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!

No quite what we had in mind

Our very satisfying plans to go out on the cut for a few days each week to do touch-up painting were foiled by the heatwave, which raged up to 38°C in the saloon. It was a lot hotter than that in the sun. Paint would dry on the brush on its way from the tin. So Grace got to work making the curtains and blinds instead.  It was good to sit out on the jetty amongst the reeds and in the shade of the trees.

Heavy, though brief, rain and equally unenthusiastic thunderstorms broke the heat after a week, and we could again sleep under a light duvet rather than on top of it. But still the painting was out of the question. The rain was totally random and the weather forecasts did nothing beyond telling us that the rain would be totally random. Wet paint and rain don't mix, either. Grace continues with her sewing, and I'm left feeling cheated, and more loose-endy than ever. I'm trying to get on with writing the book, but it's reluctant in the heat. And in the rain. I considered offering to help with the sewing, watched one very long YouTube video about making curtains, and went for a walk.

Needless to say, it rained on me.

Lindsey Anne set out to Oxford today, and our wide views of the marina pond have been returned to us. I don't know if they studied the weather forecast, but it says it'll rain. Randomly.

*****

Five on a boat to Oxford - part 5

It's Sunday, 17th September We're half-way through our trip - no longer to Oxford since we don't have the time - and we're wanting to get to Thrupp by the end of the day. Tomorrow, we'll turn and head back towards some location as yet unspecified where Dorothy's son Martin will meet her and drive her back to Wellington in Somerset. In fact, Thrupp is the better winding-point, because the canal down towards Oxford itself is far from pleasant, and the city end of the navigation leaves a great deal to be desired. Those who actually want to visit Oxford, a fine city worthy of a visit, tend to moor in Thrupp and catch the bus.

As we set off towards Somerton Deep Lock, our hearts sank. We very soon caught up with an extremely slow hire-boat. Clearly, they had had no previous experience of narrowboats, and were finding it very hard to keep a straight path on the straight bits, and to turn appropriately on the bends. And there were many bends! However, they were aware enough of us to pull over at the lock, and let us go down first, apologizing profusely as we passed.

"No need to apologize," we called out. "You did the right thing. We can be very fierce!"

The last time I managed Somerton Deep Lock, I failed to close the bottom gate. It was extremely heavy, and my honour was saved by a woman from the boat in front of us, who came back to give me a hand. This time, I'm glad to say, it was no problem.

At Bakers Lock, one starts the short trip upon the River Cherwell, flow conditions allowing.

Shortly after this lock, the Cherwell flows in from the right, the water's deeper, and the speed kicks in! It's wide and winding, fast and fun!

And, all too soon, we arrive at Shipton Weir Lock, which takes us down away off the river and back onto the canal.

There were just three lift bridges now before Thrupp, each of which needed to be opened, one of them electronically. And at Thrupp, we chugged slowly past long lines of moored craft, hoping to find a 60-foot space for the night. We passed one, gambling on there being more closer to the wharf, but that was in vain. We pulled over for the services, winded and made our way back to the space we'd passed. It was still vacant, and we were grateful!

Stir-crazy

At last, we got to take Kantara out the other day. We went not knowing how long we'd be out for, though we'd have to be back by September 9th to pick up Christine, Mike and Dorothy, to give them a two-week holiday. And that, we've decided, will be a trip down to Oxford and back. Though we might wind at Thrupp, Oxford itself being such an unpleasant stretch of canal. So anyway, off we went into the wild blue yonder. It was warm, dry, still, very encouraging. But...

...the engine started to misfire, or at least run unevenly. And quickly, not the slower hunting that we'd experienced when our alternator failed last year. All the gauges were reading fine. I checked all that I could, and couldn't find the cause. So we sighed, winded as soon as we could, and drove back to the marina.

Where we found that the domestic water had not been properly heated by the engine, so there must be an air-lock in the system, or a faulty thermostat. A call-back for Roy, methinks.

We're still waiting to hear when he can come to us.

So Grace gets back to door-painting, and I get back to being stir-crazy. We've done so little faring this year, it's ridiculous! There are a dozen things I could be getting on with, but I just can't raise the necessary enthusiasm. Sad, huh?

