Celebrations!

On this day ten years ago, I was celebrating the fact that I, newly retired from teaching, wasn't at the Training Day that my ex-colleagues were having to endure. Callous, wasn't I? But I was celebrating even more that we had just taken possession of NB Kantara. The next day, when I'd got my breath back, I blogged about it.

 

Now we REALLY start!

We could actually have hoped for a colder day yesterday, the day Kantara was handed over to us.  We allowed two hours for a one and a quarter hour journey, and it took three hours, a large chunk of which was spent sitting in a jam on the road from hell - the M1 - in very hot weather.  So we arrived late at Crick, to meet Bob, the last owner of Kantara, a lovely man who had lived with his wife full-time in the boat until poor health had forced them to sell.  He clearly loves Kantara, and his greatest wish now for her was that someone else would love her as much, and be as happy in her as he had been.  We think that describes us well.

Bob spent a good deal of time with us, explaining all sorts of details, and making sure that we had all the information we needed to get the best out of Kantara.  After he left, having given us his contact details and assured us that we were to feel free to get in touch with him if we needed any help, we drove to Yelvertoft Marina, left the car there, and walked back to ABNB in Crick to collect Kantara and sail her back to the mooring we had booked at Yelvertoft. It was a good feeling, knowing that she was now actually ours.

Then began the process of unloading the car, and getting things into the boat, listing the things we had overlooked and would need to pick up from home the next time we return. Time flew, and we realised we had not eaten since we munched a sandwich on the M1, so we had to stop to prepare and eat a meal, drink a bottle of wine Bob had so kindly left for us (along with some port and a bottle of a fiery spirit we had never seen before), before falling into bed, exhausted.

We awoke late this morning, to a dreary and windy day, but still warm, and the day was spent shopping for food, tidying our things properly into the many cupboards in the boat, and sorting out a few technical problems, most of which were due to our ignorance, and were solved by reading the manuals. One needed Bob's help, and he was onto it like a shot.  We are so grateful to him for his promise of support on such occasions.

And here we are, 10:20 on Saturday evening, sitting in the moorers' lounge in the marina - the best place to connect to the wi-fi - a lot closer to being ready to cruise a bit. We are in no special hurry. We want to be as comfortable as possible when we start to cruise, and not be irritated by some detail we have overlooked. The biggest challenge at the moment is getting our 3G router and antenna set up properly, so that both of us can get the best possible Internet connection for our laptop computers. I tried this evening before we ate, but I think I was just too tired, and I had to give up. But there's time to do that - I don't go back to school on Monday! 

Here's Kantara in her new setting...

And today, Grace and I celebrate that day; the beginning of a new way of life for us. The next few years are chronicled in the books I wrote later - Life with our feet under water, and Moving home with our feet under water. Hints and tips for life with YOUR feet under water followed, after we had gathered a mass of lessons learned from experience, and loads of advice from more experienced boaters. Those books, all Amazon best sellers, can be found HERE or via the links in the column to the right of this page. Please go and take a look.

What have we liked best on board Kantara? Well, the cruising, obviously. And my favourite trips? In no particular order...

• The Leicester Ring (our first cruise on Kantara)
• Liverpool, Salthouse Dock
• IWA Festival of Water at Pelsall on the Wyrley and Essington Canal
• Stratford-upon-Avon
• River Trent
• Oxford
•  Ashby Canal
• Down through London, and up the Lee and Stort navigations

For various reasons, we've done less cruising over the past four years, and that's regrettable. But Kantara was a lovely home during Covid lock-downs, and we plan to be back on the move next year after I've had my surgery. Covid allowing. And be assured, we'll be celebrating then, too.

I raise a toast to Kantara on our joint ten-year anniversary. Cheers! Here's to the next ten!

Fair-weather farers

Life on board NB Kantara is all rather... not very lively at the moment. OK, it's true that we'd be out enjoying ourselves on the cut right now if we weren't bothered by the weather. But it's also true that it's currently pouring with rain yet again, with a very strong wind, and there's a cracking thunderstorm. We've had a few decent days, sure, but generally we're not encouraged to venture out at the moment. Fair-weather farers I guess we are. I know several folk who've been out for a few weeks, and the bad weather's featured large in their experiences.

It's not as if we've got nothing to do while we're here. Roy and Lee came a few days ago to replace our central-heating pump (which alone cost £180!!), then to flush gallons of black, gunky water out of the system and top up with fresh water/antifreeze mix. They'll be back soon to do some woodwork and tiling in our shower room, too. And Grace is painting castles and roses on the cabin doors.

