Moor and Peace

How very appropriate, here on the Shropshire Union Canal!

We left our very Peaceful Mooring hoping upon hope that the Canal Club boat we'd encountered yesterday had made a very early start, and was moving at least 50% faster than she was yesterday. This was not very charitable of us, I accept, but we do have a schedule to keep. We do need to be on the Wyrley and Essington (aka the Curly Wyrley) by Friday week. And I really do want the poor lady skippering that boat to be doing it better than she was yesterday. For her own sake, and that of her family.

It was a warm day, and building up to be very hot. Swallows darted around the boat. Three of them were seeing off a buzzard, flying at him from all angles as if to confuse him, until he got the message and winged it.

The Shroppie is clearly a superior canal; superior to the Leeds & Liverpool and the Bridgewater. It has Armco for mooring. Miles of it, on banks that aren't overgrown with undergrowth, so that, once again, we can moor pretty much where we want to.

Except that there's the Shroppie Ledge, a mysterious protrusion from the side of the canal, below water level, which gets in the way sometimes when you try to moor, and results in the boat standing out from the back a foot or so. We haven't actually experienced the problem yet, but we have seen lots of boats moored with that gap between them and the bank.

And then there are the wasps. Entirely seasonal, of course, but still a problem. It wasn't so bad today, but yesterday they were buzzing around us in large numbers almost immediately we turned onto the canal. They stayed with us until bridge 27, when they simply disappeared en masse. Even the ones which had been avidly feeding in bowls which had held cake and cream just left. It was strange, as if some natural law forbade their passing beyond that point.

We stopped counting the boats we met, yesterday. This canal is far busier than any that we've been on this yea, and we're probably meeting more in one day now than we were seeing in a week previously.

We spent some time travelling with NB Serenity, getting to chat with them when both of us stopped for a lock. They were on their way to Venetian Marina, where they'd be hanging up their windlasses after six years of living aboard. They were finding life on the canals was getting too much for them as they were getting older, and were stopping while the going wasn't too tough. Wise, but sad.

We've been using less diesel that we'd expect, which is a good thing, of course. But, with about half a tankful still, we decided to fill it to the top again, thinking that this will probably last us now until the end of this cruise. We pulled over at Venetian Marina and filled up. NB Serenity was moored sadly nearby, her owners no doubt psyching themselves up now for moving off her and back onto land.

It was good to meet NB Dabbling this afternoon, albeit for the ten seconds it takes for two boats to pass each other. We were greeted first of all by the lady at the tiller, then by her husband who appeared from below, calling out that he's  a reader of this blog. I got a Tweet from Gerard this evening.

@NBKantara great to sail past a #boatsthattweet, enjoy reading your blog. I was working in L'pool last week and did spot you on the moorings

It's always good to meet folk who read the blog, or have read my book, or whom I follow on Twitter. It makes them far more real somehow!

At Barbridge Junction, we turned left,

passed the start of the Llangollen Canal,

and went on to Nantwich.

A long line of moored craft had left a space for us!

The sunset over Nantwich was phenomenal!

Not Photoshopped! 

North from Middlewich

The Trent & Mersey is truly impressive in its variety and contrasts. Today, the thinning urban scene of Middlewich, then quite riverlike, with “flashes” on occasion, stretches where the canal has widened into something of a lake because of land subsidence. The it gets narrow and twisty, sometimes so narrow that the passing of two boats would present quite a challenge. There were no locks today. I'm not getting enough exercise!

And then comes Northwich, with its very intrusive salt industry; pipes and chimneys, steam and rusting iron.

We came across a man playing “fetch” with his dog. Nothing unusual, you'd think. But in this case, you'd be wrong. This fetch was rather different. So was the dog.

The two of them stood next to a long, tall hedge of hawthorn, blackberry and wild rose. There was a small gap into the hedge, a field beyond it. But the game starts a yard or two to the side of the gap. The man takes the ball, and he hurls it with some force over the hedge. It goes quite a distance. And off goes the dog through the gap. He doesn't get to see much of the ball as it curls through the air and hits the ground. But he's determined. And he finds the ball within moments. Goodness knows how! His owners certainly don't. And he loves it, and he never fails.

