takes.

0

Why don’t black people drive narrowboats?

As a privileged white man I may be on dangerous ground asking this question but I really don’t understand why there aren’t more black and Asian people on the canals.

On the Bridgewater Canal this week

Narrowboating is a pretty inclusive pastime. In general there is a great deal of diversity. We meet really rich people and incredibly poor. There are probably equal numbers of men and women (even if some of the men are dinosaurs). There are probably more LBGTQ people on the canal network than in “real life”. Narrowboats are not normally designed for wheelchairs, but there are charities all over the country who have converted boats and arrange boating holidays and trips for people with all kinds of disability.

So why is it so white?

I am guessing it is simply a self fulfilling prophesy. People of colour see only white people on boats and so it is not something they consider as something for them.

So all I can do is to keep talking to the people I meet on the towpath and sell why I think narrowboating is for everyone. We have a great community of boaters here in the UK and it would be even better if it were not just white.

0

What is it like to be on a boat for six months?

And we’re off! We have made several short trips already this year, but this week we set off on our narrowboat for the next six months. This is our fourth year since retirement and our fourth year of boating all summer. The first year was in the North of England, the second in the South. Last year we travelled the westerly canals and rivers – Shropshire Union, Llangollen, Montgomery, Trent and Mersey, Macclesfield, Peak Forest, Staffordshire and Worcester, River Severn, Gloucester and Sharpness, River Avon, Stratford, Birmingham and Fazeley, Coventry and Ashby canals.

The obvious thing would be to head east this year, but the canal network is not so good on that side of the country so we have decided to complete a few more of the canals we have not travelled before, while picking up some of our “greatest hits”.

This week we journeyed up from our winter base in Stone, through the very long Harecastle Tunnel, and down 25 locks of heartbreak hill in a day. We are now travelling through the very flat and very beautiful Cheshire Plain. Over the next six months we plan to moor in Liverpool docks, cross the Pennines on the curly wurlys, travel through the Happy Valley, revisit the history of Bugsworth Basin and maybe go on a steam train next to the Caldon Canal. From there our plans are more fluid and that is part of the adventure.

People often ask us how we cope living in such a confined space for six months. Sometimes we see hire boaters having massive rows as they are not used to being on top of each other even for a week. But Mandy, the dogs and I have found our happy rhythm. We don’t try to go too far each day. We empathise when someone makes a mistake driving the boat – we all do it. I am happy for Mandy to sit in a quiet corner doing her cross stitch. She is happy for me to dash off to find a stately home or a roman fort.

I think we are very privileged to enjoy this life and am really looking forward to the next six months. I love retirement.

0

I miss having kids

We spent a day with our niece and her children, Fred and Thomas, this week near St Andrews. After what seems like months of solid rain, we were lucky enough to get some sunshine, and we visited a beautiful garden and a dramatic beach.

It was such a good day. The boys are about six months and nearly three years old, so full of energy and character. I have always loved children. My wife and I were married young and had children straight away. We really wanted them, and also wanted the freedom of them leaving home when we were still relatively young. That worked out well and we have been able to enjoy the life as narrowboaters, travelling around the UK, without worrying about children at school or university,

However, sometimes I do miss having kids around the house (or boat). For a number of reasons I think it is unlikely we will have grandchildren, so we make the most of great nephews and nieces, like Fred and Thomas. And we still enjoy time with our sons and nearly daughter in law, even though they are now in their twenties and thirties, so hardly the same!

I bet if we did have kids again, we would soon find them tiring and would miss our freedom. Maybe we should borrow some 🙂

0

Why is it so hard to take a picture of a kingfisher?

During many years of travelling on a narrowboat, I must have tried to photograph a kingfisher a hundred times. We see them on the side of the canal quite frequently. A flash of blue against the brown or green. But for some reason they are really hard to photograph. They seem to know what they are doing because quite often they will sit quietly on a branch until I reach in my pocket for my phone. As soon as I look at the screen they are gone, either disappearing completely, or teasing me by flying ahead of the boat to find another perch.

So this week I was delighted to find a bird that remained still long enough for me to get a series of pictures.

I know they aren’t great – too blurry. We meet a number of bird watchers along the canals. They tell me that I am doing it wrong. I should sit quietly with a huge camera on a tripod, and wait for the bird to come to me. A great kingfisher photo can take days or weeks of waiting. I am just too impatient for that.

I did find a better way to get a kingfisher photo a couple of years ago. I met someone on a towpath that had just taken a picture and she kindly shared with me.

Now that is a kingfisher!

2

Should I wear hearing aids to reduce the risk of dementia?

My Dad died with Alzheimer’s in February 2022. I miss him but I do not miss his last few years, when he was a shell, who knew nothing and nobody. It is a horrible disease. Understandably I worry about getting older myself and look for signs of memory loss. I forget the names of people I know well, and sometimes I mix up words. For instance I might look for a “mooring space” for my car.

This week I was given the opportunity to join a research study about healthy people who might get Alzheimer’s in the future. They took my blood and have sent it to California to get the latest testing for signs of p-tau217, a protein which indicates the formation of amyloids in the brain, believed to be the cause of Alzheimer’s. If the test is positive, I will then go on to get MRI scans of my brain and then either an experimental drug or a placebo to see the results. They will also check my blood DNA to look for a particular gene which increases the chance of the disease.

Whatever the results, I will learn something and will help the research which is likely to help many others in the future.

Attending the clinic also reminded me about hearing aids. I have quite bad hearing at high frequencies but normal hearing at middle and low frequencies. Two years ago I tried out private hearing aids to see if they would help. They were expensive and I did not get much benefit so I gave up on them. But my hearing has deteriorated so I went this week to pick up some NHS aids. The doctor told me that many people give up far too soon, and that I should wear them every day for at least eight weeks before coming to any conclusions. She also said that latest research shows that wearing hearing aids can reduce the risk of dementia.

So that is what i am doing. Three days in to wearing them and so far so good. The world does sound a little hissy and scratchy because I am not used to the high pitched sounds yet, but I will persevere. And if it helps with my brain, so much for the better.

What do you think about what I am doing? Does it make sense, or after my father, am I just understandably paranoid?

0

The best time of year to get a quiet mooring

We stayed this week at Tixall Wide. This is one of the loveliest moorings on the British canal network. Most canals are just wide enough for two boats to pass. Digging more would have been a waste of money. But when the Staffordshire and Worcester Canal was built, a rich landowner, Thomas Clifford, would only let the canal cross his land if it was dug to look like a lake, fitting in with his gardens that had recently been developed by famous gardener Capability Brown.

Narrowboat Thuis moored in Tixall Wide this week

Tixall Wide is really very beautiful and because of that gets very full. During peak season you need to arrive in the morning or you stand little chance of getting a space to moor. Even in the winter it is pretty full because it is a good place to wait out the cold weather, in walking distance of Great Haywood junction where you can get water and a bit of shopping.

But this time of year is the best to get a great mooring. Most of the winter moorers have moved on or are in marinas, and the hire boat season has not yet started. We were extra lucky this year because Tixall Wide had work done on a drainage culvert over winter, and so was not open to anyone. So this week we were moored with just three other boats. It was wonderfully quiet, and properly dark at night, with no light pollution. The moon and stars seemed so bright.

It is the earliest in the year that we have been travelling on the narrowboat since I retired and in all honesty, it is a little too cold and wet when steering the boat. In a few weeks it will be warmer and more civilised. But the big benefit is the peace. And when we are sitting in the boat with the stove keeping us toasty warm, it is a lovely place to be.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