My role at the moment is that of "the domestic". Well, why not? I ask. Grace played that one for thirty-odd years!

Kantara is sitting in a wide, open space at the moment. Lindsey Ann vacated the berth two away from us on one side for a couple of weeks, but she's back now. The space between her and us was empty for some months after Cream Cracker left, until The Hodma'dod came along, but she was only there for a few days, and I suspect they won't be coming back. And, on our other side, Emma Jane has now been away for several weeks, and no-one seems to know where they are or when they'll return. It is rather nice to have good light and views on both sides.

Whether or not we get to cruise for a short while in the next few weeks remains to be seen, but we will be out with Dorothy, Christine and Mike for a couple of weeks in the middle of September. What we have to do now is decide on a suitable route. Four Counties Ring starting at Fradley Junction? Leicester Ring starting from here? Decisions, decisions!

A good day for a wander...

...by car. We have a list of places we passed on our Leicester Ring cruise, even stopped at for a short time, which we thought might merit a visit another time. The weather yesterday was mild and mostly dry, so off we went.

Our first stop was to be at Newton Harcourt which, according to the Nicholson map book, "is a well-known Leicester beauty spot, popular on Sunday afternoons." It being Thursday morning when we arrived probably didn't explain why we were mystified by that description. So we passed on through and arrived at Wistow, pulling into the Rural Centre, which looked interesting.

And it was interesting; a cluster of shops and workshops selling a range of foodstuffs, art and craft work, gifts and assorted ephemera. We bought supper - a locally produced lamb and vegetable pie - today's lunch - Italian cheese and dried tomato bread - and various other consumables from the delicatessen,

and spent some time just wandering, admiring the variety of goods on sale. We had lunch in the bistro,

then, deciding that we might well have made some poor decisions when considering which places to visit, we took a longish, countryside route back home. All very enjoyable, and to be repeated.

The day before that, we joined five others(!) at the cinema to see "The Fifth Estate".

A dramatic thriller based on real events that reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st century's most fiercely debated organization.

It doesn't seem to have attracted much enthusiasm from hoi polloi, nor from the critics, but it was a good film; gripping, intense, and not short of pathos. However, having read the letter from Julian Assange to Benedict Cumberbatch, I have to say the film lost some of its edge. Assange told Cumberbatch that the book upon which the film was based was the least accurate and reliable of all the books written about him and Wikileaks, and that it didn't reflect the truth. Having said that, Assange is a first-class propagandist...

As for boating, the weather forecast is not encouraging.

Not only would we love to have one more cruise of a couple of weeks or so, but we need to get fasteners on our cratch cover and hull so that we can fasten the cover firmly along its bottom edge. If we're not going to get our foredeck soaked - and we'd rather not, since it's not really intended for that - then we need a couple of dry days when the cover can be off.

We've booked Kantara with John Barnard for April 2015! to be repainted. He's that busy!

Sunday & Monday

Our departure from Leicester was not nearly as pleasant as our arrival. We came in from the south on a broad sweep of river lined with clean, tidy and impressive buildings of all sorts (many of them owned by the University). Our journey up through the north of the city and its suburbs was dreary at best, passing through the unkempt butt-end, littered with rubbish and graffiti, and lined with shabby old business properties, many of them derelict. The water smelled foul, the locks were dirty and vandalised. It was good to get out of the built-up area and move out into the extensive parkland beyond, acres and acres of water meadows, now turned into a very attractive public recreational facility.

We moored up for the night at the Hope & Anchor pub restaurant just past bridge 19. It was late lunchtime on a Sunday, and the pub was extremely busy, the car park full. We took a look at the menu, and decided against eating there, but it was a good place to stop, being far enough away from the bulk of the diners for us to avoid feeling somehow out of place on the boat, and being very quiet throughout the evening and night.

This morning was chilly, warming slowly as time passed, but never being particularly bright. The countryside was lovely, however. We spent much of our time, not on the narrow canal, but on wider and deeper rivers, the Soar and the Wreake which share their channel with the canal on and off for miles. Where they are separate, they run alongside each other, and the whole length is dotted with weirs of various sizes, often with impressive amounts of water rushing over them. The water meadows continued, and the whole scene was beautiful.

On rivers, you can't generally just stop and moor at the towing path, as you can most of the time on canals. Instead, you have to find a designated mooring, such as the one by the pub. We chose one at Barrow-on-Soar, but needed to do some shopping first, and find water and waste services.

