Mike Stevens' UK Inland Waterways Pages

TRIP REPORTS : THE FELIS CATUS IIYEARS

THE LAST SEASON WITH OUR OLD BOAT, 1982

PART 2 : The Slough Rally and to Mile End

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We rersume the story with the boat at High Line Yachting base at Iver.

SLOUGH RALLY

I collected the boat on the Friday evening after an engine service and work to bring the fuel system up to BWB compliance standards,. The work had been done for us by High Line's engineer, Les Gibson. Then I took the boat to Langley station bridge to meet Wendy from the train, then on to Slough, to wind at the basin and return to our Rally mooring between last 2 bridges. We were moored breasted with Woodham. She was supposed to outboard of us, but we swapped since she had shallower draught.

We got up late and went shopping on Saturday morning. Roger & Chris were with us for Saturday afternoon & evening. We watched boats arriving, including Ray Dunford on Albion. I helped Alex & Jan Prowse on their Cascade Gallery boat on Sunday afternoon. Sunday evening was a folk evening : we went with Ray & Hazel Dunford, Mike & Marion West, Sheila & Roy Davenport & David Blagrove.

We left the Rally on Monday afternoon, bought diesel & some chandlery and watered at High Line Yachting, rejoined the main line, used Cowley sani station and left the boat outside the General Elliott, Uxbridge.

A WEEKEND NORTHWARDS

We picked the boat up at 19:21 on Saturday for a peaceful, short evening cruise, Ian & I working all the locks as Wendy had a bad shoulder. We moored above Widewater lock at 20:45 and Wendy cooked.

We had a beautiful start to the next day with the sun cutting through mist. We started cruising at 05:59 with mainly a bad road. Lambs, foals (including baby donkeys), bluebells, cow-parsley etc were behaving just as they should in May. We made a beer stop above King's Langley lock and half a mile further Wendy did an outdoor lunch by trees & lakes. Felis had a big cruiser-style deck which was ideal for eating out. We continued, used the Apsley BW yard's sani station, watered and went on to moor above Fishery lock at 17:24 and go home by train.

A WEEKEND COMING BACK TO LONDON

Wendy & I came up on a stuffy train from London train on Friday evening and decided not to go very far. We set off at 18:20 and good weather persuaded us to go further than planned, so we moored before King's Langley lock at 20:12. I went to the pub while Wendy cooked. There was good birdsong. We had a disturbed night & wet morning.

We delayed our start next day listening to the radio news of the Falklands landing. We set off at 07:38, stopped for breakfast below Home Park Farm lock then continued to Rickmansworth for a pub lunch & shopping. The shopping centre here isn't as close to the cut as in some other places, but the shopping was good, although probably rather expensive for groceries - there was then no large supermarket. We saw a carnival procession while we were shopping, and again crossing a footbridge. I repaired the small bilge-pump.

In the afternoon we shared about 5 locks. It was mostly raining. We saw 2 heron between Denham & Uxbridge locks and came across some helpful gongoozlers at Cowley. Below Cowley there were lots of red campion & ragged robins. The May blossom was beautifully scented after rain. We passed onto the Paddington Branch and moored at 20:46 near Houlder's Dock, rather short of where we wanted to be because of the weather and a bad road.

Sunday brought a beautiful morning at the beginning. We ran out of gas - not helped by the fact that we'd got one Calor and one Shell cylinder, so had to pick & choose where to change them. The running-out happened when we were well past Uxbridge. At Horsendon Hill I had to make an emergency engine repair - one of the air-bleed screws had fallen out and fuel was escaping. I found another screw that fitted well enough to make do with.

We ate breakfast on the move and at Kensal Green we met Peter coming to met us. We used the facilities at Paddington Stop, bought gas from Doug Lear from the boats Magic Lantern & Carina and had a chat with him. Also had a chat with Ray Dunford. Ken (from my canal history evening class) joined us for the rest of the day.

We joined the Regent's Canal and stopped near Haggerston Road to eat lunch cooked by Wendy. We went right the way down to Limehouse Basin and turned into the Limehouse Cut (Lee Navigation). We stopped under Violet Road bridge to shelter from a storm then turned back to Limehouse and a little way up the Regent's to above Mile End lock where there was a supervised mooring for boats waiting for the Mile End Rally the next weekend.