Tomorrow I should have been taking Starcross out from Norbury Junction and heading south along the Shroppie on the first stage of our summer cruise. Friday evening would have seen us at Wolverhampton ready to start the BCN Marathon Challenge on Saturday morning (if you follow the link, please note that BW has got the dates wrong!). But it's not to be. I will be getting a couple of days aboard but won't be going far as I'll be spending all next week at our new house in Lancaster. As well as "routine" painting and decorating we have to see a man about a woodburning stove (to make it just like being on Starcross) another man to design us a new kitchen and a third to check out what seem to us to be some very dodgy electrics. We then need to get hold of a plumber and also have to finish dismantling a wardrobe so we can get it up the stairs. Then we need to decide whether we really want to proceed with reinstating an interior wall that was taken out by a previous owner.
Oh yes!, we also have a rather large and ugly rough stone fireplace to knock out and remove. So, cue smug looks from any readers who have the good fortune to live aboard their boats and I just hope I can find time to get to stage two of the trip - the Braunston Historic Working Boat Rally at the end of June.
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Monday, 23 May 2011
Boat Gathering in Hereford
Starcross' boating activity has been somewhat constrained recently, but one event it was never going to be able to attend was the Hereford Boat Gathering held on the Herefordshire & Gloucestershire Canal last Sunday. Hereford wasn't connected to the national waterway network for very long. The canal reached the city in 1845, only ten years before the railway, and was already closed by 1881. Since 1983 the Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal Trust has been working to restore the full 31 miles of the waterway bewteen Hereford and the River Severn at Gloucester. They are necessarily undertaking this work in small stretches as and when the opportunity arises and one such opportunity has allowed about 300 metres on the outskirts of Hereford to be made navigable once more. The Trust also took the opportunity to install a slipway to allow small trailable boats to make use of this stretch, which it hopes to extend.
I wasn't able to attend myself - even without Starcross - but I do have some pictures "that I took earlier" that show the slipway and the challenges facing the Trust. But how ironic that as after 25 years I prepare to leave a boatless Hereford, the first boats arrive!
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| Aylestone Park Slipway |
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Looking towards the city centre from the slipway
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Monday, 9 May 2011
Thumbs Up for the North
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| Thumbs up for Lancaster |
Before moving to the graveyard of ambition I lived in Bolton, Preston, Carlisle and Salford and I've been waiting to get back to the North-West for quite a while. So, what does Lancaster have that Hereford doesn't? Here's what I've noticed so far:
- Proper pubs with landlords who know how to look after the beer.
- Houses built from stone.
- Buses that run four times an hour, not four times a day (or week!)
- Shop assistants who call you "luv"
- Rain
- Cycle lanes that are all linked up and don't disappear when you most need them.
- And, of course, Navigable water in the form of the Lancaster Canal.
Starcross will be staying at Norbury Junction though, at least for the foreseeable future: I don't fancy doing the Ribble Link every time I want to go anywhere, but I'm going to have my hands full getting the new house how we want it so I may not have too much to post about for a while.
Friday, 6 May 2011
What a morning at Compton!
On the morning we were due to depart from Compton, Mika wasn't well and her parents were sufficiently concerned to find a pharmacist, who in turn suggested they see a doctor. The nearest surgery that would accept her was a mile or two away but a couple who had been waiting at the chemist's offered to take them in their car.
In the meantime, I was trying to telephone the Nationwide Building Society - as I had been asked to do - to transfer the money to pay for our new house, which had to be done before noon. No signal on the towpath and too noisy on the bridge - but there was the perfect place - a phone box! Once inside the phone box I decided I might as well use it. I don't know how long it is since you used one, but the minimum fee is now 60p. I had 55p and a pound coin. Given the amount of money I was trying to spend I was happy to insert the £1 but the coin box would only accept 50s, 20s and 10s. So, into the shop nearby to get a paper and back to the box with the requisite coinage. Now I found that the box was in fact out of order and available for emergencies only!
So - back to the mobile: the usual voice mail response - press 1 for this, 2 for that and 3 for the other, followed by music - punctuated by recorded announcements telling me how important my call was to them (but not, you understand, important enough for them to actually employ enough staff to answer it). Finally, after 14 minutes I got through to a human being who informed me that it was completely impossible to make the transfer over the phone and that I was silly to even think it could be done (he didn't actually say that in fairness). I would have to find a branch and conduct the transfer there.
After a few Victor Meldrew moments I was resigned to a bus ride into Wolverhampton city centre and returned to the boat just in time to find Mandy and Mika about to depart for the surgery with our guardian angels. "I don't suppose you know where the Nationwide office is in Wolverhampton?" I asked. "Oh, we never go to Wolverhampton, he replied, but I think there is a branch about half-a-mile away - hop in, I'll take you there!"