In fact, that turned out to be difficult. As we discovered last year, it is often the case that our map books - latest editions - have wrong information regarding where these services are to be found, and, as was the case today, we have on several occasions stopped for services at marines and boat yards, to be told that we can't use them there, or they are no longer available. Today, we were finally successful at Sileby Mill Boatyard.

Shopping was also a problem. The best place we could find on our map was the town of Mountsorrel, but couldn't stop there because no moorings were provided! How much more trade the local pubs and shops would do if boats were welcomed!

The shopping was finally done at Barrow-on-Soar, where we took the last remaining space in one of the two mooring places, and settled in for the night.

Friday - one week into the cruise

(Posted late - I forgot to press the "Publish" button!)

Thursday night's mooring

Another beautiful day, and we set off, intending to reach Leicester in the afternoon. Much of today's journey took us through the outskirts of Leicester, with a lot of housing on one side or other of the canal. Nonetheless, it was all very pleasant, and there were stretches which were entirely farmland.

After Freeman's Lock, the canal joins the River Soar, and we continued into the city of Leicester on the river, wide and deep. It was because of the River Soar being in flood that we failed to complete last year's approach to Leicester. No rain this year, thankfully, but blue skies and a warm breeze.

The weir where the canal and river join

Looking down river from Freeman's Lock

Through the lock, and looking back up the river

The entry to Leicester is very impressive, with old and new architecture side by side, and some Victorian, iron bridges spanning the water. There was, unfortunately, no space for us at the secure mooring below the beautiful Castle Park, so we tied up opposite in a clean and tidy basin which put me in mind of Banbury, though much bigger.

We moored next to a small Burger Boat. One of the women who own it, and run what sounds like a very good business from it, asked me for help. They had to get the craft across the river to the space on the secure mooring which had been too small for us. Their problem was, however, that their engine didn't work, and they had to punt it across! One of their crew was not with them, and they asked if I could help.

I'd never punted before. I stood on the tiny foredeck with a ten foot bargepole in my hands, and - punted! With one of the women punting at the stern, and the other waiting to catch ropes when we got to the other side of the river. We made it without incident. Hey, I can punt!

Days 3 & 4

The journey to Foxton on Monday was lovely.

Our overnight mooring

 

Arriving at Foxton Locks in beautiful warm and sunny weather, we found a good spot to moor at the top of the staircase, close to the cafe - we planned to have breakfast there in the morning. 

I just had to have a wander around the site, I love it so much. It was very quiet.

The last time we ascended Foxton Locks, it was in the best kind of winter weather. Today, Tuesday, we descended in the best kind of summer weather. Foxton is lovely in both! We started the day with breakfast from the cafe at what was formerly the lock-keeper's house, eaten in the old stables in which boat horses used to be housed. The breakfast was a huge two eggs, two bacon, two sausages, beans and mushrooms with a large bap – for an amazing £4.50 each - , washed down with tea and coffee.

With that inside us (we needed no lunch later!), we took on water, and made our way down the locks in beautiful weather, although a strong breeze started about half way down, and continued for the rest of the day. We weren't hurrying. We'd made a lazy start to the day and travelled slowly, arriving mid-afternoon at a mooring half a mile or so from the village of Fleckney, where we bought food from the Co-Op. We spent the night here, looking with some concern at clouds building as night moved in.

I forgot to say on Saturday – I had another sighting of the other Kantara that morning. She sailed past the marina, going south. What a same that we would be heading north, and would not have a chance of seeing her again, and perhaps chatting with the owners.

And we're back!

A day later than expected, but never mind. The journey from St Albans took over three hours longer that it should, with problems on the M1 bringing northbound traffic to an absolute standstill, but never mind - we're back.

Today, I booked a two-day helmsmanship course at Sawley Marina on the River Trent. This will be in the last week of June, and we'll make it part of our re-run of the Leicester Ring trip which we had to abort part-way through last year. This time, we'll be doing it anti-clockwise, arriving at Sawley after the first week.

The course involves one day on the river and the second on the canal, earning us the Inland Waterways Helmsman's Certificate, having demonstrated (hopefully) competence in handling the boat on both river and canal, and in a range of cruising situations. It will be an enjoyable couple of days, and we're looking forward to it. I expect we'll have a fair amount to learn, and we'll come out of it with increased proficiency and confidence.

I need to make sure our anchor has the required 5 metres of chain and 60 meters of rope, ready for use on the river.