Waterways World – January 2002
‘From blow-up boats to Bob the Builder’
Richard Skeet warns against the addition of boating on canals
Our very first boat blew up.
We bought her, brand new, long before the days of the Boat Safety Scheme and blew her up the very first time she was launched. In fact we blew her up every time she was launched and jolly hard work it was too. By the time we had pumped goodness knows how many cubic feet of air into her limp plastic body we were too exhausted to do anything much more than lie around and let the wind take her where it would. There were oars of course, silly tubes of aluminium with small plastic bits stuck on the end which allowed us to propel her at a maximum speed of about 400 yards per hour.
Those were heady, thrilling family outings. The first few occasions were ‘noisy’ trips in a few inches of water around Bolder Mere, where the most exciting feature was the roar of the traffic along the A3, but for our two sons on the threshold of their teenage years, this height of adventure didn’t satisfy for long.
The lure of deeper water and a wider vista beckoned and so did Bewell Bridge, an extremely scenic reservoir in Kent. We dislike crowds, so chose part of the reservoir well away from the ‘public areas’ (with their well-displayed safety warnings), inflated the boat and launched in quiet, idyllic surroundings. Quiet that was, until the spotter plane came into view and determinedly buzzed our boat. We were fairly quick on the uptake, and not totally unmindful of safety, so it didn’t take long before we suspected that we must be contravening a bye-law. Discretion being the better part of avoiding a fine, we hastily scrambled our boys back to land. By the time the Water Ranger arrived in his speedboat we were innocently munching cucumber sandwiches, but it was difficult to hide an 8ft inflatable dinghy from his keen eye. He was very pleasant, of course, but we got the message and didn’t launch there again.
The bug had bitten, but where to go next? We had heard rumours of a river Wey Navigation not many miles from home and discovered that £7 would buy a licence which allowed us unpowered use of the navigation, except for locks. Well, who wants to work a lock when you can pick up your boat and walk round it?
It was probably on the river Wey that our serious addiction began. One day we were carrying our nameless inflatable around a lock when we saw Piglet. She was perfect. White, elegant, at least fifteen feet long – and with a cabin roof. Our lives would never be the same again. What more could we ever want?
At this point a change of employment moved us to Herefordshire, well away from the temptations of the river Wey but to a house on the very bank of the river Wye. There we found that the previous owners had left us a rowing boat which rejoiced in the name of Pedro, a strange name for a boat we felt, and no Piglet, but a boat nevertheless, and one which didn’t need blowing up before use.
Armed with life jackets and a picnic we embarked, like Mole and Ratty, on our first excursion down the river. Pedro was a heavy boat and we scarcely needed to use the oars as we raced downstream. After a mile or so it began to dawn on us that the return journey might be rather harder work so, upon reaching a stretch of calmer water, we turned around and began a trial row upstream and rowed enthusiastically, but the river would have none of it and we continued in the same direction as before.
We pulled into the bank and tied up to a tree to consider our predicament. Rowing was out of the question and bowhauling seemed the only way home. Thus it proved, but was easier said that done; if there is no evidence of it now, take it from one who knows bowhauling a boat from a bank of overhanging willow trees is not to be recommended. It was a very long way home.
It shows how serious this boating bug can be, for despite this ‘never again’ experience, we showed up at the Inland Waterway Association National Festival at Gloucester in 1990 and there in the car park was, not Piglet but a craft very like her. There was a large ‘For Sale’ sign in her window.
And so it was that we began a series of outings on the Mon & Brec launching from the free slipway at Goytre Wharf or Pencilli. On most trips the engine packed up, especially when mother-in-law was about, and often we found ourselves trying to manoeuvre Sir Ivor onto her trailer in gathering darkness. On one occasion our nocturnal activities at Goytre Wharf even brought the local constabulary to the scene!
One evening we very nearly blew this boat up as well as I filled the petrol tank from a Jerry can while Chef was frying sausages a few inches away on the other side of the cabin door. Please don’t try this. Fill your tank on the towpath as far away from the boat as possible!
You would be forgiven for thinking that we must have been quite mad, launching Sir Ivor down the slipway at Fenny Compton in the summer of 1991 for a week’s holiday on the Oxford Canal. A family of four, including two teenage sons already taller than their parents, just will not fit into a 15ft boat with a 7ft long cabin a dwarf could barely sit up in. Not being totally stupid, we had arranged B&B accommodation for the boys at strategic places between Fenny Compton and Oxford. For once, the engine never faltered and the sun shone and shone. We discovered that in this boat we would pass twenty narrowboats waiting to work through Duke’s Lock, and share with the first in the queue, and we could always find a mooring. We knew all about canal boating.
