THE CAR SHUFFLE

"Well, you see, there's six of us on the boat this weekend, and we've got two cars, mine and John's. So last night we all drove up and met up at the 'Boat Inn' at Aldersbury at half past nine. Now, Aldersbury to Kings Weston is more than 45 minutes by road, which is very important..."

"It is?"

"Yes, because of course twice forty five minutes is an hour and a half, you see. Of course, if Sue hadn't joined in at the last minute there'd have only been five of us, and so we'd have met in the 'Wharf Inn' at Kings Weston instead, Now my car's only a four-seater, so we'd have all arrived at the 'Boat' in John's car at about half ten, just time for a couple of beers, but we'd have got an early start this morning because we'd have done half the shuffle already, you see?"

"Err, I think so..."

"Anyway, we didn't, so first thing this morning John and I set off in both cars and drove to Kings Weston. When we got there John parked his car, he jumped in my car, I drove him back to Aldersbury and when we got back the rest of them had taken the boat down the first five locks and were just serving up breakfast."

"Why did you come back in your car, not John's?"

"Ah, well, it wouldn't have mattered, except that Mary's leaving us tonight on the train from Wolversfield station, so we're down to five crew tomorrow, and that means we can all fit in John's car, but if it had been my car, John and myself would have had to go off and retrieve John's car from Aldersbury before we could set off home. You get the idea?"

"Yes, I think I'm starting to, but wouldn't it be a lot easier if you all just went by train?"

"Well, yes, it would, in an ideal world. But of course half of the decent mooring places don't have a station, and the ones that do, don't always have a Sunday service. But it can be useful sometimes, and a lot of the more experienced car-shufflers like to include a train journey or a bike ride, just to make it a bit more interesting. And sometimes it helps if you don't get as far as you expected to, because of queueing for locks, or because the car-shuffling takes longer than you expected..."

"Hold on, you mean sometimes you don't get to where you shuffled the car to, because you took so long shuffling the car there?"

" 'Fraid so. Now, just supposing we don't arrive at Wolversfield tonight till after the locks close, so we have to moor at the bottom and do the flight in the morning. That means we won't make it to Kings Weston tomorrow night, but we should make it to Fenny Sutton. Now there's a station at Fenny but no trains on a Sunday, so we've got a choice: firstly John can take the folding bike, catch the train to Fenny tonight, take the bus on to Hawkesford Bridge, then cycle from there to Kings Weston, put the bike in the boot, drive back to Fenny and catch the last train back, hoping to get back in time for last orders at the 'Navigation'. Now that's the easy way..."

"Go on, you're going to tell me there's a more complicated way?"

"Oh, yes, but we'd do it in two parts. Tonight, John would get his car, just the same, except that instead of leaving it at Fenny, he'd drive right back to Wolversfield. Then, in the morning, the two of us would set off back to Aldersbury and pick up my car, drive in convoy to Fenny, leave John's car there and come back to Wolversfield in my car, by which time the others would have got the boat through the locks and we'd wait for them at bridge 56A, just before the tunnel. Then when we left the boat there'd only be a short drive back in John's car to bridge 56A to pick up mine."

"But isn't it a bit unfair, the way you drivers spend half the weekend driving around while the rest of the crew are boating?"

"Oh, they don't seem to mind it at all, they just let us get on with it. Besides, when it's a complicated trip, like a long weekend with people joining and leaving at different times and three or more cars, there's a chance for most of them to join in."

"So, you must be something of an expert at the car-shuffle?" he says, as he spots the 'John Watts* Newport Pagnell Challenge Trophy' gleaming in the window of the boat.

"Oh, no, not at all, we were just lucky with the traffic and the connections on and off the train-ferry. Honestly, we don't really stand comparison with some of the great masters of the shuffle. Big Tim, for example. He once did a long weekend on the Rochdale Canal and a weekend on the Llangollen at the same time, and nobody on either boat realised it. And what about Old Bob? He once did the whole southern Grand Union without once setting foot on the boat. He passed us next to Watford Gap services, waved to us from the M25 viaduct and then the next time we saw him he was just getting his bike out of the guard's van and loading it onto the No 222 at West Drayton station. But even they needed a bit of good fortune, and sometimes their luck ran out. Like the time they were matching speed at 70mph on the M6 so they could pass the folding bike from one window to the other and the police stopped them..."

"Were they in bad trouble?"

"Oh yes, I'll say they were. They were three hours late at the rendezvous point, Jen and Jill missed their train, the boat was half way through the tunnel when they got back and they only got to the 'Old Barge' five minutes before closing time. You've got to hand it to them, though: the next day they flagged down a passing minibus, borrowed a dinghy from a boatyard and they were back on schedule by the evening."

"Oh, well, I'd better not delay you any more, I can see it could make things very complicated."

"Oh, not at all, this is quite a straightforward trip really. Now next weekend is going to be something of a challenge: we've got 15 of us altogether - no problem with the legal limit of twelve crew because we won't all be on the boat at the same time - with three cars, plus a Transit crewbus, a motorcycle and sidecar, a folding boat and the bikes of course. Now this new Midland Metro tramway is very useful, but I've just heard a rumour that while they're happy enough with bikes on the trams, they draw the line at tandems. Now that might make things interesting..."

"I'll be surprised if you find time to do much boating."

"Oh, I don't think we'll bother moving the boat much, we'll be far too busy with the shuffle. And anyway there's a stoppage only a few miles down the canal."

"Oh, that's a nuisance."

"Not really, it's worth it in the long run - they're putting in a new road bridge to link the M48 roundabout to the boaters' carpark..."