It's the calm after the sporty storm as steaming euphoria settles over the Olympic Park, and roaring huggable London quietly fluffs its mane with pride. But while gold medals swing from the pert necks of athletic bodies, I'm nursing saggy aching limbs after my challenge cruising the infamous Tardebigge flight on the Worcs & Birmingham Canal. 30 locks in a rise of 220feet in just over 2 miles makes Tardebigge the longest lock flight in Britain - boaters either hate it or love it!
We were less than 3 locks into the flight when a BW chap (in his new Canal & River Trust T-shirt) came chugging along the towpath on a quadbike. A fine compliment hid in his ear-to-ear grin and happy greeting "Oh no, it's the two most dangerous people on the canals!" (He was coincidently the BW hero who rescued us last winter when our boat got wedged in the lock in Stourport Basins) Just for fun, Martine had to prove, on behalf of all womankind, that contrary to the Stourport mishap, girls can be cool as cucumbers at the tiller... and she steered our boat 'through the eye of the needle' into the next slither-thin lock on the flight! Our hero doffed his imaginary hat in overblown Thespian jest, and we sailed away, all three of us waving in canal camaraderie.
In 30 locks I returned a happy "good morning" to 4 boats, 12 bikes and over 40 walkers (I was counting the strolling couples, bouncing families and waggy dog walkers easily enough, but lost count when a rambling group yomped past). Then there was the friendly bunch who were holidaying in a former lock keeper's cottage along the flight (www.landmarktrust.org.uk) - they mucked in by closing the lock gates for us as we passed their cottage.
Winding locksful of uncountable gallons of canal water, and lifting a 57ft steel narrowboat downhill sounds like an Olympic workout... but I'm telling my saggy muscles, it's just another day chilling out for us boaters.
PS The Tardebigge Lock Flight is one of the 100 treasures of the canals in our latest book
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Friday, 13 July 2012
Canal & River Trust launch!
Trumpets, drums, and much clapping of hands... it's official... Canal & River Trust are the new guardians of our canals and rivers, with HRH Prince Charles at the helm as Patron of the new charity.
Since canals and rivers amble everywhere, launch events for the new charity were held all across the land. Martine and I were at the celebrations in Gloucester Docks. We heard the speeches and shook hands with lots of people, while the champers and balloons created a Mexican wave all across the usually still waters of the canals. It was a fabulous day with TV news and seemingly everyone talking about the canals!
The importance of this change of status for the canals is immense, and frankly intense. Britain's canals can't survive on their own - they need people to get involved and help, and the message of the Canal & River Trust is to join and become a 'Friend'.
Ho-hum, today I'm back from the adrenalin commotion of the launch, and I'm quietly in the bow of our narrowboat for lunch with the ducks. Since we've been moored in Alvechurch, 6 ducklings have been joining me and Martine every mealtime, for whatever culinary disaster we might rustle up. Today it's pickled beetroot butty again (still no fridge or cooker on the boat!) The ducklings squeak in delight over our stale bread crusts, and we squeak with their pleasure. The simplicity of moments like this are part of the reason canals are a national treasure, and so important for us to our best to help protect them.
Since canals and rivers amble everywhere, launch events for the new charity were held all across the land. Martine and I were at the celebrations in Gloucester Docks. We heard the speeches and shook hands with lots of people, while the champers and balloons created a Mexican wave all across the usually still waters of the canals. It was a fabulous day with TV news and seemingly everyone talking about the canals!
The importance of this change of status for the canals is immense, and frankly intense. Britain's canals can't survive on their own - they need people to get involved and help, and the message of the Canal & River Trust is to join and become a 'Friend'.
Ho-hum, today I'm back from the adrenalin commotion of the launch, and I'm quietly in the bow of our narrowboat for lunch with the ducks. Since we've been moored in Alvechurch, 6 ducklings have been joining me and Martine every mealtime, for whatever culinary disaster we might rustle up. Today it's pickled beetroot butty again (still no fridge or cooker on the boat!) The ducklings squeak in delight over our stale bread crusts, and we squeak with their pleasure. The simplicity of moments like this are part of the reason canals are a national treasure, and so important for us to our best to help protect them.
Sunday, 1 July 2012
July the 1st!
It's been a whirlwind since my last blog... 2012 is turning out to be an excitingly busy year for coolcanals.
We've finally emerged from the burning hole of researching, writing and publishing our latest book, yet the all-consuming months of scratching at scorched deadlines are always instantly forgotten when the first copy of the book arrives hot from the printers! July 1st is the official publication day of our latest book:
'Britain's canals, a national treasure in 100 must-see objects'.
