When to cut the wheat

It is definitely harvest time. This week we have travelled through the midlands from Coventry up past Fradley Junction and Great Haywood to Stone – villages that probably mean very little to most people but are famous to narrowboaters, as they were developed around the canals in the 18th Century. The countryside is mostly arable farming – wheat, corn, barley and sweetcorn.

I imagine it has been tricky for the farmers to know when to harvest. As you can see from my picture, taken near Nuneaton, the wheat is full and ready for cutting, but if it is damp, the moisture levels are too high and the price the farmer can get comes down. And the weather has been very mixed this week. One minute it is bright sunshine, the next a heavy rainstorm.

So not surprisingly some days the fields have been empty, and other days every piece of farm equipment has been out. On Saturday we moored up near farmland and were woken about 11pm by the bright lights and noise of a combine harvester and associated tractors. I am not complaining. The farmers have to get the crops in whenever they can.

Living on a narrowboat has brought me closer to nature and how the land is used. You can be steering through an industrial cityscape, and round a corner you find the view opening up over fields to distant hills. This week I saw a kingfisher darting between the bushes alongside the boat. Yesterday evening we were “bothered” by two swans tapping on the side hatch to ask for food. It is not a bad way to spend a summer.

August 18, 2023 0

Why Coventry made me sad

We travelled into Coventry this week. We had been warned that this arm of the Coventry canal can be full of rubbish, but it wasn’t so bad, and it was lovely to be moored in a basin near the centre of town.

I knew very little about Coventry. I knew it was the second city in the UK midlands, and I knew the old cathedral had been destroyed in a German raid in 1940. I had visited it once as a child, and I knew my mother had once had a holiday in Coventry with a young cousin that lived here.

What I had failed to understand was how much the town had been obliterated in the war. After a blitz that lasted about three months at the end of 1940 and the start of 1941, around 75% of all buildings had been destroyed. The Germans used high explosives to take off the roofs of buildings, and then incendiary devices to burn them down. I went to a blitz museum this week and saw footage, with plucky English folk going about their daily lives, surrounded by devastation.

When my Mum went on that holiday in the early 1950s the town would still have been a wreck. Her aunt Dorothy had lived through it and been bombed out of her home twice. Her husband was in the army in India/Burma at the time so Dorothy would have been so scared.

I am aware that the British were equally guilty of such raids, notably Hamburg in 1943. So this is not about who is right and who is wrong. But it is about how tragic the consequences of war are to real people. Coventry is now a vibrant, modern city, but it made me very sad.

August 11, 2023 0

Going from 2 mph to 200 mph

The Ashby canal is very beautiful but quite slow. It is fairly shallow and quite narrow in places so we travel at around 2mph most of the time. That is not a particular problem – no point being on a narrowboat if you are in a hurry – but it made the shock even greater when my younger son and I spent the weekend in London at the E-Prix.

Formula E is like Formula 1 but with electric cars. The drivers are world class – often ex Formula 1 drivers, or up and coming youngsters. The cars are largely based on the same chassis and 350kW power units but are built by different manufacturers such as Porsche and Jaguar. They have incredible torque. A modified car, driven by one of the Formula E drivers, got the indoor world speed record last week – 217mph.

And the track in London is very unusual. It is based at the Excel Exhibition centre, inside and outside the exhibition halls. This provides an extra challenge to the drivers, especially when it is raining. The two races at the weekend were the final two of the Formula E year and we saw Jake Dennis, a British driver, win the championship, even though he did not win either race (he was second and third).

We have been to several Formula 1 events in the past. Formula E was more friendly and quite a lot cheaper. I would go again.

So now we are back at the boat. And back to 2mph. 200mph was fun but I am glad to be back.

August 4, 2023 0

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?

July 28, 2023 0

Should Farage be allowed to keep his Coutts bank account?

In the UK this week there has been a lot of press about Nigel Farage having his Coutts bank account closed. Coutts is a bank for the very wealthy and he does not meet their criteria for how much money he has, but this week it became clear that another reason for closing the account was that the Coutts Reputational Risk Committee did not feel his politics were a fit with the bank’s values. The British newspapers are shouting that it is outrageous that a bank can close an account because they do not agree with the beliefs of a customer. I think they are wrong.

Before I retired I was a banker with NatWest Group, which includes Coutts. So I have some experience in this area. I also held a senior role at Co-op Bank for a few years, probably the most ethically based bank in the UK, and at Nationwide Building Society, the biggest customer owned bank in the UK. At the time I really noticed the difference in behaviour between these “value based” banks, and the big four – NatWest/RBS, Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC, which were much more focused on profit.

