Mike Stevens' UK Inland Waterways Pages

TRIP REPORTS : THE FELIS CATUS II YEARS

A LONG SUMMER : May to October 1995

Part 5 : The main Summer cruise -
(d) Dutton to the National and a the first leg of the trip home.

We resume the story with the boat a little way south of Dutton.

We made a deliberately earlier start at 07:23 to get the benefit of the cool part of the day. We couldn't see through Salterforth tunnel, but went on in as there were no sounds of engines in it. Barnton tunnel was visibly clear. At Anderton we stopped for breakfast, rubbish disposal and photography and later looked at the launderette at Orchard Marina but it was (a) too small for the pile of stuff we've got and (b) being used by somebody else.

At Middlewich we moored up before bridge 72 (close to our friends Helen & Barry Whitehouse) to see if there was a launderette. I found a friendly pub where I was told there's not one in the town, but was told of lots of others nowhere near the cut! There was a huge queue for Wardle Lock, where we joined the Middlewich Branch of the Shroppie.

We reached Church Minshull at 19:05 and actually stopped there! We had often planned to, but this was the first time we'd actually done it. We moored on the last decent bit of bank that wasn't full either or boats or anglers. Two boats arrived later: one had to shift some anglers and the other to put up with grotty bank. It proved a good mooring for cats. The village is a few minutes walk away, and the Badger is a very good pub.

A very misty morning brought a 07:45 start, rather delayed by Orinthia's wanderings, which was just as well because the early mist was very thick indeed. We met a boat from Chester at Minshull lock who told us that there was at least one launderette in Chester "possibly in what they call Frodsham Street".

At Barbridge junction we joined the Shropshire Union (Chester Canal section) stopping at the foot of Bunbury locks for a pump-out at Dartline. Continuing, we found that all the locks on this section were manned by BW for the run-up to the National, except the one where it would be most useful, where bridge works made it hard to get on & off the boat! To get back onto FC2, I had to cross a Viking hire-boat. It was very slow running with a lot of moorings and shallows, and queues at every lock, of boats all heading for Chester. At Hoole Lane lock we stopped (in the lock) for water.

At Chester we moored at 19:00 by bridge 123d at the tail-end of a very long line of boats, on the last mooring with any depth. I went for an explore and found we are very close to Frodsham Street which is part of the main shopping centre and has a large Tesco. I brought back a fish & chip supper. The cats didn't like this mooring : much too urban. It was a long day, and lovely when it stopped.

I spent a long time upside down in the engine-hole tightening the stern gland securing nuts that had worked very loose (Someone who'd done some maintenance for us had left off one of the lock-nuts), clearing the more solid wodges of grease out of the bilges and unblocking the bilge pump. We'd need to get the bilges cleaned out at a boatyard as they were very oily and greasy. Meanwhile Wendy went three times to Tesco for a massive provisioning for the Festival, then called a minicab to find a launderette. The latter proved to be not far away, but the load was so big that it wouldn't have been possible without the cab. I went to the bank etc.

Eric Wood, one of the Festival harbourmasters, came along the moorings to ask boats not to lock down the staircase until next day unless they are needed on site, because the pound is very low. So I 'phoned Harry Arnold, for whom I was to be working at the Festival, and who did want us there that night. So I told Eric this, and we set off. At Dee junction we stopped for water and to deal with the elsan. We met Geoff Taylor (whom we last met at our Union Conference) who is a descendant of J H Taylor of the Chester boatyard and would be giving some lectures during the Festival about the family history.

We found our Festival mooring, at Blacon, at 17:10. It was hard to find which was our mooring, as they had been marked out with paint which a shower earlier in the day had partially obliterated. At first we needed the full length of our plank to get ashore, but as time went on the water level came up and we were able to pull in quite close by about Friday. N.b.Fulbourne hadn't yet arrived from Ellesmere Port, with my fellow-workers and the computer, so we couldn't set up the DeeBriefing newsletter office that night, so I was able to be back at the boat at a civilised time for dinner.

This is where my photos of the trip come to an end. I guess I was too busy editing to do any photography aty the Festival, and on the way home thought I'd already go enough shots of the territory we covered.

At the National Waterway Festival, I was working with Martin Ludgate and others on DeeBriefing. It was much less fraught than the year before because of good facilities at the College where we were based, including a very helpful technician called Trasy (sic) who gave us her home 'phone number in case we needed any help or advice while she was off duty over the weekend. We did. Also much helped by WRG (Maria & Clive) taking over the photocopying task.

