Route to freedom

I have 21 working days before I am free (last day at the shop – 31st May). I intend to start my big cruise as soon after that date as possible and have been looking at where I might go.
There are two canals I definitely want to explore because of the countryside they are in and they are the Macclesfield and Peak Forest Canals. Both of these skirt the upper levels of the Peak District. I also want to revisit the Shropshire Union as I loved it so much when I cruised it the year before last.
So my tentative route will be up the Trent and Mersey to Great Hayward where we turn onto the Staffordshire and Worcester. No doubt we will spend a few days here as it is one of our favourite places. It has great walks, the River Trent and a lovely farm shop, as well as water and rubbish facilities. Then down the Staffs and Worcester, passing close to Stafford, as far Wolverhampton, where we turn onto the Shropshire Union. This canal heads eventually for Chester but we will turn off onto an arm called the Middlewich Arm which will take us across to the Trent and Mersey at Stoke on Trent. The Macclesfield starts here and runs to Marple where we will turn onto the Peak Forest.
The return route is uncertain. The quickest way will be to return down the Macc. and then turn left onto the Trent and Mersey which will return me to Great Hayward. However that means I need to navigate the Harecastle Tunnel – very long, very low in parts and very dark and drippy. I hate tunnels; just the idea of all those thousands of tons of earth above my head is enough to freak me out. So I may retrace my route if I wimp out and have a detour down the Llangollen Canal which joins the Shropshire Union and leads into Welsh Wales.
The great advantage of having 3 months to cruise is that it doesn’t matter what route I take and it also won’t really matter how busy the canals are (and being that it will be June to August, they will be busy!) I have plenty of time, so following a very slow boat or queuing at locks won’t (hopefully) stress me out. Finding moorings might be more of an issue but my usual pattern is to leave early, cruise till lunchtime and then moor for the rest of the day to explore etc. Most holiday boaters cruise all day so I will hopefully be moored up before the rush!
I am a little nervous now it’s getting close but also very, very excited!

This is a well known bridge on the Shropshire Union at the Grubb Street Cutting. Look closely and you will see a lone telegrapth pole mounted within the bridge!

New Roof

I have been unusually busy recently, hence no posts. Then I remembered I hadn’t posted any photos of my lovely new roof, so here we are…

This was the way it looked before – this photo doesn’t do justice to the rust marks and stains from the chimney, (carbon liquid leaks from under the chimney when I have a wood fire and makes a dreadful mess. I have a better chimney now and that has cut down the leaking a lot).

I could never work out why the previous owners had painted the roof a grey / blue colour when it didn’t go with the rest of the boat. So I have chosen cream which echoes the coach stripe on the side. Being light, it also reflects the sun which keeps the boat cooler in summer. Sand has been used to make it non slip, much to Bonny’s initial disgust as she didn’t like how it felt under her oh so sensitive paws.

This is my newly painted hatch. I wasn’t sure I wanted the red, but it nicely matches the red tunnel band on the stern. (Narrowboats have horizontal bands of red and cream or similar around the stern so that if you see one looming out of the dark of a tunnel you can tell if it’s coming towards you or travelling away.)

Bonny has this happy Buddah as a new companion on the roof! I love his laid back posture and happy smile!

Released!

At last we are free of the shed and have resumed living in the light! We were finally let out on Friday – so nearly two weeks of incarceration. It’s been worth it though. The roof looks tremendous after having seven coats of paint applied – if you count the primer and undercoats. I should have taken a photo – never mind – one to follow. The engineer has also had another go at solving a persistent coolant leak in my engine. I’m not entirely convinced that he has cracked it but we will see. I have dried the engine bilge and we will see in the coming days whether it stays dry.

A more important releasing is now confirmed. My last working day is 31st May. The shop is due to close some time in July and I would have been willing to stay till the bitter end if my bosses had been reasonable regarding the financial situation, but no, although they have agreed to give me a good reference. So I am deep into planning the next few months. It is so exciting. I am going to take the boat out from June until the end of August. Then home for some boring stuff like car servicing and pet inoculating. Then a shorter cruise before a family wedding in October. Late Autumn will be taken up with visits to friends and relatives before hibernating for the winter. Job hunting will then commence. It will be the first time in my life that I will not be answerable to anybody else and I can’t wait!

Living in a shed

Last Monday I took the boat up to Fradley Services – the boatyard just up from my mooring. We were there for the blacking of my bottom and the painting of my roof – well my boat’s bottom and roof!

They were running a little behind and so only got me in on Tuesday and I had assumed that it would take maybe 5 days in total. I was wrong! We will not be released from the shed until either Tuesday or Wednesday next week. The downside is that Bonny and I are living in the dark and breathing lots of paint fumes. The upside is that we are on shore power which means unlimited electricity and no running of the engine. It’s a real treat as I haven’t been on mains electricity since I left the marina over 2 years ago.

It may be taking a long time but that is because they are very thorough. They have taken my roof back to the metal and have painted several undercoat layers with long gaps in between so they dry properly. Yesterday they painted the first topcoat – a beautiful buttery cream colour and will do another coat next week, together with sand to make it non slip. They finished the blacking of the hull on Friday and since they don’t work on weekends, the paint has a good two and a half day to dry and harden before going back in the water. In some boatyards you would be lucky to get one day at most for the blacking to cure.

