Mike Stevens' UK Inland Waterways Pages

TRIP REPORTS : THE FELIS CATUS II YEARS

TO THE FENS AND BIRMINGHAM
Summer & Autumn 1991

PART 1 : London to the Fens & back to the GU

A LONG WEEKEND

We came from home and started the weekend with shopping in West Drayton (as a poor shopping centre it rivals Kidsgrove). It was a hot, sunny day. Back at the boat, we moved off at 12:35, stopping at Uxbridge Boat Centre where we bought a lot of stuff, including an anchor (which gave us a bit of a puzzle how best to stow it). We met a lot of southbound traffic, because a 5-day stoppage at Ironbridge lock had just ended. There were some huge flocks of Canada Geese around. We found another leak in the water system somewhere in the bathroom. We moored for the night at Rickmansworth, above bridge 174 at 18:36.

We started at 06:11 on a hot, humid, overcast & thundery but dry day. We met lots of anglers but little boat traffic. At Batchworth lock we took on water and then continued to a breakfast stop above Hunton Bridge. The breakfast was burnt because of delays caused by the extreme tardiness of Lady Capel coming down the lock. We stopped before Boxmoor bottom lock and bought some distilled water for the batteries from a garage a little way up the road. We moored at 18:05 at Bourne End, before lock 59, after discovering that there is no depth for mooring in this pound until quite close to that lock.

Because of mist and a heavy dew, we had breakfast before a start at 09:22, locking with a pleasant cruiser, and left the boat at 11:02 at Bridgewater Boats in Berkhamsted, a place I'd visited often recently (with & without the boat) while working with Lindy Foster on a campaign against some sections of the British Waterways (General Powers) Bill, then before the House of Lords.

MAIN SUMMER CRUISE

A few days later Wendy & I & the cats came back from London. We shopped. The boatyard had done various jobs for us, including tracing and repairing the leak in the bathroom, which was caused by a cross-threaded acorn connection in the loo-flushing mechanism. We set off at 16:13 and stopped for the night in Bulbourne lay-by at 19:39 too late to experiment with "mogs' lib".

We started at 06:49 and were (not surprisingly at this time of day) on our own down Marsworth locks with mainly a bad road. Below Startopsend lock we stopped for breakfast and bought a chimney-hat from Derek Pearson. On our resumption we were locking with Snow Goose to Leighton Buzzard, with a very pleasant and helpful crew who'd borrowed the boat from an uncle after a whole day's tuition. We saw huge numbers of butterflies in the Ivinghoe area, although perhaps not as many species as in earlier years.

At Leighton Buzzard we shopped at a big new Tesco & Texas Homecare, both canal-side, and used the sani station & water point, before continuing to tie up for the night at 18:53 below Stoke Hammond lock, a good mooring for cats.. It was encouraging to see how often Arlecchino came back to the boat to check on us. Dido came out into the well-deck quite a lot but didn't get off the boat.

It was cool & misty to start with, becoming sunny & hot later, staying that way for most of the cruise. We managed an early start at 07:04 and I cooked breakfast on the move. We used the sani station at Cosgrove en passant, then made a pause at Grafton Regis. Wendy walked to the village to look for any memorials to Elizabeth Woodville. The Church and Manor House were nice buildings but everything, including a tantalising walled garden, was rather private and closed. Wendy thought the house was a replacement, the garden possibly not. I worked on the boat, mainly restoring the bathroom panel we'd taken down to trace the leak. Starting again, we had a harrowing run up Stoke Bruerne locks with a couple of rather vulnerable little cruisers. Blisworth Tunnel was full of very opaque fumes, giving Wendy the fantasy that we wouldn't get out until the outside world was likewise in total darkness.

We moored at Blisworth village at 19:30 and I went to the pub to fix a meeting for tomorrow with a couple of retired ex-colleagues, Arthur & Norma Howes who were going to join us tomorrow for a few days' boating. They'd done a fair bit of canal boating themselves, but had never been on the River Nene.. Dido explored the outboard side-deck. Arlecchino made many short trips ashore and check-back calls again. He became very territorial when a Blue Persian kept inviting itself on board.

Following an 07:51 start, at Gayton we turned onto the Northampton Arm before stopping at Gayton Marina (friendly people) for a pump-out, diesel, Nene key & licence, postcards etc. We had a bad road down the locks, but were helped by a lengthsman who interrupted his grass-mowing to do so. At Cotton End junction we passed onto the River Nene and moored before Northampton lock for some more shopping and to rendezvous with Arthur and Norma.

With them on board we continued. They proved intrepid jumpers on and off the boat at locks, putting Wendy (20 years younger) to shame. The moorings at Weston Favell seemed much eroded since we were there in 1980 (click here to read the story of that trip), so we went on to a little before Billing lock where we moored (not without difficulty) at 18:58 to a caravan site : not good for depth : not bad for the cats.