After the banking crisis in 2008, the bailed out banks were left with a terrible reputation, and even now people talk about bankers as being all bad, in the same way they consider politicians, and criminals. To combat this, the big four have repositioned themselves as value based. I remember when the current CEO of NatWest, Dame Alison Rose, was appointed, one of the key reasons was her desire for NatWest to be “purpose led”.

So let’s look at what they say.

Lloyds: “Our purpose if Helping Britain Prosper. We do this by creating a more sustainable and inclusive future for people and businesses, shaping finance as a force for good”.
Barclays: “Our five Values – Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – are our moral compass; the fundamentals of who we are and what we believe is right.”
NatWest (including Coutts): “We are guided by our purpose. We champion potential, helping people, families and businesses to thrive.”
HSBC: “Opening up a world of opportunity – helping to create a better world – for our customers, our people, our investors, our communities and the planet we all share.”

I don’t think any of these purposes has really got traction with the public. I am not sure they are aware of them, or believe that banks stand behind them. A customer looking for an ethical bank in the UK will still tend to choose Co-op or a building society.

So instead of Alison Rose apologising to Nigel Farage, as she has done, perhaps she should stand up and say that we do not want to bank customers whose values do not align with ours. What is wrong with that? Perhaps then, people

Don’t worry, next week I will drop the politics and be back to everyday stories of living on a narrowboat.

July 21, 2023 0

I hate scammers

We have all got used to scammers in recent years. Back in the day there was the Nigerian prince who wanted to send me some money. Then the person allegedly from my bank who wanted me to transfer all my savings to a “safe” account. And the email from my broadband company needing me to re-enter all my personal details. But this week I finally lost patience when I tried to sell an old sideboard.

It is a rather nice mahogany sideboard that used to be owned by my wife’s grandparents. We have had it for years, but no-one in the family wants it and it is taking up space we need. So I put it ion Facebook Marketplace for the bargain price of £30. There was quite a lot of interest but more than half the replies were scammers.

The scam works like this “I really like the item but I am busy tomorrow so I will send UPS (or another logistics company) to get it and they will bring you the cash.” I had not heard of this scam so I went along with the first person till I became suspicious. But how can it be a scam if they are giving me money? Well I did some fraud research and apparently if I had gone ahead, UPS would have contacted me asking me to pay their insurance for handling cash, and obviously they would then have disappeared.

But the sideboard is just £30. Surely insurance would not have been more than £5. So how can this be worth the effort for a scammer? Maybe they would have tried to steal my data at the same time?

Anyway, I hate scammers. What is hopefully a real person is coming on Saturday to get the sideboard. Let’s hope she does not offer me a cheque.

July 14, 2023 2

Is the Tour de France more about strategy or tactics?

I am not a bike rider, In fact I didn’t learn to ride a bike till I was 21, and I have never much enjoyed it. Going uphill always feels too much like hard work, and going downhill makes me scared. I much prefer to walk for my exercise. But I do understand that for many people it is an exciting pastime.

I do enjoy watching the Tour de France on TV. I got into it when they had the Grand Depart in the UK in 2014 and I went to see it near where I was living in West Yorkshire. This week the 2023 tour started and I have watched the highlights every evening. It has already been an exciting tour with many a twist and turn.

What I have not decided is whether the key to winning is strategy or tactics. The strategies are typically team led – perhaps to plan an early breakaway from the Peloton, or to keep the team together, protecting the leader. Tactics are more down to the individual, deciding whether to follow someone who pulling away, or whether to conserve energy for the next climb, or a sprint finish. As I write this, Jai Hindley from Australia has just taken a surprise lead and the yellow jersey, after chasing a breakaway group and creating a gap to the favourites that they could not regain. I wonder how much of that was planned in advance, and how much was opportunistic. And was it better strategy for the favourites to conserve energy for another day?

Spending retirement on a narrowboat has similar challenges. We have a strategy of where we want to go. This year it is the west of the UK. And there are the tactics of making decisions each day on whether we want to stop because of the rain, where to moor, how important it is to find a decent Internet signal. OK it is not quite Tour de France. But at least I do not have to wear Lycra.

Hope you have a great week, and good luck to the Yates brothers and Mark Cavendish.

July 7, 2023 0

Why are people on social media so angry?

I have written before about how tolerant people are “on the cut” (by the canals). I meet so many different people with so many different backgrounds and almost without exception they will engage in conversation about how their day is going, where they are heading, and anything to watch out for. Chatting by locks is one of my favourite things.