So it is all good and Bonny is adjusting to the surroundings although we will both be very happy to be back in the water and breathing fresh air again! Meanwhile she is passing the time by hunting mice and possibly rats around the yard! I am also delighted to discover that my roof was not nearly as rusty as I had thought (more discolouration than rust) and that my hull has lasted very happily with a gap of two years between blackings. In fact for 15 years old, she is in very good condition all round.

That’s more than can be said for me as I am finding life quite exhausting at present, what with the shed causing me disturbed sleep, a bit of a domestic with a friend, and work issues as well. Still I wouldn’t swap my life for anyone’s and I have my long cruise to look forward to – almost certainly beginning in June now.

Heroes and a naughty little dog

Heroes come in many shapes and sizes and yesterday my caped crusader came with a powerful torch and an exceptionally well trained Collie dog!

I had been relaxing with Bonny recently. She hadn’t run away since October last year and was becoming increasingly obedient both on and off the lead. Yesterday my complacence was blown out of the water. We had been quite busy with this and that on our day off and after her third and final walk of the day, Bonny and I returned to our boat. I took her lead off so she could jump into the cratch unhindered.

Suddenly she was off and running. She slipped between my legs, belted down the path and straight through the hedge into the field behind the mooring. I immediately followed and using my most commanding training voice, ordered her to ‘Come’! She paused, looked at me and then, if dogs had fingers, she would have raised two of them! And off she went.

Five hours later…It was pitch black and increasingly cold. I had heard her every so often barking in the various fields around the mooring but every time I went out, she hid. I was cold and exhausted and had returned to the boat. I was terrified she would either run out onto the road where she would be all but invisible to traffic or that she would fall into the sluice for the canal as that is where she had been last seen. But I was powerless to do anything about it. I knew by now she would be cold, footsore and hungry but once she has disobeyed me, a switch seems to flip in her brain and she appears unable to return to me even when she is desperate to come home.

Enter my hero… Chris is his name and I had seen him on the mooring much earlier, while it was still light and had said that Bonny was on the run again. I assume he must have seen me and my lonely torch in the field and guessed that I had had no joy. Out he came with a torch that could double as a lighthouse lamp  and a totally wonderful dog called Beth. He sent Beth to track down my wild pup and then somehow he managed to catch her and brought her back filthy and panting (Bonny not Chris!) to my boat. I heard Beth at the door and my heart leapt as I thought it was Bon, but then sank again when I saw Beth. Then a figure like the Good Shepherd loomed out of the darkness and there was my very own errant sheep cuddled in his arms.

I cannot express how relieved I was and how incredibly grateful I was to Chris, who should have been tucked up safe and warm on his boat and not tramping the fields in the middle of the night. He didn’t tell me he was going to help, or talk about helping, he just went and did it. I was still trying to stutter my thanks when he strode off with his faithful hound back into the darkness. What a hero!

When I am tempted to lose faith in people and their humanity, someone comes along and restores my faith in the human race. This time it was Chris – and Beth, restoring my faith in dog nature – severely damaged by Bonny!

Clouds and Silver Linings

I was talking in my last blog about the expenses looming for my boat. Well since then we have been iced and snowed in. Even when the weather improves, it always takes longer for the canal to thaw so at present I am stuck. That means I won’t be able to move the boat up to the yard for its painting and blacking.

The downsides to this is that I will have to rearrange the blacking for another date. The upside is that the money stays in my account for just a little longer. The other issue at present is water. While we are frozen in, we have to find a tap that isn’t frozen and then collect water in plastic barrels which then need to be decanted into the boat’s tank. It is heavy work. The upside is that we draw together closer as a community and tend to help each other more than when life is easy. Well, most do – there is always the odd one who decides that their needs are so much more important than anyone else’s – but that attitude is thankfully rare – at least in our part of the world.

Here are some pictures to give a flavour of our winter world…

(cheating with this one as it was taken last year – but it is very pretty!)

Loads of Money

There is no doubt that it is generally less expensive to live a floating life style than a land based one; on the other hand if anyone tells you it’s free of big expenses, don’t believe them. You have heard what BOAT stands for? Bring Out Another Thousand!

In these coming months I have particularly big outgoings to keep ‘Don’t Panic’ happy and legal. Firstly there is my annual mooring fee – just shy of £1,300. Then there is my licence to allow me to cruise the waterways – nearly £700.

On 13th February, if we are not iced in, I am taking the boat for her two yearly bottom blacking. This involves blasting all the grime and weed that has accumulated using high pressure water hoses and then painting the hull with several coats of a bitumen based paint to retard rust and so keep her afloat. My roof has needed repainting for some time and so both these painting jobs together will cost around £1,000. I have learnt that the best way of keeping the dreaded rust at bay is to keep her clean and polished and to keep the paint in as good a condition as possible. Rust is very sneaky – you may only see one little spot showing through the paint, but often if you investigate further you can find that it has crept all over the place, under cover of the paint.

Lastly my Boat Safety Certificate is due for renewal this year. This is an inspection that happens every four years to make sure the boat is safe and you have to pay an examiner to do it. I’m not sure how much that will cost yet and of course the expense will rise if there is anything I need to put right. It’s very like your car MOT in that you hope very much that you only have to pay the fee for the exam and nothing nasty is found!

Because all these expenses are due within a couple of months of each other, it requires me to be financially disciplined throughout the year so that I save enough to cover it all. I find this quite difficult – particularly as I only earn around £750 a month. It is so tempting to spend what I have each month and worry about these big expenses when they arise. However that way lies ruin so I do my best and am very grateful to the relatives who have helped me out on more than one occasion!