The Anderton Lift comes next. Transporting boats the 50 feet between the canal and the River Weaver below since 1875. We didn't stop to look around. We will on our way back from Liverpool, and we'll come out and cruise the Weaver another year, probably travelling the Llangollen Canal on the same trip.

Barnton Tunnel is straight, 572 yards long, and you can see the exit from the entrance. It's also only wide enough for one boat, so there's no entering if you can see a tunnel-light ahead!

Saltersford Tunnel is shorter, at 424 yards, also only single-width. But this one is very bendy, and you can't see one end from the other, so entry at each end is governed by a timetable, restricted to one ten-minute slot each hour. We were fortunate to arrive within one such slot, so we sailed straight in. And it was bendy!

photo - www.geograph.org.uk

Out the other end, and we heard one of those noises that no boater likes to hear. The sound of something large and hard being struck by the propeller at 2000 revs a minute. Grace slips the engine into neutral, and we wait. Behind us, something large, black and shiny bobs to the surface briefly, then sinks again. Engage forward gear gently. Everything feels OK. Phew!

We've been amazed and delighted to see along the T & M large clumps of beautifully-coloured wild geraniums. We've never seen so much of it before.

But we've also never seen before so much of this very attractive but very undesirable, invasive Himalayan Balsam. I really can't report every sighting!

We stopped not far before bridge 212, an absolutely lovely spot overlooking a sharp fall of around 60 feet to a plain that stretches out into the distance towards more hills. We wondered why it was that the concreted bank only has enough mooring rings for four or five boats, when there's actually space for twice that!

Catching up

I don't like letting this much time pass between blog posts, but then I don't like writing posts which really have little to say. I've been looking back over the blog's past years, and frankly I wouldn't follow it! I have to remind myself, though, that the main purpose of this blog is to be a record of this part of Grace's and my life together, for future reference. Something to remind us when our memories are even worse than they are now. So I'll continue, even if what I write is rather boring to those few readers I have. Sorry, both of you!

One thing the blog's being good for right at this moment is helping me to write a book about our life in Kantara. I've completed about a quarter of the first draft, and I'm quite pleased with the way it's going. Its working title is "Life with our feet under the water", and I'm going to publish it on Kindle initially, maybe Lulu, too. It'd be good to have it actually in real print on real paper in a real cover. 

I had a book on Lulu some years ago, "A Friendly Guide to Exam Success", which sold, I think, five copies. I'm still not sure if that was Lulu's fault simply because they don't attract many readers, or mine because the book was rubbish. (Lulu do claim to have published 1,791,413 books since 2002, but it doesn't say how many it's sold.) But I don't think the book is rubbish. It's biggest problem is that it'll appeal mostly to those kids who are regarded as swats, and i think they're a dying breed. And do they use Kindle? Do their parents? I've revised it, though, and I'll publish that on Kindle, too. There's nothing to lose, after all, and I reckon that Kindle probably has squillions more users than Lulu.

So, life on Kantara continues at a slow pace. We're really glad to be here again, though the icy, snowy weather we'd hoped we might get just hasn't materialised (if that's what weather does), and what we've had is wind, rain, and cold gloom, with fog and... well, some sun. Like today. A beautiful day starting with frost, continuing with almost totally clear skies. We went carpet hunting. Wow! We want to replace the carpet in the boat, but we'd like to keep what's on the wall up to dado height - which is pristine - and get carpet in an appropriate colour to replace what's on the floor - which isn't. We've now visited all of the carpet shops, big and small, in St Albans, Rugby and surrounding areas. And can we find such a carpet? No, we can't. Nothing like it. We're waiting for some samples to arrive in the post from manufacturers. When that fails, which I'm pretty sure it will, we'll have to do the far simpler, though more costly, thing, and replace the lot. This'll involve taking all of the bits and pieces off the wall - radiators, speaker grilles, switches - which was the biggest reason we wanted to avoid replacing the wall carpet in the first place. But that can wait until after the boat's been repainted in April.

