Tag: peace

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.

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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.

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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.

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How to deal with a bad day?

I am naturally positive. My instinct is always to see the best out of everything and to look for opportunities in adversity. Indeed, when I was working I would sometimes be criticised because I would not spend enough time on “what went wrong?” because I was always looking for “what can we do now?”.

But even positive people occasionally have bad days, and Wednesday was one of them for me.

Two things went badly wrong. The first was the dentist. I had an appointment for a crown replacement, but my new dentist took one look and told me I have bigger problems. Apparently I grind my teeth at night and they have worn down to a level where the back teeth are rubbing against each other and putting pressure on the side of the crown which was why it had split off. Fixing could cost thousands of pounds which I don’t have. In the meantime he put in a temporary crown and left me in a lot of pain as the anaesthetic wore off.

Then just as I was feeling down, my phone rang. It was the couple who are buying our house. At least they were. Their buyer had just fallen through so while they still want our house, our planned date of March 22nd is now impossible, which means the house we were buying in Lancashire is also off.

So no house and in pain. Not my best day. Mandy also understandably angry and upset. So what to do?

Normally my response would be to switch on my positive energy and find five great reasons to be happy about the day. It would probably have irritated all those around me but it would have made me feel good. But for once it was not what I wanted to do. I just wanted to wallow in my miserableness. I found a quite corner and read a book.

So now it is two days later and and I am very much back to myself. There are lots of good things that will come out of this. My teeth are fine – for now at least. We get to stay in Scotland longer. I will even get my 60th birthday Scottish bus pass. And if the Lancashire house falls through, there will be another one, Fate is our friend.

I have also decided – sometimes even the most positive of people is allowed a bad day.

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What is it like to stay on a boat that does not move?

From March to October we are continuous cruisers on our narrowboat. We travel around the country seeing new places and meeting new people – having new adventures. We are already planning our first trip for this year, probably heading up to Liverpool and then crossing the Pennines to Leeds. I am excited at the thought and this week I made a boat improvement that will help – a map on the fridge.

We had the kitchen upgraded before last season and we have been very happy with it. The one thing we did not like was the white fridge, which did not look quite right. So I had a vinyl “wrap” made of the canal network and have put that on the door. Now, not only does the kitchen look better, but we can easily show visitors where we have travelled and where we are heading.

This is an example of the sorts of “jobs” I tend to do over winter, when the boat is moored in a marina. The experience of staying on a boat when it is not moving is different from our summer adventures. We are not seeing new places every day, and we are not enjoying the loneliness of staying overnight somewhere away from everyone. But there are advantages too.

The marina has plenty of facilities including electricity and water on the pontoon, toilets, showers, pump out, and even its own pub. We also have access to our car so I can easily get to shops or go to see people. I also really love the cold weather. Gongoozelers (non boaters) often ask if the boat is too cold in the winter. The answer is absolutely not. We have central heating from a diesel boiler, and a “bubble stove” that easily heats the small airspace in the narrowboat. Last night for instance was icy cold outside, but Mandy and I were in our T shirts and had to turn the stove off because it was over 24°C in the boat.

It is cold in the mornings because we tend not to have the heating on overnight, but it is cozy warm in our bed, and the boat doesn’t take too long to warm up. I also really love getting up to take the dogs for their first walk, and seeing the early morning sun glinting off the frost and ice on the boats in the marina. It is very beautiful.

Staying on a boat that does not move is a different experience than our summer adventures. But it has its own charms. I am just so happy to be back on the boat.

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Is September the best time of year to be on a narrowboat?

In the UK we have had something of a heatwave this week, with plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures. At the same time the days are getting shorter and I have often woken to mist rising off the canal in the dawn sunshine.

I feel as if such “Indian Summers” are increasingly common, before Autumn sets in, and they provide some of the best days on a narrowboat. The plants are still in full bloom with some just beginning to change colour. The water fowl still have plenty of food and swim happily around the boat. The canals are busy with experienced boaters on hire boats taking advantage of reduced prices after the school holidays. Everyone seems content.

And there are always surprises. On Wednesday evening we were moored outside Chester and went for a bite to eat and a pint in the Cheshire Cat pub, quite a famous boaters’ inn. The food and beer was good and instead of canned music we were treated to songs from a local ukulele band.

They “interpreted” many popular songs. This might sound terrible but after a long hot day on the boat it was genuinely just what I wanted.

We only have a few more weeks cruising this year but right now we are loving every moment. September is a great time to be on a narrowboat.

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Which is the prettiest canal in the UK?

One of the reasons we love narrowboating is the amazing scenery we see. I do enjoy the old industrial warehouses and mills, but there is something special about finding beautiful countryside with the canal meandering through it.

This week we travelled down the Coventry Canal to join the Ashby, an isolated canal in the midlands. Originally it was used to bring coal from the local mines and was probably filthy, but that industry is long gone and the water is now clear. The countryside is mostly fields with wide views from the boat. It is one of the most beautiful waterways we have travelled.

But perhaps not the most beautiful of all. There are the “curly wurlys” west of Skipton on the Leeds Liverpool. High up in the Pennines and winding around the hills. There are the final few miles of the Caldon to Froghall, in a stunning wooded cutting, with a steam railway for company. There are the Llangollen and the Montgomery, providing a great mixture of winding round the contours of Wales, and cutting through tunnels and over aqueducts. The Sharpness was a revelation for us this year. Straight and wide with great views over to the River Severn. All of these are wonderful but I think the prettiest of all would be the Peak Forest. The Peak District is one of the most dramatic National Parks in the UK, and this canal skirts the edges of high hills, with views for miles.

We are just so lucky to be have the chance in retirement to discover such great countryside.

