Bright Lights, Big City

Oh, I LOVE Birmingham by boat!

The climb is hard work. 38 locks surrounded by factories and tower blocks can only reasonably be described as 'torture.'

But afterwards, we found ourselves in a waterfront apartment in the trendiest part of town, with dozens of pubs & restaurants to choose from! Harvey Nicks' champagne bar is two minutes walk away.

Result!

The only downer: I was exhausted after 38 locks in the pissing rain and slipped off a wet gunwale while mooring.

I've always been strict about holding the rail while walking the gunwales, and was painfully vindicated by way of a single wet foot and a hurt pride. (If you're going to fall off your boat, do it in Gas Street Basin in front of thousands of onlookers.) Nothing worse than a hurt shoulder, but it could have been so much worse.

A Desolate Wilderness

I grew up in Staffordshire, and never liked the place.

To be fair, this is probably because I travelled into Stoke-on-Trent for school and social life - which is like going to Milton Keynes for its history or visiting London for a bit of peace & quiet.

But travelling through Staffs by narrowboat was surprisingly pleasant.

Mainly, this is because we were on the very pretty Eastern end of the Trent & Mersey, and turned onto the Coventry Canal before approaching Stafford. This is something I strongly recommend.

The village of Alrewas is well worth a stop - but to stand a chance of getting a mooring you need to arrive early. We were lucky yesterday, and settled in for some excellent fish & chips.

The countryside here is progressively busier, but still pleasantly rural with an increasing number of leisure facilities as we get nearer to the bright lights of the big cities.

This afternoon we crept in as far as Kinsbury Water Park before tying up in a very peaceful location. Tomorrow, we have the 38 lock climb to the centre of Birmingham.

A Desolate Wilderness

I grew up in Staffordshire, and never liked the place.

To be fair, this is probably because I travelled into Stoke-on-Trent for school and social life - which is like going to Milton Keynes for its history or visiting London for a bit of peace & quiet.

But travelling through Staffs by narrowboat was surprisingly pleasant.

Mainly, this is because we were on the very pretty Eastern end of the Trent & Mersey, and turned onto the Coventry Canal before approaching Stafford. This is something I strongly recommend.

The village of Alrewas is well worth a stop - but to stand a chance of getting a mooring you need to arrive early. We were lucky yesterday, and settled in for some excellent fish & chips.

The countryside here is progressively busier, but still pleasantly rural with an increasing number of leisure facilities as we get nearer to the bright lights of the big cities.

This afternoon we crept in as far as Kinsbury Water Park before tying up in a very peaceful location. Tomorrow, we have the 38 lock climb to the centre of Birmingham.

This is narrowboat country

It's not been a successful day for photography - but today saw a significant change in the waterways we are cruising.

Yesterday was spent in a hire car - taking Mic to a university appointment, popping home for laundry, and collecting a swanky (and bloody expensive!) rechargeable Dyson vacuum cleaner which will replace the much less powerful Oreck on the boat and (thanks to its filters) should further reduce the triggers for Hugh's asthma. Much cheaper than buying another domestic battery & a larger inverter so we could run our home vacuum cleaner on the boat.

Heading upstream on the Trent out of Nottingham, the current was surprisingly strong so the going was slow. It was also strikingly pretty - and much busier than anything we had seen so far this summer. We stopped at Sawley for ice cream and for Mic to gaze longingly at the dolls house workshop there, and then again at Shardlow for lunch - the Eastern end of the Trent & Mersey Canal. This is narrowboat country now.

If you think river cruising is relaxing - canal cruising is hibernation in comparison.

After a whole morning of sitting on the boat roof, drinking tea and generally relaxing, we were exhausted. So we found a pretty spot and moored up, put a table and chairs in a shady spot on the towpath, and drank some more tea.

Transported to Another World

After the stress of the last couple of days, waiting for the Little One to recover from his asthma attack, we finally got out of hospital late last night - 48 hours...

This morning, things couldn't have been more different.

First, the Little One was breathing easily, and after a long morning in bed (life jacketed up!) he was back to his normal, Tiggerish self.

The rest of us slapped on the sun cream and cruised the Trent on one of the most perfect summer days I have seen. One single cloud, over Gainsborough, made a token appearance.

The tide carried us swiftly all the way so we arrived 2 hours ahead of schedule. A quick trip to Waitrose for ice-cre and supplies and then an hour for chilling out - before meeting dear friends to sample the local brews.

Scunthorpe General

The Stainforth and Keadby Canal is a pretty route best known as an alternative to Trent Falls for people wanting to get on & off the River Trent. Not much in the way of shops (although Thorne is worth a visit for its proper shopping street.)

It's an easy day, if you like swing bridges, and it started with a glorious mist beneath crystal blue skies. The only niggle was a wheezy little boy. We thought nothing of that - he gets asthma occasionally... (Yes... That's your clue.)

