At Anderton

Since we happen to be here, right by the Anderton boat lift, we’ve decided stay for this bank holiday weekend and enjoy the opportunity to gongoozle the gongoozlers.  And be tourists ourselves.  And why not ?

You may have gathered, we don’t move very fast, and that means we get to actually see the towns and countryside we pass through, and industry and nature at their most astonishing, things that those on a mission to cover as much distance in the shortest possible time must surely miss.  Travelling gently is calming, you know, but moving just short distances can be a problem for us:  there is a minimum distance we must cover in a day for the cat to be able to reset her catnav.

Why the Bloke ?

My sister-in-law asked this.  She lives in America so, until now, was spared a rendition of the tale.  For you, Chris, but also because it hints at other aspects of canal living:

We had inkled that he (pre-Bloke) and I might become more than just good friends, that we might, in fact, have an interesting life together, so thought we’d cruise in tandem for a bit and see what developed.  It was all very tentative and nothing was said to any of our respective friends, we’d known each other for years, after all, so there’d be nothing unusual with us cruising in company.

We left Bulls Bridge, loitered in the Slough Arm a while, then headed north.

Coming into Berkhampstead, he went up to set the lock whilst I held the two boats and engaged in conflict with the overhanging willow.  A young British Waterways chap was working down and joined him.  He appeared to recognize me down below there (though you were not someone I remember having seen before).  He said brightly to my newly potential partner:

“Is that … ?”

“Yes.”

“I heard she’d got a bloke.”

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There’s a sticker I’ve seen in boat windows that makes me smile;  it reads:  Towpath telegraph relay station.

Gas usage

In fact, we don’t use much gas at all.  We have a lovely built-in gas hob, oven and grill, but the Jotul range meets pretty much all our needs.  Even in high summer we’re more inclined to fire it 

up with a few bits of fast-burning wood to cook the evening meal.  But the range really comes into its own when the weather is cool:  on tick-over it keeps the boat cosy, whilst effectively providing free cooking heat for stews, soups, steamed puddings, breads and carrot cake, things that are so costly when cooked on gas.  And I’ll give you my recipe for baked beans, though it’ll spoil you for tinned ones I’m afraid.  Most days there’s the aroma of something warming on the go.

The gas hob is the Bloke’s hero first thing in the morning, as he is usually the first to get up.  On those rare days when I’m up first, my inclination is to tickle up the fire and fiddle about doing

something else until the kettle comes to the boil.  The Bloke, however, on waking, requires instant tea-gratification, so his first action once vertical is to plonk the kettle on the hob and light the gas.  And the gas oven comes into its own on those occasions when we may have picked up some cold wood by accident, and the roast in the range is cooked but just won’t crisp and brown, so a blast in the gas oven fixes that.

As a footnote, the wood we burn is mostly fished out of the canal or picked up dead from woods and hedgerows as we cruise, though in the depths of winter we may add some coal to keep the fires going through the night.

The fridge is still off

For a while there in March, it looked as though we were going to have to put the fridge back on.  As soon as the weather cools down towards the end of summer, the fridge goes off and everything keeps just nicely in a box out in the covered cockpit area.  Saves gas, and maybe we’re doing our bit for the environment.  Ironically there are usually occasions over the winter when things have to come back inside because it’s just too cold out there.  On this occasion, we needn’t have worried, the sudden sunshine was just one of those welcome blips that mark the end of winter, if not a full-stop.  On the whole though, British weather is quite user friendly.  A little rain now, to keep everything topped up, would be nice …

