Starting with a splash

On Tuesday morning, before Grace and I were even out of bed, Michelle fell into the canal. Well, she washed one leg very thoroughly, and badly bruised the other knee.

"It's certainly one way to avoid locking!" I joked. She glared at me. She really enjoys the job, and wasn't going to be best pleased with having to watch me do it on my own - though I can be very entertaining!

It was a day of clouds...

and cows.

We moved on to Rugby, stopping for a short while to shop at Tesco. The stretch beyond, between bridge 59 and the aqueduct, has been very nicely restored where it used to be a badly broken bank. OK, it wasn't possible to moor there before the fix, but it's a shame that the opportunity wasn't taken to make this long stretch into a good 48-hour mooring.

Newbold Tunnel was still unilluminated. They really ought to replace that fuse! We stopped at Easenhall Bridge 34 to eat. Over lunch, there was much discussion about what we'd do when we met the Coventry Canal. Left to Coventry to see the cathedrals and whatever else we might discover Coventry has to offer, or right to the Ashby Canal? Michelle hadn't seen the city before, and would have liked to see the cathedrals at least, but her knee wasn't holding up very well, and there was some doubt that she'd be able to do the walking. I made the executive decision to turn right. How rubbish would it be to do the 10-mile journey in and out of Coventry with Michelle not being able to benefit from being there?

As it happened, we were able to moor at Hawkesbury before the junction. Every time we'd been this way before, that bank was totally full of boats. We moored close NB Ottawa whom we'd moored next to the night before. Another boat filled the gap between us. The young lady from the boat introduced herself as Isabelle, the social media manager of her dog, Tony, who tweets as @tonyonaboat. Tony follows me on Twitter. I follow him now, too. Well, I already follow @BoatHorseCracker‏, the boat horse on the Montgomery. I can't be specist, can I? Not at all PC!

A shout, "Grace and Roger!!" made us hurry to the side doors in time to see Sandy and Dave - the Fairies - go past, waving and calling out. They were with another boat that was ahead of them, so they couldn't stop to catch up, which was a great shame. They were on their way back to Barby from a trip to Leeds. Eleven weeks in total. Lucky them!

We ate at The Greyhound Inn, down at the junction, an excellent meal in a charming old building, then returned to Kantara for a sweltering evening of card games.

A week out at last!

It had been our intention to take Michelle along the Trent & Mersey from Fradley Junction to Nottingham on the Trent, and back. We'd planned to meet her at Fradley, where she would park her car for the duration. This called for us to spend five days travelling to Fradley, and five back, of course. We'd arranged for Caroline to come and see us there the day we arrived. Caroline is an old friend of Madeline's we'd been reacquainted with at Madeline's funeral.

The problem was, I'd messed up some dates in my calendar, and we couldn't actually afford the five days for the return journey at the end of the week. We changed plans, then.

Michelle arrived at around midday on Sunday, and we set out soon after. It was a lovely afternoon, and there were lots of boats about. Moving on after lunch just above Watford Locks, we had a short wait at the busy flight. Chatting with the husband-and-wife vollie team, we discovered that they both used to live in Boreham Wood, the town of our birth, and that the wife had been born there, too. Small world, huh?

We arrived at the place of the rusty butties - Norton Junction approach - at about 5:00, and were glad to find just one mooring space. It was here I had something of a painful surprise.

Monday morning was breezy. The dawn chorus was fabulous - they'd rehearsed well.

Braunston Tunnel would have been fine but for a very timid skipper in front of us who moved very slowly, and bounced off the wall several times. He even reversed at one point. We're generally patient, but slowing down means less control over the steering, so it made things a bit more challenging for Grace, let's say.

Boats were queuing at the top of Braunston Locks, as they were below and, no doubt at each successive lock. Most travelled in pairs, which made the whole matter that much speedier and more efficient. One of the boats was a party of Norwegians on NB Rock Thrush who were on their fourth annual two-week UK canal holiday. They considered themselves quite expert, but I didn't have the heart to disabuse them of that idea. We were to meet up with them several times over the rest of the week, since their itinerary was much the same as ours. They planned to stop and visit Braunston.

"How big is the city?" they asked.

One balance beam at Bottom Lock bore a CRT sign I'd not seen before.

"Warning! Bee activity in balance beam!"

It's amazing how often we come this way and find Roy and Lee of Days Afloat inside Roy's boat having morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea... And still they manage to get their work done!

Just beyond Braunston, on the Oxford Canal North, we had a bite to eat. It's a lovely place to stop at.

On we went afterwards. Willoughby, Barby, then Hillmorton Locks. We'd hoped to moor above the locks, but there was no room, so we made our way down, and tied up just around the corner after Bottom Locks. It had been a longer day than we'd expected.

Hippocampus!!

How many of you know the word? How often do you use it? How many times a day, week or month? In a whole year, even? How often do you think the word will be uttered today in your town? In the UK?

I was looking out of a window, enjoying the canal countryside scene. A boat passed by.

"Hippocampus!?" I shouted out.

Michelle was sitting, reading a book.