We set off again at 07:06, enjoying some picturesque cruising. Arthur & Norma continued to be an immense help at locks. We stopped in the park at Wellingborough to take on water, do some more shopping (a big Tesco & other stores were close by) and have lunch at the Dog & Duck. In the afternoon we continued to Woodford village, where we moored at 18:38, after finding it hard to find a decent mooring - we were turned off the first we tried by the land-owner. The mooring we found was far from brilliant, but as it was now raining quite heavily we decided to put up with it. Once again Arlecchino had a good explore during the evening. We played Scrabble after dinner.. The cats were adventurous in the evening. A lot of rain overnight made me worried about the mooring if the water came up very much, but all was well.

We had no problems leaving the mooring despite having moored facing downstream and there being rather more current running than on the previous day. Wendy, nervous after a bad night & bad dreams, managed to drop the tank-key into the river after dip-sticking the fuel tank. We failed to retrieve it with the magnet and guessed the current had taken it under the boat. Soon after starting at 08:36 we spotted what looked like a decent mooring by Wadenhoe church. We stopped below Upper Barnwell lock where Arthur & Norma took us for an excellent lunch at the Old Mill. The restaurant and bar were both excellent, their veg were al dente and their new potatoes real. Then we went on to Oundle Marina to use their elsan and water points.

At Oundle bridge Arthur & Norma left for home. In retrospect it would have been more convenient for them if they'd left at the lunch stop, especially as we didn't find the proper wharf at Oundle until after they'd made a difficult landing elsewhere. We went on to moor at 18:13 at Fotheringhay, where the moorings on the village side had good mooring posts and were now run by the local farmer, who charged £1.50 & offered morning papers and milk. Arlecchino went hunting.

It was not a good start to the day. We had a lie-in but let the cats out. Arlecchino brought back a mouse and ate it. Then we had breakfast and set off. As I turned the boat through Fotheringhay bridge, I realised that the current was taking me further to one side than I had reckoned with, and that our chimney (which we'd forgotten to take down) was likely to clip the curve of the arch. Reacting as though we were on a canal, I tried to back out of the bridge'ole, but with the current behind me that was not the right thing to do and we side-swiped the bridge quite hard, resulting in a very battered chimney, a busted side hatch door-hinge and Arlecchino overboard mid-stream. He swam to safety but it was hours before he would come near enough for us to bring him back on board.

We went back to the previous night's mooring and made enquiries for the cat. Someone had seen him running across the road and possibly up the hill towards the village, so Wendy walked up their to make enquiries. At mid-day he was still (or once again?) in the garden where he'd first come ashore and we eventually enticed him back with food and great difficulty.

We finally moved off at 15:18 and went on to moor near Nassington at 17:00. Arlecchino was adventurous again despite the morning's accident. He fell in the water again but got straight out & was very blasé about it.

We started at 08:25. Now we were 2-handed we were finding the locks difficult because so much water was weiring over the top gates, which gave us problems controlling the boat in the lock, needing to use a lot of reverse power. We stopped on the long expanse of moorings in Peterborough (where the "National" was held a couple of years later). Facilities at the moorings include sani-station, water, rubbish and d-i-y pump-out, all on the Nene key.

Wendy went a long way to a launderette and I did some jobs on the boat before one of my ex-bosses, Joyce Baird, visited for an evening run & a barbecue (the re-launch of Son of Hibachi, a rather cleverly-designed barbecue we'd bought for our old boat which had been refurbished for us by a friend in return for his borrowing it for a holiday). While taking Joyce for a run, we ran aground on the scour below Orton lock while winding and were pulled off by a powerful sea-going boat, Fluff. There seemed to be a problem with our electricity: the domestic battery either wasn't getting much charge or wasn't holding it. Arlecchino went hunting in the bushes and was very reluctant to come back on board while there were still passers-by around, finally doing so in the early hours.

We needed to shop and any hopes of an early start were dashed when we found Tesco didn't open until 08:30. However there was quite a good market. Ian joined at about 10:00. We finished the shopping and were away at 11:46, heading for the Middle Level Navigations via Stanground backwater. We had a short wait, on a nightmare landing stage, to go through Stanground Sluice and spent the time filling in forms. The Middle Level Commissioners might not charge a fee to navigate their waters, but they do like their paperwork!

We passed through Whittlesey where we found that the old narrow bridge on a tight bend had been modified to make the passage easier. Ashline Sluice landing stage was a bit better than Stanground, but not much. Both locks have decent landing stages at the bottom. We followed Whittlesey Dyke to Angle Corner and turned into the Twenty Foot River.