As we reflected on a wonderful holiday, we began to wonder what it would have been like had it rained all week. A not unknown feature of the English summer.
The following year we found out and after a couple of wet excursions we were on the look out for something a little larger – perhaps even a boat we could stand up in. One day on the Staffs & Worcs we damaged Sir Ivor’s impeller and, while having it fixed at Ashwood Marina, decided to investigate those funny locks at The Bratch. There, quite by accident, we found Carolyn, a Norman 23 in excellent condition and looking for a new owner. Soon afterwards, we found ourselves a four boat family with Carolyn on the British Waterways mooring at The Bratch, Sir Ivor on her trailer in our car port, Pedro at the bottom of the garden and our nameless inflatable in the loft. By this point our sons had identified a serious case of Irreversible Boating Disease in their parents and sought refuge at university.
We eventually parted company with Sir Ivor at the Gloucester Boat Jumble and for two years we spent our holidays on the canals in our smart shining white Carolyn. We noticed that most of the boats on the canals were those rather dingy old fashioned narrowboat things which people banged into bridges or locks with gay abandon. When the rain came down, up went our canopy, while narrowboat steerers had to stand with all that rubbery yellow stuff on and water running into their shoes. We knew all about canal boating,
Then we began to notice that when narrowboats came rather too adjacent to a low bridge arch nothing much happened; they sort of bounced off. When we did the same, our windscreen collapsed into several pieces and only with the greatest good fortune did not finish up in the cut. We also noticed that when it rained and we put up our canopy, we could no longer pass under the low bridges without the risk of tearing the material to shreds and we were obliged to tie up until better weather arrived. The last straw came when we shivered all evening on the Trent & Mersey while the air was filled with the smell of wood-burning stoves in the cosy narrowboats moored either side of us. It was August.
Thus it was that we arrived at Lowesmoor Wharf one Sunday afternoon in September to examine one of Viking Afloat’s hire boats about to be put out to grass. “This’ll do” said our elder son and so Thistle Dew she became. We spent the winter demolishing the bunks in the aft cabin and building a double bed in their place. We knew nothing about narrowboats, and if Viking Afloat had known anything about us they wouldn’t let us stay there all winter, constantly disrupting their work with conversations beginning “How do we…?”, “Where’s the …?” or “could you…?”. They were wonderful.
For the next seven years we travelled the canals and rivers whenever we were able, from Llangollen to the Thames, warm and sometimes dry. Thistle Dew survived the usual bumps and bashes of canal life, to say nothing of the Boat Safety Scheme, but without the adventures of our early boating life.
As Thistle Dew approached her twentieth birthday we began to realise that, like us, she was not as young as once she was and in time would ‘need attention’. We couldn’t bear to see her pulled apart yet again and so, with our own retirement beckoning and the promise of extended cruising, we began to think about her successor. We looked at a lot of ‘young’ second hand boats, some of which were all very fine, but not exactly what we were looking for. And so for the first time since we walked out of a shop in Kingston-Upon-Thames with a boat in a box, we decided to purchase a new one, 54ft of narrowboat to our own design.
We did the usual things. We went to the ‘National’ at Waltham Abbey and saw lots of wonderful new boats. We sent a specification to a long list of builders, most of whom replied helpfully, though one or two were obviously too busy. With assistance from Bob Southerland of Alvechurch Boat Centres, we had parted with Thistle Dew and discovered that they build boats for the private market as well as their own fleet. Not particularly looking to buy a brand new hire boat, we asked to see one of their ‘private’ boats and soon were welcomed aboard Kiwi Explorer by Lynda and Jimmy Hill We had expected to be there for perhaps an hour or so, but it turned out to be more like four, by which time our minds were made up. This was a boat which came complete with two luxury loo brushes!
As we eagerly waited for Bob the Builder to begin our boat, we knew that we had reached the bottom of the slipway which began on Boulder Mere and Bewell Bridge fifteen years ago. So be warned. Ours is a typical case; in some, addiction to boating can take many years to develop to its full blown form, while in others, onset can be very rapid indeed.
And you never can tell.