Wing Wah on the Wigan Flight

Who in their right mind would happily do the whole of the Wigan flight in one hit, whilst knowing the existence of Wing Wah Chinese take-away at pretty much the half-way mark?  Wing Wah is a legitimate excuse to moor up between locks 77 and 78.  It’s a five-minute walk over the bridge into Ince;  eschewing the temptations of KFC and numerous kebab and pizza places, keep going and you’ll eventually find Wing Wah on the right-hand side.  Don’t be put off by the disregard for decoration, these people have more important things to do, like cooking, and the bits that matter, the stainless steel counter and food areas, the visible bits anyway, are spotless.  I’m vegetarian and the Bloke definitely isn’t and it’s been worth the several stops we’ve made there now just to see his joy when he opens that box of spare ribs resplendent in a thick luscious barbecue sauce.  We’re not talking a few dried bits of grilled bone.  We’re talking things that the Bloke picks up in both hands, with succulent meat attached that comes away in mouthfuls as he works along the bone, we’re talking the pleasure in his eyes as the sauce and juices ooze and drip down his beard, and the serious business of sucking his fingers between each one.  And we’re talking a really decent sized box full of these things.


And for the vegetarian?  I discussed my options with the proprietor:  I like vegetable chow mein and he recommended tarting it up with a lashing of chilli sauce, which was completely the right thing to do, and when it came it was another massive portion.  He suggested a vegetable chop-suey to go with it all, plus fried rice, without egg or prawns, and a whole heap of mini vegetable spring rolls.  And he threw in a bag of prawn crackers, which the Bloke and the dog greatly appreciated, but oddly not the cat.  This whole came to £16-something, and we could only manage half of it so had it again the following evening.


People have wondered about the security of stopping on the flight, we did the first time but haven’t hesitated since.  We’ve only had nice people stopping to chat.  Plus a bunch of kids, ten year-olds at a guess, that homed in on the Bloke, who has difficulty mustering affection for children and yet is like a magnet to them.  They bombarded him with questions about the boats:  do yu’live on them?  Why?  Have yu’got a bathroom?  Have yu’got a toilet?  How does it work?  Why have yu’got two boats?  Are yu’on yu’own?  Have yu’got a woman?  Where is she? …to which one of the little girls interjected:  She’s inside makin’is tea stupid.

Two in hand

We’ve been asked if it’s difficult to handle a pair, and the answer is that there isn’t an answer:  it’s different, and it’s relative;  we know people, ourselves included at times, who run pairs single-handed, it just takes a little getting used to;  at most I’d say perhaps you need to be a little more aware, sometimes I swear Christina is just waiting to catch you daydreaming and you can almost sense her snigger when she catches you unaware.

We’ve also been told:  “my wife wouldn’t want to steer the butty”, but since we tow cross-strapped, there’s no need to.  We both single-handed for years and now we enjoy each other’s company, there’s always something to point out when travelling, and it’s great having the extra person to brew up.

There is no right- or wrong way to handle a pair, what works for you is the right way.  All I can tell you is what works for us.

            There is no doubt that towing on the long snubber is more economical of diesel, as it was of horse-power, but the only time we’ve done it is when we’ve needed to travel when there was a high wind blowing.  Steering the butty independently on a 70’ line puts very little pressure on the motor, and I have to say, drifting along silently way back there all by yourself can be astonishingly restful.  But our butty is not heavily laden so there’s no real need.

            Whilst mentioning wind, on wider stretches of the canals, we might breast the boats (that is, tie them side by side – I’m aiming at newcomers to the cut so please bear with me when I state the obvious) on gusty days, so they present a smaller surface to a side-blast.  But this also puts a greater load on the engine and so again uses more diesel, and we happily use as little diesel as possible these days.  Mostly though, we sit out windy conditions and find something otherwise fun to do.

            So we prefer to travel cross-strapped, that is, with the butty’s nose close up behind the motor, with one short tow-rope from the left side of the butty’s bow to the right-side dolly on the motor’s stern, crossed by another from right to left.  In our case, one of the straps is fractionally longer than the other so that Christina’s bow rides marginally off-centre, to the left (or portside) of Freyja’s stern;  this is because of the direction her prop turns, and the wash and suck it creates.  For the same reason, the boats ride easier with Christina to Freyja’s portside when breasted.  With Christina’s tiller out and rudder strings holding it in a nice straight line so the water flows smoothly away, there is no need to steer the butty, to do so puts pressure on the motor’s stern and makes it harder for her steerer.  If you must have a steerer on the butty, steer the butty’s stern and not the bow.  But really, it’s unnecessary and possibly more troublesome.