The holiday proper was underway under glorious sunshine (see what I did there?) We arrived at Keadby to find a small flotilla preparing for the 7am tide - so many boats we couldn't even complain about the one on the water point!

We settled down for supper, set up the new satellite television receiver (£99 at Maplin's for everything you need! Bargain!) and washed the boat. And the little boy's wheezes just got worse - and his inhaler had stopped helping him.

So by the evening the inevitable decision was made. The nearest NHS Walk-In was located, a taxi was booked, and shoes were found. He walked ten feet down the towpath before puking and passing out. The ambulance arrived within 10 minutes.

24 hours of oxygen and nebulised steroids later we are anticipating discharge in the morning, after two nights in hospital. He is fine now, acting just as you would expect a 9-year-old to act when waited on by pretty nurses (with snacks, computer games, attention and a bloody menu!) Me? I get two nights in a hospital chair.

So our leisurely four-day Trent cruise is going to be compressed into just two days, hopefully still allowing for some beery evenings. We will still reach Nottingham in time for Mic's university appointment, and still have an enjoyable holiday.

As I said in the tag: 'being prepared' is important when you boat. Always know exactly where you are; always know where you can get what you need; and always have the taxi fare to the nearest town in your pocket.

York to Nowhere In Particular.

After the early July flooding, the Yorkshire waterways have been remarkably quiet - we saw just 2 other boats moving all day. However, with a heat wave predicted to coincide with the start of the school holidays, we are expecting to see that increase sharply.

The Rivers Ouse & Aire showed the evidence of very high waters over the last few weeks, and the flood locks were all in operation. So we weaved our way past flotsam-strewn bridges and muddy lock landings, and covered 45 miles today, finishing up in the middle of nowhere with no phone signal.

Wonderful.

The only downer on the day? The three power stations we passed all created their own mini weather systems, little man-made rainstorms in an otherwise dry day.

Expensive

The fuel tank was nearly empty. We needed to fill it.

Ouch.

Renaming the Blog, Not the Boat

We had originally planned to rename the boat to NB Peccadillo when she gets her repaint this winter.

But Michaela has grown too fond of lock-keepers calling her "Honey" on the radio...

So we're keeping the old name.

In theory, the old website should just redirect to the new domain, and your browsers, links and RSS feeds won't notice the difference.

In theory...

Cancelled

Sadly, the York800 Flotilla has been cancelled.

After all my 'big talk' in the last blog post, it makes me look a bit silly, doesn't it?

Still...

We found out while cruising up the Ouse on a very high tide and heavy rain, in convoy with the wonderful crew of NB Cheswold (more of them in a moment...) and the rozzers aboard the waterways enforcement boat Yorkshire Ranger.

I've never seen the water levels below Naburn Lock this high without the lock being closed - there is normally a rise of almost two metres. We arrived at the lock and were advised by the lock keeper and the Flotilla organisers to "moor somewhere safe."

While in the lock, something unexpected happened. The throttle cable snapped. Now, let me give you some advice: always make sure that when your throttle cable snaps you are alongside a boat crewed by a professional engineer who loves mending boats & carries spare throttle cables, and his lovely partner will make you a gin & tonic as he gets to work.

Not only was the cable repaired, but the cause of the snap was identified: the cable had welded itself to the exhaust, preventing flex, and had snapped at a point near the throttle lever where it frequently bends (see the picture.)

We then fought our way upstream to the city centre, where York's infamously poor facilities for visiting boaters were exposed. No floating pontoons for visitors on a river known throughout the land for rising and falling up to twelve feet without any warning.

In all, eight narrowboats made it into Foss Basin, where the moorings were underwater, and we all tied on to each other alongside local boats which were on safe moorings.

All I can say to the organisers of the Flotilla and the people responsible for the local river: "for shame, York, for shame."

Being seen at the right parties, darling

We didn't make it onto the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Flotilla. But that's OK - it was held on some backwater down South, and it would have been a real nuisance getting Honey there. Water shortages on the way there, floods on the way back... We got the message! We stayed away!

And anyway, there is a far more important flotilla happening on our doorstep this weekend. York is celebrating the anniversary of receiving its charter.

60 years, Brenda? Not bad, I suppose.

Us? We're celebrating 800.

And as the Daily Telegraph said in its article about this weekend's celebrations, "800 years is peanuts in this city."

So York is going to have a party. The preparations are well under way, and we are going to party for several days.

In typical English summer weather I brought Honey half way from her home mooring to York. It was a journey under moody skies and past heavily laden working barges & the usual motley collection of wonderful little boats. Everyone was very friendly and chatty, ignoring the rain & loving the sunshine, and treating the waterways as they should be: a nice place to be.

Bring on the party!