"What made you say that?" she asked, with some incredulity in her voice.

"That boat is called Hippocampus!" I answered, a little gobsmacked. What a strange name for a narrowboat!

"Really? That's amazing!" came back Michelle. "I was just reading that word in this book!"

She read the passage out to me. 

"The administrative assistant who comes in at night, while you’re asleep, to clear that logjam in her in-box is the part of the brain called the hippocampus. The hippocampus takes all these folders and files them in places that make sense."

(Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult)

I ask you, dear readers, what are the chances of that happening? I cannot imagine. I'll tell you one thing, though. "Hippocampus" will be said a lot more than usual, now that you've read this post!

Hot stuff

We came back to Kantara on a sweltering hot day. And there was the normal Yelvertoft wind, but now an abnormally hot one.

We were expecting, hoping for a thunderstorm to break the oppressive heat, but it didn't come, though it did threaten for a couple of days. Grace and I hadn't been sleeping as well as we would have liked, and a few weeks ago we started to play a recording of rain and thunder throughout the night. It worked a treat, our sleep improved. Then, a couple of days ago, the storm broke. It wasn't much. There was rain, there was thunder and lightning, but it was at around 7.00 am, and the lightning was nothing in the daylight sky. But it was rain and thunder...

When we woke up again, we launched into a list of  "things we have to do before we cruise". Most of these have been completed, and we start out next Wednesday.

We leave Kantara again later today, to stay overnight with Christine and Mike in Torquay, and then to go to Dorothy's birthday party on Saturday. We'll go back to C and M's again that night, then return to the boat on Sunday.

The weather's colder now.  A mere 22 degrees. The summer-weight quilt was put aside on Tuesday night, and we slept under a sheet. We felt chilly last night. But we'd rather the weather as it is now than what it was at the start of the week.

It's just right for faring!

A fond farewell

Back in Kantara now, enjoying the weather, Grace and I are feeling a little less hectic. Madeline's funeral was a good occasion as far as that is possible. A large group of family and friends gathered at the crematorium under a sky as blue as today's but not as hot. The service was moving, of course, and tears were shed, but it was a fitting farewell to the "little sister". A beautiful poem was read that I want to have included in my funeral service, come the day.

The parting music came as something of a surprise to all but the immediate family.

Various of us had to explain to others afterwards how Madeline, as a child,  had been a great fan of Gerry Anderson's "Thunderbirds" on TV, in no little part because her dad had been the sound engineer. It was a great way to see her off, and we left the crematorium with smiles on our faces.

Another good side of the sad occasion was the meeting up of family, and with friends of Madeline's we'd not seen for decades. Among them was Caroline, who came with Grace's family and me on my first canal boat holiday, just a few months before Grace and I married. Madeline's standing in the doorway, Caroline's wearing the blue hat. Yes, that's Grace and me on the roof!

The day finished with family and closest friends eating together at Dorothy's house (Dorothy holding baby Kathryn in the photo). This Saturday, we'll be there again, celebrating her 70th birthday. It would have been Madeline's 58th, too. She'll be missed.

Feeling a bit like yo-yos...

Our return to the house was prompted by the need to find a new (used) car, coinciding with the scheduled loss of electricity for two days at the marina. In just a few days, we looked at innumerable cars on websites, test drove cars at two dealerships, and finally bought a bright, shiny Ford B-Max (henceforth to be called the Beemer) on Friday. Our old Honda Jazz is to be serviced and MOT'd next week, and given to a very worthy cause.

When we came back to St Albans on Tuesday, we were expecting to be here for just a couple of days. However, this grew beyond the sustainability of the few clothes and bits and pieces we'd thrown into a bag when we left the boat, so, still unsure of how long we'd be here, we returned to Yelvertoft on Saturday (the car's lovely!) and brought back more clothes - plus the perishable edibles that hadn't yet perished in the fridge. Madeline's funeral has a purple dress-code, and we used some of our time in the Rugby area to shop for purple attire for Grace. We failed.

It was convenient for Jess that we were heading north up the M1, because she needed to get to Bedford to meet up with the other two Maidens and drive off to a gig with them. Fortuitously, we were able to pick her up from  Bedford on our way back at the end of the day, too - a useful addition to our drive.

Said the Maiden headlined a music festival in nearby Redbourn on Sunday, and we joined a very good-sized audience and enjoyed a good, sunny afternoon there.

The Maidens are flying to Worms, Germany, tomorrow, to play at their Jazz & Joy festival over the weekend. They don't do Jazz - they're the Joy bit!

The shape of the next few weeks is now becoming clearer. Madeline's funeral will be on Friday, in Somerset. We'll drive down tomorrow and stay with Grace's eldest sister overnight. We'll be going back to Kantara from there, but returning to Dorothy's for her 70th birthday celebrations the following week. Returning to the boat after that, we'll be preparing for some cruising. Firstly, a week with Michelle on the Trent & Mersey and River Trent, then, after a week back at the house yet again, we'll have some cruising time to ourselves, route/destinations as yet undecided.

Watch this space.