But I posted something into a boaters’ group on Facebook this week and it got so many angry responses. Here is what I wrote:

“I am so disappointed with Birmingham. We came through last about 15 years ago and it was a smart city of well maintained canals. Yesterday we boated up the Grand Union amd Birmingham & Fazeley. It was so different. Canals shallow and full of rubbish. Lock gear stiff or broken. Graffiti everywhere including wet paint on the locks. Drug users not even making an attempt to hide. And almost no boats which is not surprising but I guess makes things worse. All towns have their dodgy areas but I am not sure we found any non-dodgy areas. Maybe Gas Street Basin is still nice?”

I had one really useful response noting that the particular route I had chosen went through the most deprived areas and that the west and central canals were much nicer. I had a few helpful comments that people liked the graffiti and that the picture undermined my argument. They are right. My bad. I hadn’t taken pictures of all the paint on the locks, the rubbish in the canals, the druggie inhaling nitrous from a balloon.

But most of the comments were shouty and angry. What did I expect after ten years of Tory underinvestment? It was all the fault of not supporting the police. Why do we not hear English voices anymore (yes really!). And one particularly vituperative diatribe saying that if I was so negative I should go back to living on land. All of this in a Facebook group called “The Friendly Narrowboaters and Waterways Group”.

You know how much I love my life on the waterways of Britain. I see so much beauty, so much variety, so much nature, so many fascinating buildings. And I know that if I met these people on the cut we would have a right old chin wag about how sad it is that this part of the network has run down. So why on social media do they get so angry?

For balance, here is me in my happy place, coming across the longest aqueduct in England this week:

June 30, 2023 3

Five good and two bad things about Stratford Upon Avon

This week we completed our journey up a beautiful but sometimes scary River Avon. The heavy storms caused some pretty strong currents but we made it through on our flat bottomed narrowboat, and are now on the much gentler Stratford Canal. Where the river meets the canal, there is a basin with mooring for about sixteen boats, so we stayed a couple of nights in the famous town of Stratford Upon Avon, where Shakespeare wrote his plays.

It was lovely to visit Stratford. My grandma lived here, so at one time I knew it fairly well, but that was over forty years ago. If I had to pick the five best things I would say:

1. Stratford is beautiful. The river and canal basin are the centre of the town, overlooked by the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre. There is a large green park and lots of statues.

2. Everything is Shakespeare themed. Shakee’s icecream barge, Thespians Indian Restaurant, Shakespeare in Love Wedding Boutique, and even the Shakespaw Cat Café.

3. It has real history. You can visit the houses of Shakespeare, his wife Anne Hathaway and his mother Mary Arden. And for boating geeks like me you can find out about Stratford as a port, when boats from Bristol came up the Severn and the Avon before transshipping their goods onto narrowboats for the midlands and the north.

4. Anyone can get on a boat. Lucky narrowboat owners like me are joined by large and small tourist boats blaring their commentary to all and sundry, and land lubbers trying a tiny rowing boat or a paddle board on a pretty wide river.

5. It is full of tourists. People from all over the world come to Stratford, either individually or in organised groups. Hordes of school children swarm the streets, clutching their quiz sheets. All life is here.

But not everything is perfect. Here are just two things I liked rather less:

1. Stratford is noisy. After enjoying the peace of mooring along the river it was quite a shock to be based in a city centre, especially the revellers at midnight, singing and banging a drum.

2. It is full of tourists. We are always happy to answer questions about living on a boat from inquisitive onlookers. But when they climb onto the boat to have a look, or in one case, just to wash their hands in the canal, that is going too far.

So we enjoyed our time in Stratford but were also happy to leave it, and I am writing this moored up in the countryside, with nothing around us. No tourists, no locals, not even another boat. It is lovely.

June 23, 2023 0

Do I need physical photographs?

I was looking back at some old photos albums this week of my student days in the 1980s. The world of photography was very different in those days. Digital cameras did not exist, and instead I would take maybe 30 pictures in a year using my film camera. I did not know whether they had been any good till I used up a film, and sent it off to be processed. A week or so later, I would get my pictures back, throw away the rubbish ones and put the others in an album. Every photograph was precious.

These days I take maybe a thousand pictures a year on my phone. I often take five or six of the same thing, so that I can choose the best. Because there are so many, they are no longer special. Maybe an interesting one will pop up on a screen saver on my TV, but more often than not, they are looked at briefly and then forgotten.

For many years I tried to manage this situation by choosing my favourite pictures each year and getting them printed off to go in an album, But I realised this week that the last time I did that was 2018.

So I am faced with a conundrum. Should I get some pictures printed off as I did before? Should I find some other way of curating the large numbers into a manageable selection. Or should I just accept that photographs are no longer special, and treat them as a throwaway commodity.

What do you think?

June 16, 2023 2