On our previous visit to the Middle levels in 1979 in our old boat (Click here for the trip report) we'd only cruised the main through route, and this time we wanted to explore a bit more. We had a struggle with a weed-rope, just after a bridge with only 1" gap above our tiller-pin. The weed-rope consisted of a long blue rope stretched between mooring poles either side of the river, with battens along it at intervals, and was designed to trap cut weeds floating down-river. We got past by unfixing one end and passing it round the outside of the boat with some difficulty, then re-fixing it. At Twenty Foot End we passed onto to the Old River Nene and moored up about a quarter of a mile south of the junction, which was a good mooring for depth & for the cats, but too near a crop of ripe oats for a barbecue.

Starting at 10:21, we cruised in to March, used its sani station and stopped for breakfast. Then we went along to Fox's boatyard to see if they would be able to do some jobs for us the next day (which they were). We then went exploring through Flood's Ferry, passing under another very low bridge, and Benwick village. We wanted to go to Ramsey, but Ian spotted that Nicholson's said there's only room to wind 25 ft. there, so we winded instead at Saunders' bridge and retraced our steps. We later discovered that Nicholson's was out-of-date in respect of Ramsey. We ended up back on March public moorings at 19:17.

March - the capital of the Middle Level

We had to go nearly a mile to find somewhere to wind in order to return to Fox's boatyard, where a nice chap called Alan re-hinged the door we'd damaged at Fotheringhay and tried unsuccessfully to cure the elex problem. Then it was back to March public moorings again. We did some minor shopping, but March didn't prove ideal for that purpose.

Arlecchino, desperate to get out among the bird-song, got out through the kitchen window but came back for breakfast. Perhaps, we began to think, an open door or window at night would be less worrying on balance. . We decided to set off and have breakfast on the move. At 07:16 we set off, passing through Flood's Ferry and Whittlesey to before Stanground , where we had to wait, since on the lock-keeper's day off "they" (in March) were sending someone out as needed.

Then we went back to Peterborough, used the facilities on the moorings again, and Wendy dashed to Peacock's to buy some trousers. After lunch we continued to Wansford-in-England, where at 17:53 we moored to the garden of the Haycock Hotel. Working up the locks proved easier than working down, even when they're weiring over. Ian & I went to the hotel bar, finding the place very up-market, with a Conference Centre. Arlecchino enjoyed the new "Mogs' Lib" philosophy and explored the hotel grounds.

Arlecchino was most indignant when one of his hunting forays on the bank left him with a wet tail. The day's start was a bit later than usual, at 09:16. We went as far as Fotheringhay where we had an excellent pub lunch at the Falcon, then I went back to London for Canalway Cavalcade Committee. Wendy & Ian did various cleaning jobs, then it rained, but not enough to make any serious difference to the river. Arlecchino brought in a vole and a small mouse, and ate the latter. Wendy put the vole on the bank and found it in the morning with another tiny mouse beside it.

It rained overnight but was sunny again in morning. Wendy & Ian walked around the Castle mound. Arlecchino was exhausted. Once I was back from London we were off at 14:41, dropping in to Oundle Marina to use their facilities and buy some more diesel, then went on to moor at 18:49, about a mile above Upper Barnwell lock. It was a rustic mooring, where Arlecchino took great interest in the woods and brought back one trophy, which was swiftly eaten. We had some trouble with the shower-outlet pump, possibly a fuse, we thought.

We started at 09:01 and reached Wellingborough at 17:09 after a non-stop run. I steered for far too long and got over-tired. We went shopping in Texas & Tesco. Wendy and Ian went to the Dog & Duck for dinner, but I was too tired to join them. Arlecchino went back and forwards a number of times across a busy road in search of good hunting ground.

I made a hash of manoeuvering round some anglers to the water point and got the stern rope round the blade, so I had to go weed-hatching, then re-splice the damaged rope. We had more trouble with the shower pump, and the elex were still far from right. We continued at 10:42 and stopped above Cogenhoe lock where we found that the caravan site here had a launderette but no drier, so it was no use to us.

Then we went on to moor above Northampton lock at 17:25. Wendy made a rapid dash to Debenham's to get more knickers for me as we'd not found a launderette. She met marked disapproval from a shop assistant who had to get the key to re-open the till, but as she was dashing round a respectable city centre in shocking pink trousers trying to buy men's underwear, what else could she expect? Both cats were active in the evening, but we kept them in overnight as it was colder than recently.

Arlecchino was out for an inconveniently long time in the morning. Wendy went to buy papers and found a launderette near Cotton End , but we decided not to use it because of time. Arlecchino jumped ship as we tried to start, missed the bank and was fished out of the water by Ian with no lasting damage except to his pride.

We were finally under way at 10:15 and set off up the narrow locks of the Northampton Arm, used the facilities at Gayton yard then headed north to finish they day at Norton junction at 17:35. It was almost impossible to find a mooring. All moorings between the lock and the junction were either overnight (and full) or permanent; no 14-day ones. We ended up pinching some-one's permanent mooring. We had a barbecue and then Arlecchino got lost behind an impenetrable hedge and had to be rescued.