Do you have a different view of the prettiest waterway in the UK?

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Why I love Kerala

I have just returned from a two week trip to India, seeing many sights across the country and meeting old friends. I enjoyed every moment but I have to say that my favourite few days were in Kochi, Kerala. I have never been to Kerala before, although many people have told me how wonderful it is. Kerala state is the pointy bit at the bottom of India and much of it is made up of jungle and rivers. Trivandrum is the capital but many tourists (like me) go to Kochi instead.

Th lunch we were given after our backwaters trip

I think there are three reasons why I loved it so much – the beauty, the peace and the history.

It is very very beautiful. I went on a backwaters tour, walked around Kochi a lot, frequented the very cheap ferries between the islands, and used quite a few tuk tuks (auto rickshaws). It seemed as if around every corner I would see a fresh “wow” view.

So very lovely

Saying it is peaceful may seem a little odd. The narrow streets of Fort Kochi are as filled with vehicles blaring horns as every other town in India. But get away from the streets, in the Dutch Palace, or the synagogue, or the Cathedral, or in the backwaters, with our boat pushed along by poles rather than an engine. Suddenly everything seems silent and reflective. I even went to a modern art event called Biennale, set in a series of old spice warehouses, and I felt so relaxed just sitting quietly, looking at the exhibits.

Our driver
One of the many exhibits at the Biennale

As for the history, Kochi was one of the first Indian areas visited by western countries. The Roman Empire traded at Muziris, a port believed to be a couple of kilometres north of Kochi. The Dutch, the Portuguese and the English all ruled over the town at one time or another, often working jointly with the local maharaja. Just before Indian independence, a new island – Willingdon – was dredged from the sea, making a port that large ships can now visit, for the trade in spices, particularly pepper. I was able to explore many of these sites. I even popped into Kochi Chamber of Commerce which was near my hotel, and one of the gentlemen there gifted me a copy of a history book celebrating a hundred years of the chamber. India is not just about seeing the famous tourist sites. It is also about exploring and talking to people you meet.

The famous Chinese fishing nets in Kochi.
A statue I found hidden in the merchant navy headquarters on Willingdon island.

I was only in Kerala for three days, but I think I have fallen in love. What a magnificent state. And so much more to explore if I ever return.

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How to find your way around the British Canals

I am getting excited now as we get nearer to returning to our narrowboat and travelling around the British canals this summer. We have been having work done on the boat including a new kitchen, but that should be ready soon, so hopefully by the end of the month we will be back.

The UK canal and river network is extensive – some 2000 miles – travelling through vast tracts of countryside, and connecting most towns & cities. Before the railways it was the best and fastest way of carrying goods from place to place, and despite falling into disrepair in the first half of the twentieth century, most of the navigations (the official name) are now open to traffic again. Volunteers and the Canal & River Trust keep the waters clear and the locks operating. It is somewhat easier than other countries because most of the equipment is self service and we can take our narrowboat anywhere we like, whenever we like.

Just a few of my guides

So of course that begs the question of how we know where to go. The answer is a mixture between 21st and 19th century technologies. There are some great apps and websites. One of our favourites is “Canal Plan AC” website, which is brilliant at working out how long it will take us to make a journey, and where likely stops are along the way. It takes account of fast and slow navigations, and time to get through locks, as well as how many hours a day we want to travel, and where are good places to moor. The other app on my phone is “Open Canal Map” which allows me to track our journey live and zoom in and out of the canal maps, for instance to see where a water point is, or a recent stoppage.

But I have to admit, despite the advantages of technology, I prefer to use proper paper books. There are two sets of canal books in common use in the UK – the Nicholson Guides and the Pearson Guides. Pearsons are more chatty and have simplified maps. Nicholsons are more comprehensive and have the detailed Ordnance Survey maps. Both guides have been around for over 50 years and are updated every few years. I had always thought that was done by hundreds of editors but by coincidence we have become friends with Jonathan Mosse, who lives on a boat near us in Scotland, and does most of the work to keep Nicholson guides up to date. When he started in the 1970s, he would spend his days boating and cycling along canals. These days he can do a lot of the research online, but he is still always grateful for updates from boaters like ourselves, who travel the canals every day, and can let him know when a bridge number has changed or a pub has closed.

This week, he kindly sent me the guides that have been updated for 2023 – covering the North West of England. They are shiny and new but it will not take long till they are covered in muddy thumb prints and hand marked updates. I feel privileged to play a small part in keeping everyone informed as we share the navigations.

If you have never had a narrowboat holiday in the UK, I recommend it. The slow pace of life will bring mindfulness and calm, even if just for a week. And don’t forget to get a copy of your local guides.

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Is there any point in a static narrowboat?

This week we are back at the narrowboat, moored in a marina near Chester. The weather is very autumnal – strong winds and rain. So we are not travelling. We have the warm stove on, are watching Christmas movies and walking the dogs.

You may wonder what the point is in coming to the boat of we aren’t travelling. Well I don’t really understand why, but when we arrive we immediately relax. Even the dogs find a comfy spot and curl up. Years ago we used to part-own a static caravan and that had much the same feel. It is as if all the worries of the world are left at home and we can chill.

Some canal boaters never move their boats. I heard this week of a new “wide beam” coming to this marina, which is too wide to travel through the bridges from here, so will be marooned. The owners don’t care. They just like staying on the water. The marina owners also recently installed five floating pods which can be hired by anyone. They are booked out at weekends, even at this time of year.

So I do get it. And I am really enjoying this week. But I confess that a little part of me can’t wait till the spring, when we will be off on our travels again. It’s like people that enjoy cruise ships. Some just want to stay on the ship. Others enjoy the facilities but want to see new things, meet new people.

Which would you prefer?

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