TRIP REPORTS : THE FELIS CATUS YEARS

MY LONGEST CRUISE: Summer 1979

Part 1 : From the Grand Junction to the Fens

Click on a picture to see a bigger version with a caption

This is the story of the longest continuous cruise I have ever made - over 500 miles in a month. It was a long time ago, in 1979, when we were part-owners of the original Felis Catus, a 40 ft boat converted from half a wooden joey boat. The hull dated from somewhere around the turn of the century and she had been shortened and the cabin fitted at some date in the 1930s. She was old, cranky, under-powered and not brilliantly comfortable, but an interesting vessel that gave us five years and nearly 5,000 miles of good cruising before she became so badly in need of major repairs that we decided to part with her. We believe that she's still around - last heard of on the Kennet & Avon in 1994. Click here for more information about the boat.

The syndicate that owned the boat in 1979 consisted of Wendy and myself, with a work colleague, Roger, and his wife, Christine. We had a winter-only mooring at Little Venice which we left around Easter each year. In the year I'm writing about, Braunston tunnel was closed for repair (as was Saddington, if I remember correctly), so we decided that our main Summer cruise would be to the Fenland waterways. One other reason for this was that the Upper Great Ouse had only been re-opened in the previous year and we were keen to visit it.

We were on the Grand Union for the Easter and Half-Term holidays, together with a number of weekends, and our main Summer Cruise began in late July when we picked the boat up from a mooring at the The Globe, Linslade, where we'd bought her almost exactly two years before. The crew for this leg were Roger, Christine and myself.

Our first task was to head south to the boatyard at Berkhamsted where we planned to do some maintenance work on the boat (we'd had a sinking the previous week - read the story here - and were still putting things to rights). Roger & I arrived at lunchtime, ate at the Globe then went to Old Linslade Wharf to wind and took the boat into Leighton Buzzard for shopping, where Chris joined us in the evening and we had dinner at the Cross Keys.

It was a hot day, overcast at times, sunny at others. We set off at 08:55 and had a cereal breakfast on the move. We stopped for a lunchtime beer at the Duke of Wellington behind Pitstone Wharf (Free House), then went on to moor at 16:12 at the Ship Stores, Marsworth, where Wendy joined us. We had a beer at the Red Lion, then as now one of our favourite canalside pubs.

Then we continued, much slowed by weed and anglers, to moor at 21:00 (quite late for us) at the Black Horse, Great Linford, where we had dinner on board then enjoyed the last half-hour in the pub.

Wendy made an early solo start in sunshine. It had clouded over by the time Roger & I were up. We stopped for water at Cosgrove, and again at Yardley Gobion to eat breakfast. The early start enabled us to lunch at the The Boat, Stoke Bruerne and then press on the Blisworth Village, where we moored at 15:46 and did a bit more painting before going up into the village for a drink at the Royal Oak before dinner.

We were in Northampton by lunchtime, where we bought our Nene licence from the lock-keeper before going shopping. Chris re-joined us for the weekend, and we set off down the Nene, mooring that night below Billing lock at 19:37.

Our first impressions of the Nene, as for everyone who goes there for the first time, was of the amount of work needed to operate the huge guillotine gates at the bottom of each lock. In 1979 none of them had yet been motorised. But with a crew of four, the work was shared and didn't bother us. I'm surprised to see that our log contains no comments about the way water in the Nene locks weirs over the top gates, a feature which is our dominant memory of more recent trips there. Perhaps there wasn’t much flow in the river that month.

We started at 07:44 and stopped briefly in Wellingborough to use the sani station and again at Higham Ferrars to walk into the village for some shopping and a lunch-time beer at the Griffin (Mann's IPA on hand-pump). It was another warm, dry day. During the afternoon an engine problem turned out to have been caused by one of the bleed screws on the fuel pump working loose and falling into the bilges, so we improvised a temporary repair with another screw that almost fitted. The overnight mooring was above Wadenhoe lock at 20:33

Ditchford lock

Working a guillotine

The day started with Wendy & Roger cleaning the bilges at the crack of dawn and finding the missing bleed-screw. We were under way at 08:41 and ate breakfast on the move, still in hot, dry weather.

Apart from a brief stop at Oundle Marina to use the sani station, we kept going all day and moored for the night by the bridge in Peterborough at 18:53, where we drank in the Elephant & Castle (Wethered's on hand-pump) before dinner.

We thoroughly enjoyed the scenic nature of the lower reaches of the Nene.

Once again, Chris left us early to go back to work and we did a little shopping before starting at 09:58, heading down the wide, straight, boring section to the tidal lock at Dog-in-a-Doublet. We were very impressed with the scale of the tidal lock and weirs, much less so with the eponymous pub. It was another hot day. We didn't lock down into the tidal water, but turned back to Peterborough and into Stanground Backwater passing under a wooden railway bridge on what seemed to be a main line.

We joined a couple of other boats waiting to lock through Stanground Sluice into the Middle Levels. From there we had an uninterrupted run through Whittlesey (where the infamous bend was still in its original very tight state), onto Whittlesey Dyke, then the Old River Nene to an overnight mooring in the centre of March at 18:12. We must have worked up a thirst, as the log records that we visited The Cock (Elgood’s), The Ship (Greene King) and The Rose & Crown (Greene King again).