And today is emotional for other reasons too. British Waterways, the governing body for Britain's canals, offically transfers to charitable status as the new 'national trust for the waterways' - the Canal & River Trust. BW is no more! Martine & I will miss the friendly BW way that has been part of our everyday canal life for so long. But this isn't a sad day, July 1st is the day Canal & River Trust takes up the baton for caring for the canals & rivers of England and Wales (its big launch is 12 July)and, under its new charity status, more funds can be raised to help protect and maintain the canals (and we're sure that they'll be just as huggable as BW!).
Martine & I were really honoured when we were asked to produce a special edition of 'Cool canals Weekend Walks' for the new Canal & River Trust fundraising campaign. All new 'Friends' of the Canal & River Trust will get a free copy of this special edition, and we hope it'll inspire even more people to enjoy walking canal towpaths as much as we do.
Meanwhile we're still building the boat around the desks in our mini narrowboat-sized office - my tenon saw is permanently positioned to trip us up, and the sawdust levels in our lungs are reaching red alert. There's still no cooker (we're making do with a camping stove and epic variations on a salad theme!), no fridge, and nine months of sleeping on a hard plywood floor has taken its toll!! Thankfully friends we meet along our travels sometimes take pity on us, and narrowboat NB Jandai fattened us up recently with some great home cooking and even got stuck in with some of the woodwork - boaty camaraderie at its best! :)
Who in their right minds would choose to build a boat, while living on it and running a publishing business at the same time...?
'Britain's canals, a national treasure in 100 must-see objects'.
And today is emotional for other reasons too. British Waterways, the governing body for Britain's canals, offically transfers to charitable status as the new 'national trust for the waterways' - the Canal & River Trust. BW is no more! Martine & I will miss the friendly BW way that has been part of our everyday canal life for so long. But this isn't a sad day, July 1st is the day Canal & River Trust takes up the baton for caring for the canals & rivers of England and Wales (its big launch is 12 July)and, under its new charity status, more funds can be raised to help protect and maintain the canals (and we're sure that they'll be just as huggable as BW!).
Martine & I were really honoured when we were asked to produce a special edition of 'Cool canals Weekend Walks' for the new Canal & River Trust fundraising campaign. All new 'Friends' of the Canal & River Trust will get a free copy of this special edition, and we hope it'll inspire even more people to enjoy walking canal towpaths as much as we do.
Meanwhile we're still building the boat around the desks in our mini narrowboat-sized office - my tenon saw is permanently positioned to trip us up, and the sawdust levels in our lungs are reaching red alert. There's still no cooker (we're making do with a camping stove and epic variations on a salad theme!), no fridge, and nine months of sleeping on a hard plywood floor has taken its toll!! Thankfully friends we meet along our travels sometimes take pity on us, and narrowboat NB Jandai fattened us up recently with some great home cooking and even got stuck in with some of the woodwork - boaty camaraderie at its best! :)
Who in their right minds would choose to build a boat, while living on it and running a publishing business at the same time...?
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Community Pubs Month
Rotund midriffs don't really tally with the image of long-distance walkers. We've rambled here, there and everywhere along the 2,000 and more miles of canals, and have calf muscles of iron, but the stomachs tell another story! I blame those landlords and landladies of canalside pubs serpenting us with their best ale on almost every turn of the canal.
Our floating office has been moored in Stourport Basins
for over a month now, which feels like an eternity for our itchy feet (we're in our usual typing frenzy getting our next book ready for our printer's deadline!). But Stourport is making us welcome - it's a canal town, and so a good community goes without saying. Maggie, the landlady of our Stourport local, has her own narrowboat of course.
April is Community Pubs Month and her pub, the Hollybush, just a stone's throw from the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal, has what a good pub needs - a landlady who cares about her pub, fab real ales and a community welcome that's real.
The local pubs have welcomed us strangers in town, and already the looming goodbyes will be sad. It's a reminder to me of the vital role real pubs play in nurturing community. It's a hard and frankly worrying fact that, according to CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale), pubs are closing at a rate of 16 per week. Canalside pubs have the bonus attraction of the water and summer tourism, but still need to manage year-round trade to keep them open.
"In the old days, you just had to stand behind the bar with a jug of ale and people would come flocking in", Maggie jests, "but now pub landlords and ladies have to reach out and give people reasons to come: pub quizzes, curry night, jamming nights". And Maggie's energy spreads into social media networking too, and of course her good beer, lager and food... and a smile.
GOOD landladies and landlords make GREAT pubs... and create vital hubs for their communities.
Support your local:
Community Pubs Month is an initiative by CAMRA to increase awareness of local community pubs this April.