            There are some benefits with a pair, for example:  when navigating a sharp bend, in or out of an arm say, dropping the appropriate cross strap will encourage the butty’s bow to overshoot the turn, pulling the motor’s stern with it and thus the bow over, then a little acceleration will straighten the motor up and bring the butty in behind.  Also, when spinning the pair, we will breast the butty on the outside of the turn, with the bow and stern lines just the tiniest bit slack, so that when the motor’s engine goes into reverse, the butty continues forward for a bit, pushing the motor’s bow over.

            Then there’s locking:  on single locks we tend to take the motor through first and bow-haul the butty.  If the shape of the pound makes hauling the butty out awkward, the motor will back in to pick her up.  On flights with shortish pounds, one of us will take the motor to the top (or bottom) then walk back to help with the butty.  It’s always a matter of principle to see how far you can get before the cavalry arrives back and surprisingly there’s rarely much in it, especially when there’s two-way traffic.

            On flights of double locks we keep them breasted and then locking is straight forward.  But when approaching a double lock with the butty in tow, we find it easier to have just the left-hand gate open.  The single gate concentrates the manoeuvring space.  As Freyja enters the lock, the steerer drops firstly Christina’s strap from the starboard dolly on Freyja’s stern, to encourage Christina to move over to the left of Freyja and so line up for the lock;  then as Freyja goes into reverse, her prop direction tends to suck her stern over and behind the closed lock gate, leaving the entrance to the lock free;  by then Christina is committed to the lock so the other strap is dropped leaving her free to glide in under her own momentum.  The two sterns are tied together (no need to tie the bows) so that both boats can be controlled as the lock fills or empties.  Again, when towing, we prefer to leave through one gate, the right one obviously.  The steerer takes both boats to the back of the lock to give the butty room as the motor tends to suck the butty forward, then lets go the stern rope;  as Freyja’s stern comes alongside Christina’s bow, reach over and get her bow-line, pull her over, and loop the cross-straps over the respective dollies.

            When mooring, we often settle Freyja first then decide whether to breast them or leave them in line.  We’re not sticklers for tradition, so the butty is not always on the inside, though she has a shallower draft so often she is for that reason.  Sometimes the view dictates the mooring arrangement.  If we know the butty is going on the inside, we might let her slide between the motor and bank, much like entering a lock, but with one of us ashore, flipping the motor’s centre line over the butty’s roof as she slides in.

            It’s really not complicated, the thing is to take it easy, watch what the boats are doing in relation to what’s going on around you, watch each other if there are two of you rather than bellowing instruction, chat about how you’d like to do something before you do it and have a grin and a laugh when it actually works.  And remember, all the above waffle is merely what works for us.

And then there’s winter cruising

Or not, precisely.  The first crusting of ice dissolved, with no indication that it would return in a hurry.  We’ve slipped into the arguably bad habit of not often listening to the radio or watching television or checking out the news on-line.  Mostly the world comes to us retroactively by way of a weekend paper, so we didn’t see this freeze coming, though intuition should have flagged it.  I suppose because we are in a relatively convenient location that we weren’t bothered.

            We thought we would move on on Thursday (2^nd),  but Thursday arrived with an inch of ice on the water.  

And Friday, snow.

And so we may treat this enforced incarceration as a rest period.  We’re not very good at spending too long in one place so when this happens we have to make ourselves busy, getting on with the still-uncrossed-off things at the top of the dog-eared to-do list.  So the Bloke has put an edge on the blades of the chainsaw and cut and split the bigger logs of wood we’ve been carting around, and I’ve been writing letters and catching up on emails, and reassembling the constituent parts of his favourite jumper, and emptying the compost from the bottom tray of the worm bin.  Six days on and no sign of the ice melting.