On Sunday there was a nasty accident when Wendy was flea-spraying Orinthia and the propellant of the spray ignited (from the gas burner of the fridge). There was no lasting damage to either of them, and the Festival vet, Bob Cooper, was very helpful: he gave Orinthia an injection of an anti-biotic / painkiller / vitamin cocktail. He thought her fur had insulated her quite well, and anointed her less furry bits with Savlon. By morning she had got her bounce back and caught and ate a sparrow, which led Bob to declare her unharmed. Bob prescribed Wendy a very large gin, and had one himself to keep her company.

We set off at 08:58, much later than planned because Orinthia was out. It proved quite a long way to the winding hole, much of it slow through Festival moorings and back again. At Tower Wharf there was a massive queue for the staircase as BW had not padlocked it overnight, thus letting up a lot of boats who hadn't booked through. Many of them had moored in Chester itself rather than going on up the locks, with the result that the Chester pound was seriously low. (14" down, we were told). We opted out of the queue for a time for Wendy to go shopping, which was slow because everybody else was doing the same.

We finally got into the staircase at 17:30 just behind Audrey Smith's boat Muffin 3 and Ivor Caplan's Bilbo Baggins. At bridge 123d we were brought to a halt by the Big Woolwich Fulbourne (with, we understand, not its most experienced crew) stuck firmly in the bridge-hole. We later learned that they'd been advised by a BW man not to stop for shopping in Chester itself and had ignored that advice: had they accepted it they might well have got through before the level was as low as it became. We resigned ourselves to staying there, but the mooring we were on a week previously was now too shallow, so we had to moor with our nose actually in the bridge-hole and our back end about 6 ft out.

Orinthia was back aboard conveniently early, so at 07:27, as soon as Fulbourne moved out of the bridge-hole we could get away. Fulbourne was still aground, but with room for shallower-draught boats to get past her. At BW's request we tried towing her, but only got about 30 yards before she stuck fast again, so BW said we should go on.

Because of last night's blockage, the queues ahead of us at most locks weren't too bad, except at Wharton lock where we assumed the long queue was caused by boats that had moored overnight in the long pound before it, probably at the pub at Christleton. We were locking for much of the day with Will of the Wisp, a new boat whose people had taken her over from the builders (Midland Canal Centre) at the end of the Festival where she had been a trade exhibit. They were (for some reason we didn't follow) taking her back to Stenson where she had been built. They were not at all happy with the queues. We wondered what they had expected on the way back from a "National".

We stopped at Calveley because it's a good mooring (decent depth and eminently cat-worthy) and we were running out of energy after a very long day by our then-current standards.

We set off at 06:49 hoping to get ahead of some of the queue. At Nantwich junction we joined the narrow-beam Birmingham & Liverpool Junction Canal section of the Shroppie. At Hack Green locks we teamed up with a small cruiser who could fit behind us in the locks. The chap was single-handed and very efficient, so we were happy to lock through with him all day.

We found the usual crowding and chaos at Audlem wharf. As there was a queue for the lock above, we decided to stop for lunch at the Shroppie Fly: a much more pleasant pub a than we remembered, with a very good menu. Our friend from the cruiser did a car/bike shuffle and then joined us for a pint before we set off together again. We pressed on to Market Drayton despite the time (mooring at 20:18) because we wanted to use the launderette here first thing in the morning. The cats were very energetic in the twilight.

The launderette here was still functioning, but perhaps not for much longer. Since we were last here, the town had acquired a big Safeway: a long walk but worthwhile. We set off at 12:04, finding a queue at Tyrley locks, but it was running much more smoothly than at Audlem the day before. We stopped at Gnosall at 18:50, mooring at the opposite end of the village to where we usually do because that was the only slot available. I intended to try the Navigation as the Boat was too far to walk, but after our final barbecue of the holiday we stayed on board & got as exhausted as newts.

A late start at 10:06 was probably the result of last night's boozing. Near bridge 29 we saw a huge number of partridges. We stopped at Wheaton Aston rubbish point mainly because we thought there was also elsan disposal there, but there wasn't. We had a good pub lunch at the Bridge Inn at Brewood, another pub that had changed for the better since we last used it.

At 14:35 we left the boat in the care of Water Travel at Autherley with a list of jobs for them to do on it. We called a taxi for Wolverhampton station and home.