Pub is the Hub
CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale
Our floating office has been moored in Stourport Basins
for over a month now, which feels like an eternity for our itchy feet (we're in our usual typing frenzy getting our next book ready for our printer's deadline!). But Stourport is making us welcome - it's a canal town, and so a good community goes without saying. Maggie, the landlady of our Stourport local, has her own narrowboat of course.April is Community Pubs Month and her pub, the Hollybush, just a stone's throw from the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal, has what a good pub needs - a landlady who cares about her pub, fab real ales and a community welcome that's real.
The local pubs have welcomed us strangers in town, and already the looming goodbyes will be sad. It's a reminder to me of the vital role real pubs play in nurturing community. It's a hard and frankly worrying fact that, according to CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale), pubs are closing at a rate of 16 per week. Canalside pubs have the bonus attraction of the water and summer tourism, but still need to manage year-round trade to keep them open.
"In the old days, you just had to stand behind the bar with a jug of ale and people would come flocking in", Maggie jests, "but now pub landlords and ladies have to reach out and give people reasons to come: pub quizzes, curry night, jamming nights". And Maggie's energy spreads into social media networking too, and of course her good beer, lager and food... and a smile.
GOOD landladies and landlords make GREAT pubs... and create vital hubs for their communities.
Support your local:
Community Pubs Month is an initiative by CAMRA to increase awareness of local community pubs this April.
Pub is the Hub
CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Walking boaters or boating walkers?
Of course when I write our Coolcanals guide books, the 'point' is to focus on the 'best' of the waterways and tell the story in tourism language – a job that's easy... we're walkers, and what's not to love about trundling the towpaths! It has occurred to me though, now that we're living on a narrowboat again and continuously cruising the canals, we'd think that walking the same stretch of towpath that we've cruised in a narrowboat would be a tad tedious. Never! Walkers and boaters experience the canals from different viewpoints.
Take Bratch Locks for instance. We've walked through the famously popular Bratch Locks lots of times. On foot, we always enjoy a good gongoozling session if we're lucky enough to catch a boat on the move. We spotted two kingfishers in the hedgerow last time we walked this bit of the Staffs & Worcs Canal and spent ages over a picnic, sitting with our legs dangling from the wall outside the old toll office at
Bratch. This week when we boated through the locks, the journey was a much more serious affair. The primary aim was to avoid death by drowning, and the secondary aim was to complete the course without the unwanted embarrassment of becoming 'The Boaters Who Flooded Bratch Locks' because we didn't follow BW (British Waterways)'s warning signs. For a boater, Bratch is all about the coded blobs of blue and red paint on the paddles. This is BW's bid to help simplify the unusual lock procedure. It's easy once you've read the signs: open the blue-blobbed paddles first and then the red, or is it the red and then the blue? Or both together? (Aaargh... we wish those darn gongoozlers weren’t watching us)
Can't believe it's been a whole month since we piled all our belongings into our new sailaway narrowboat at Kingfisher Narrowboats in Trent Lock. There hasn't been much time to build the interior yet. We've been on the move, heading southwards to the Midlands, before the canal freezes in winter. So far we've travelled the River Trent, the Trent & Mersey Canal and the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal. As continuous cruisers we have to move regularly to meet BW's regulations – but that doesn't stop us mooring long enough to explore the towpaths and revisit some of our favourite walks.
The only hitch at this time of year is that there aren't enough hours of light to fit in enough walking and boating into a day. Counting down to Dec 21, things will be looking up after the shortest day of the year. We're outdoor people, and hate being trapped indoors. I'm almost (I lie) tempted to join the mad cyclists we hear pedalling past our boat in the dark! They cycle in clumps, and chat together as their lamps flash past at ridiculous times of the night, rain or no rain. Who are they?!
No, we're content to stay boating walkers, or are we walking boaters?
Take Bratch Locks for instance. We've walked through the famously popular Bratch Locks lots of times. On foot, we always enjoy a good gongoozling session if we're lucky enough to catch a boat on the move. We spotted two kingfishers in the hedgerow last time we walked this bit of the Staffs & Worcs Canal and spent ages over a picnic, sitting with our legs dangling from the wall outside the old toll office at
Bratch. This week when we boated through the locks, the journey was a much more serious affair. The primary aim was to avoid death by drowning, and the secondary aim was to complete the course without the unwanted embarrassment of becoming 'The Boaters Who Flooded Bratch Locks' because we didn't follow BW (British Waterways)'s warning signs. For a boater, Bratch is all about the coded blobs of blue and red paint on the paddles. This is BW's bid to help simplify the unusual lock procedure. It's easy once you've read the signs: open the blue-blobbed paddles first and then the red, or is it the red and then the blue? Or both together? (Aaargh... we wish those darn gongoozlers weren’t watching us)Can't believe it's been a whole month since we piled all our belongings into our new sailaway narrowboat at Kingfisher Narrowboats in Trent Lock. There hasn't been much time to build the interior yet. We've been on the move, heading southwards to the Midlands, before the canal freezes in winter. So far we've travelled the River Trent, the Trent & Mersey Canal and the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal. As continuous cruisers we have to move regularly to meet BW's regulations – but that doesn't stop us mooring long enough to explore the towpaths and revisit some of our favourite walks.