So the upshot was I got to the branch just in time to transfer the cash (and had it confirmed again that it was a laughable idea to think about doing it over the phone) and Mika returned from the doctor's with some appropriate medicine and we were soon on our way - only two hours down on the schedule.
Unfortunately that late running meant we were unable to do more than wave at Lesley from Caxton as we passed at Wheaton Aston and I hope she heard our explanation why we couldn't stop. That's the second time I've done that to her -we've been reading each other's blogs for a few years - one day we'll meet and have a chat, honest!
In the meantime, I was trying to telephone the Nationwide Building Society - as I had been asked to do - to transfer the money to pay for our new house, which had to be done before noon. No signal on the towpath and too noisy on the bridge - but there was the perfect place - a phone box! Once inside the phone box I decided I might as well use it. I don't know how long it is since you used one, but the minimum fee is now 60p. I had 55p and a pound coin. Given the amount of money I was trying to spend I was happy to insert the £1 but the coin box would only accept 50s, 20s and 10s. So, into the shop nearby to get a paper and back to the box with the requisite coinage. Now I found that the box was in fact out of order and available for emergencies only!
So - back to the mobile: the usual voice mail response - press 1 for this, 2 for that and 3 for the other, followed by music - punctuated by recorded announcements telling me how important my call was to them (but not, you understand, important enough for them to actually employ enough staff to answer it). Finally, after 14 minutes I got through to a human being who informed me that it was completely impossible to make the transfer over the phone and that I was silly to even think it could be done (he didn't actually say that in fairness). I would have to find a branch and conduct the transfer there.
After a few Victor Meldrew moments I was resigned to a bus ride into Wolverhampton city centre and returned to the boat just in time to find Mandy and Mika about to depart for the surgery with our guardian angels. "I don't suppose you know where the Nationwide office is in Wolverhampton?" I asked. "Oh, we never go to Wolverhampton, he replied, but I think there is a branch about half-a-mile away - hop in, I'll take you there!"
So the upshot was I got to the branch just in time to transfer the cash (and had it confirmed again that it was a laughable idea to think about doing it over the phone) and Mika returned from the doctor's with some appropriate medicine and we were soon on our way - only two hours down on the schedule.
Unfortunately that late running meant we were unable to do more than wave at Lesley from Caxton as we passed at Wheaton Aston and I hope she heard our explanation why we couldn't stop. That's the second time I've done that to her -we've been reading each other's blogs for a few years - one day we'll meet and have a chat, honest!
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Buying a house at Gnosall
Mark and Mandy could spare three days from their busy schedule so from Kinver we carried on along the Staffs & Worcester towards Autherley Junction and the Shroppie. This involved another passage of Bratch locks of course and, once again I was surprised not to have to wait at all, being granted entrance to the bottom lock as soon as we arrived. I always seem to be steering at the Bratch and one day I'll get some decent photos - but for now here is a shot of the top lock taken from the middle one.
The Bratch
After an overnight stop at Compton (of which more in the next post) we were heading back to Gnosall, where our guests had to leave for the bus to Stafford station when I got a phone call from our solicitor to say that he had exchanged contracts on our new house at Lancaster - the first time I've ever bought a house on a boat although we did sell our previous house from a train!
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Memory Lane
On the way back from Stourport we had a visit from Starcross' previous owners. Mark and Mandy, with their daughter Mika, were back from Tasmania, where they now live and as part of their tour of friends and relatives had asked if they could have a couple of days aboard Starcross with us -and of course we were happy to oblige!
Having a car available, we picked them up at Kidderminster station and brought them to the boat at Wolverley, moving on later as far as Kinver for the evening. Pre-dinner drinks in the garden of the lockside Vine Inn were disappointingly served in plastic glasses but when it was my round I was allowed proper glasses "because I looked a respectable sort of person!".
Mark and Mandy thoroughly enjoyed their time with us and it was great to see them again, especially as we could be completely relaxed about having them on board and helping with the steering and lock work - which isn't the case with all our visitors I'm afraid.
Having a car available, we picked them up at Kidderminster station and brought them to the boat at Wolverley, moving on later as far as Kinver for the evening. Pre-dinner drinks in the garden of the lockside Vine Inn were disappointingly served in plastic glasses but when it was my round I was allowed proper glasses "because I looked a respectable sort of person!".
Mark and Mandy thoroughly enjoyed their time with us and it was great to see them again, especially as we could be completely relaxed about having them on board and helping with the steering and lock work - which isn't the case with all our visitors I'm afraid.
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| Mandy, Mika and Mark |
Even Mika helped with the steering - under close supervision of course - and like most children or other non-car drivers understood the basics of it pretty quickly. From what I've read, children not much older than her were regularly seen steering loaded working boats in the old days.
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