But yesterday, we took advantage of the continuing decent weather, and we drove out to Calke Abbey in Leicestershire.

 This is not a stately home. This is what the National Trust delight to call an "un-stately home".

"Hidden away in a hollow within ancient park land, Calke Abbey appears to have turned its back on the modern world. The telephone first rang in 1928 at Calke and electricity wasn't introduced until 1962. The often eccentric Harpur-Crewe family preferred a solitary life which excluded mod cons."

The park around the house is huge, with herds of deer and flocks of sheep. The gardens are large, and beautiful at this time of the year.

The house itself has suffered from generations of very eccentric folk adapting the place in very strange ways to accommodate their own particular circumstances and desires. Hence it has a very random, disorganised, interior, with most of the upstairs rooms and several of the others being stuffed full of  paintings, trophy animal-heads, and dead animals and birds in glass cases. And junk. Lots of it. They collected "stuff".

Some of the rooms are in a fairly good state, but much of the pace is very run-down; cracks in walls and ceilings, wall-paper peeling off or long-gone, paintwork badly deteriorated. The NT has done a lot of work to preserve the building, largely by fixing leaky roofs, walls, windows and doors, but the sheer size of the job of complete restoration is so huge that it would be beyond their resources. They've done the wise, clever thing of making its condition its attraction. Where their other houses paint a picture of the rise of noble families, this one tells the story of a fall. And if yesterday was anything to go by, it's a very popular attraction indeed.

The one thing in the house that's in good condition is a magnificent bed, a wedding gift three hundred years old, but never having seen sunlight! It's absolutely pristine.

It's a fascinating, haunting place, and we had a great day out there.

Now back to those jobs...

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Please note that another update to "Hints and tips..." has been added to the Addendum Blog.

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"Welcome to Oxford"!

...or, “This is Oxford, and you're welcome to it”!

It rained heavily on and off during the night. I wouldn't have known, had it not been for the frequent passage of railway trains throughout the night, on tracks just tens of meters away from the boat. So I didn't get much sleep. Fortunately, Grace slept fine. Wednesday morning brought clear blue skies and warm sunshine, so, after a half-successful shopping trip to the local Londis, we cruised on into Oxford.

It turned out that we had made the very best choice of mooring the evening before, for the bank along the towing path continued to be totally unusable because of excessive reeds and rushes, or severe deterioration – and often both. The only half decent places were designated Long Term mooring, or “Agenda 21”, a local authority response to shortage of affordable accommodation in Oxford, and mostly looking very slummy. The only decent visitor moorings came another mile further on, after bridge 240. And the frequent signs said, “Welcome to Oxford”. The funny side of it was that other signs generously offered 24-hour mooring in a number of places where no-one in their right minds would dream even of attempting it!

The last two miles into Oxford look and feel generally neglected and run down, despite the fact that some pleasant, no doubt expensive, houses flanked parts of it. Finally, we arrived at Isis Lock, the end of the Oxford Canal, surprisingly still some distance from the heart of the city. Boats over 50 foot long were unable to wind (turn around) without first passing down through this shallow lock onto the River Thames, there to turn around, re-enter the lock, ascend, and return back up the canal, out of Oxford. We had not been impressed, and could think of no reason to stay even for a short while.

The weather all the while had been fine, but this changed now, and we had a number of squally showers from which we could not escape, owing to the absence of anywhere to moor up for a while. We needed to press on and find somewhere pleasant to moor for the night, so we simply had to carry and on and get very wet. But even then, a warm sun broke through from time to time, making us and Kantara steam.

We were a little alarmed to come across NB Jorja, a boat we had seen several times over the past months, moored at the stern, but drifting her bow out across the canal and almost blocking it. There was no-one aboard, and the bow mooring pin had been pulled out of the very wet and soft ground, probably by the passing of another boat. I boarded her from Kantara, retrieved the rope and pin, and pulled her back to the bank while Grace took Kantara on to where she could moor safely, and came back to me with a mallet which I used to re-pin the bow. We left, hoping that this new mooring would last until the crew returned.

We arrived at Thrupp just as the skies opened again, and moored up at a good spot just across the road from the cottages. It was getting late, we were tired and achy, and were glad to take the opportunity to enjoy an evening meal at The Boat Inn just at the end of the road.