The only hitch at this time of year is that there aren't enough hours of light to fit in enough walking and boating into a day. Counting down to Dec 21, things will be looking up after the shortest day of the year. We're outdoor people, and hate being trapped indoors. I'm almost (I lie) tempted to join the mad cyclists we hear pedalling past our boat in the dark! They cycle in clumps, and chat together as their lamps flash past at ridiculous times of the night, rain or no rain. Who are they?!
No, we're content to stay boating walkers, or are we walking boaters?
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Canal & River Trust
Momentous! A new era is dawning over Britain's Canals. British Waterways has announced the name and logo of the New Waterways Charity set to launch early 2012.
In 2012, the new 'Canal & River Trust' will take the baton to protect the future of our canals for all waterways users - boaters, walkers, cyclists, wildlife watchers, sightseers.... Ahead lies a fabuously challenging task for the new charity to preserve the past and fund the future... and the changes ahead will surely rank amongst the biggest on the timeline of UK canals. Exciting times!
[Canal timeline in a nutshell:
It all started over 200 years ago with the opening of the canals as a revolutionary trade route for the Industrial Revolution. The success of canals depended fundamentally on the determination of canal engineers and entrepreneurs (Brindley, Telford, Wedgwood, Cadbury....) The decline of canalmania came with the legendary arrival of the speedier steam train. Canals were redundant, and left to crumble. After World War II, a group of people, passionate about keeping Britain's canal networks navigable for leisure boats, launched an era of direct action. In 1946, Tom Rolt and Richard Aickman formed a voluntary organisation, famously known as the IWA (Inland Waterways Association). 1948 brought a landmark change as Britain's canals were nationalised and BW (British Waterways) became the governing body of the waterways.]
In 2012, the new 'Canal & River Trust' will take the baton to protect the future of our canals for all waterways users - boaters, walkers, cyclists, wildlife watchers, sightseers.... Ahead lies a fabuously challenging task for the new charity to preserve the past and fund the future... and the changes ahead will surely rank amongst the biggest on the timeline of UK canals. Exciting times!
[Canal timeline in a nutshell:
It all started over 200 years ago with the opening of the canals as a revolutionary trade route for the Industrial Revolution. The success of canals depended fundamentally on the determination of canal engineers and entrepreneurs (Brindley, Telford, Wedgwood, Cadbury....) The decline of canalmania came with the legendary arrival of the speedier steam train. Canals were redundant, and left to crumble. After World War II, a group of people, passionate about keeping Britain's canal networks navigable for leisure boats, launched an era of direct action. In 1946, Tom Rolt and Richard Aickman formed a voluntary organisation, famously known as the IWA (Inland Waterways Association). 1948 brought a landmark change as Britain's canals were nationalised and BW (British Waterways) became the governing body of the waterways.]
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
'Conker'ing my fear of spiders
Five years is a long time in one place for me. The house is sold and I can't wait to move back to a home on the canals again. John & Mick at Kingfisher Narrowboats have been building our 57-foot narrowboat (a semi-trad Sailaway with additions). All's nearly ready for moving on day. But... there's a problem for me. Someone's already moved in. A spider is hanging maliciously from the porthole and I know he's got friends in dark crevices.. I can see a repeating film in my head - waking up in the middle of the night, trapped in a 6-foot steel corridor with something tickling my chin. And this chap isn't the revolting type with crisp black legs, it's worse - he's the most repugnant variety, with tiger stripes and a bulbous boily body. Just heavous!
Can an animal-loving veggie let the sole of John, Mick or Martine's boot solve this problem? According to John, some boaters say that placing conkers in the portholes stops spiders from crawling in. Is this a spam joke that someone gets kicks out of every time they see a boat cruise by with piles of conkers in their portholes? Or is it rooted in scientific fact?
Does anybody know for sure?
What shall I do?
Boot or conkers?
The conkers have started dropping off the trees now - I've started my collection.
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