 Wendy & Derek
with Varrich
at the top of Johnson's Hillock Locks,
Summer
1972. |
We are both very committed to boating on inland waterways.
Click here to read reports of some of
my trips.
This interest started in 1972 almost by accident, when out
of curiosity we hired a fibreglass cruiser called Varrich on the Leeds
& Liverpool Canal for a holiday, the first week with one of my colleagues
and his wife, and the second with my brother, Derek.
By 1977 we were hiring two of three times a year, and
decided to buy our first boat, jointly with a couple of friends. For
information about that original boat, Felis Catus,
click here. By 1982, the boat needed a
lot of work doing on it, for which we lacked either the skills to do it
ourselves or the funds to have it done professionally.
So we went back to hiring until 1990, when we had our next
boat, Felis Catus II, built for us. Click
here for details of Felis Catus II. This was designed as a
holiday boat for long-distance cruising, and it was always our intention to
replace her eventually with a larger boat on which we'd live and cruise
continuously.
This last aspiration became possible when we had both
retired from our jobs ashore, and I'd inherited a reasonable capital sum on the
death of my father. See here for
detail of our current boat, Felis Catus III and the story of her
building.
Sailing barge Thalatta
September
2000 |
Me & Thames sailing barges
As well as canal boating, I also do some sailing on Thames
sailing barges. That's an interest that Wendy doesn't share. My first trip was
on a charter barge,
s.b.
Reminder, at some time in the early 1980s. I subsequently joined
what was then the Thames Barge Sailing Club and is now the
Thames Sailing Barge Trust. My sailing with them
has been either Club members' weekends on s.b. Centaur or charters on
that b arge or s.b. Pudge. For illustrated logs of the various charters
I've organised, click
here.
Me & the IWA - the Inland Waterways
Association
South London
Branch's Campaign Cruise past Parliament
passing under Tower
Bridge.
May 1996 |
Spinning off from our interest in boating, we joined the
IWA. While I was teaching and doing voluntary work for the Union I didn't have
time to be much more than an armchair member, but after my change of job I
volunteered for such tasks as could be useful to what was then IWA's London
Branch. I started as its Minutes Secretary, and later became editor of its
newsletter, Excalibur, and Branch Chairman. When London Branch
was transformed into a Region with three Branches, I kept the
Excalibur job, now under the Region, and became Secretary and
Publicity Officer of the new South London Branch. I had two stints as Region
Secretary and and also Region Information Officer, (a rôle that embraces
publicity, publications, web-master & a few other odds-and-ends). I also
served on IWA London Region Planning and Navigation Committee, and organised
the towpath walks we run inconjunction with The Original London
Walks. I retired from all Branch and Region IWA posts in the Spring of
2005, after spending my last year on the South London Branch Committee as
Branch Chairman.Click here to visit the IWA London Region Web Site,
which I maintain.
I am proad to have been awarded the IWA's Richard Bird Medal
for services to the Association over a number of years,
Me & waterways festivals
Canalway Cavalcade
at Little Venice.
I'm not
sure which year. |
I have been involved with Canalway Cavalcade since its
inception in 1983, at first simply as a programme-seller. Then I joined the
Committee and was given overall responsibility for the event's publicity. I'm
now hoping that someone else will take over that rôle as I feel I've done
it for long enough.Click here to visit the Canalway Cavalcade web site. The
photo (left) was taken at the 1999 event.
We've often been to the National Waterways Festival with our
old boats, on other people's boats or just visiting by train, and intend to
keep up this tradition with our new boat. Since 1994 I've had the task of
editing the daily newsletter at the event, assisted by Martin Ludgate, Glen
Peckett and a bunch of other helpers, mainly from London IWA and London WRG.
One of these is Huw Davies who is our principal cartoonist. Some of his work
from these newsletters and elsewhere can be found
here.
Me & waterways history
From the beginning of our
boating years I started developing an interest in waterways history and reading
everything about it that I could lay my hands on. Around 1980 I spotted the
need for a set of synoptic maps showing the waterways of Britain as a complete
system evolving through time. I started doing some research from my bookshelf
and compiling the information for this. Twenty years later this resulted in a
series of web pages which can be seen here. 
Me & the London Canal Museum
I have taken an interest in the London Canal Museum since
before it opened. For a while I was on the committee of the Friends of the
Museum. Eventually that organisation was wound up when the London Canals Museum
Trust itself became a membership-based organisation. When I retired from the
day-job, I became a volunteer attendant at the Museum, and have since been
co-opted onto the Council of Management, where I have written and edited some
leaflets giving background information to some of our displays. At the time of
writing, I have respoinsibility on the Council of Management for out education
programme and as Volunteers Co-ordinator, although I am training somebody else
to take over that last responsibility from me now I'm no longer based in
London. Visit the Museum's web site
here. |