Last night we went to Cineworld to see "Jupiter Ascending" in 3D.

1. "Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) was born under signs that predicted future greatness, but her reality as a woman consists of cleaning other people's houses and endless bad breaks. Caine (Channing Tatum), a genetically engineered hunter, arrives on Earth to locate her, making Jupiter finally aware of the great destiny that awaits her: Jupiter's genetic signature marks her as the next in line for an extraordinary inheritance that could alter the balance of the cosmos."

   

   
   
2. It was action-stuffed, the visual effects were amazing, the 3D was well used, the story was naff, and the whole thing seemed to switch between taking itself seriously and spoofing. I don't think the trailer represented it accurately, but I think I'm glad I saw it.
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Last Friday, we saw "Kingsman: The Secret Service".

"Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, whose late father secretly worked for a spy organization, lives in a South London housing estate and seems headed for a life behind bars. However, dapper agent Harry Hart recognizes potential in the youth and recruits him to be a trainee in the secret service. Meanwhile, villainous Richmond Valentine launches a diabolical plan to solve the problem of climate change via a worldwide killing spree."

That was great fun. Unapologetically spoofy, with Colin Firth hilarious as the James Bond-type agent, a creditable relative newcomer Taron Egerton doing a good job as the new recruit with baggage. Samuel L. Jackson lisped his way through brilliantly as the baddy.

I'm in the process of looking at this year's cruising. We'll definitely be out on the cut continuously for several months. We have it in mind to go to Llangollen, Liverpool and Leeds, then wend our way back to Yelvertoft by... well, any number of routes. An exciting prospect!

Restless...

...doesn't describe adequately how I feel at the moment. The weeks since Christmas have seemed incredibly long, and, although it's good to be spending time with our kids, we're more than eager to get back to Kantara. The worst of the weather seems to have passed (but who knows, eh?), we have plans for the rest of the year, and those plans are canal plans!

Being at the house has enabled us to get done a number of jobs which were needed here, or which we could do better here. We've had solar panels installed, we've investigated cavity wall insulation (and found it's not needed), replaced a shower pump (supplying two showers), and done a bit of gardening at times between downpours - Naomi's done more than that, bless her, and has just started a project to erect raised beds around the garden, in which to grow vegetables. Other, tidying and rationalising, work will be done as part of that, too. I've investigated a leak in the roof of the summerhouse, and await further heavy rain (although I really hope it doesn't come) to test my repair efforts. Grace has made several dresses for herself and Jess. We've been doing a fair bit of clearing out of "stuff", too, and discovered FreeCycle, an excellent way of finding good homes for things that are no longer wanted. I've just given away a couple of Kerria from the garden, and a TV a week or so ago. We have a couple of good charity shops just at the end of the road, too.

And I've broken my third exercise bike!

Looking back over the blog, you'll see that I bought my first one for use on the boat back in 2012. It developed a fault before the year's warranty expired, and i got a replacement... which failed within the year, so I got a replacement... which failed last week. Tesco Direct, from whom I bought it, have been very good about this, and replaced it each time without any problem, but they did say this time that they wouldn't replace it again, if I insisted on having the same make and model. So I've chosen another, and I'm waiting for its delivery as I type. Fingers crossed!

We were glad to be around when Said the Maiden supported Jim Moray at the Hitchin Folk Club. It was great for them to be supporting yet another top artist on the folk circuit, and their performance was magic.

 They're in the process of finalising their first full album, ready for their nationwide tour with Dave Swarbrick in April and May. Steve's engineering and producing the CD.

Of course, when we get back on the canal, there's no telling how much this deplorable weather will affect our cruising, but we have a number of trips in mind; to Llangollen, to Stratford-upon-Avon - we have vouchers for theatre tickets we're looking forward to using, to Brentford, and a trip to complete our intended Leicester Ring trip last year, visiting Coventry and the Ashby Canal.

We shall see!