Mike Stevens' UK Inland Waterways Pages

TRIP REPORTS : THE FELIS CATUS II YEARS

MORE INTERRUPTIONS THAN CRUISING

Summer Half Term 2000

Earlier in the year we'd been to Canalway Cavalcade and done a bit of local pottering. I'd also done a delivery run on the Thames in another boat. This was to be the beginning of our run up-country to the BCN Marathon.

Click here for details of our boat, Felis Catus II.

SUMMER HALF TERM

We'd hoped to get to Felis Catus II [Click here for information about the boat.], at its mooring at Hillingdon Canal Club in Uxbridge, sometime over the weekend, but that wasn't to be, because I had a bad cold and so was getting everything that needed doing before we left done at half speed. If that sentence doesn't make much sense, that's rather how I was feeling.

Wendy & I and Tilly (the current eponymous cat) arrived on the Monday morning and set off at 09:41. Wendy was at the helm, and found the tiller misbehaving - sticking and making nasty noises. Our first suspicion was something fouling the rudder, so we stopped in Uxbridge lock & Wendy went down the weed-hatch, but found nothing (as far down as she could reach) to explain it. Could it be some wire or something round the very bottom of the rudder-shaft? Or problems with the bearing? Since either possibility seems like a crane-out job, we decided to head back to base & talk to Alan Boswell at Uxbridge Boat Centre.

Back at our mooring by 11:18, I went and talked to Alan, who came up with a third hypothesis - that something could be bent if we'd backed into a cill or something. In any case it looked like he'd need to lift our back end out before we could tell what the problem was. But he was unlikely to be able to fit us in that week! So we resigned ourselves to spending a few days' spring-cleaning the boat before going home.

Wendy chatted casually with Gary Long (our club's harbourmaster) about our problem. He spotted that there was rust on the top bearing on the rudder, and applied some engine oil to it, which appeared to do the trick. As we were facing south, we decided to go down a little way, turn and come back. If the steering still felt OK, we'd continue with the cruise as planned. If not, we'd come back to the mooring. By 10:14 we'd winded a little way down the cut, and all felt well with the steering, so off we went!

We had a bad road for most of the day and we only found a partner for a couple of locks. Because of a lot of recent rain, there was quite a flow of current in some of the river-fed sections, and the mill weirs below Copper Mill produced some real white-water narrowboating. Shortly after this, I noticed the beginnings of some diesel smell from the engine. We decided to get Roger Alsop to look at it when we get to Berka. We'd thought, in any case, of stopping there to get him to repair a sticking tap in the kitchen.

At 19:23 we found a good deep mooring above Hunton Bridge, opposite the water works.

Day's run : 9 hrs 18 mins. 13.7 miles 17 locks

We set off next morning at 06:52. Once again, we found a bad road for quite a long time, but we did start to meet some boats coming the other way, which helped. We reached the boatyard at Berka at 13:55, bought a lot of diesel, pumped out and Roger did our two repair jobs. The diesel smell was because an earlier repair to the bleed-off pipe had not been 100% effective.

We were underway again at 15:44, now with an efficient partner to share the locks. They stopped at Cowroast. We would have liked to get as far as Marsworth, but didn't have time before dark, so planned to stop at Bulbourne. But we had to stop sooner!

At 18:41 Wendy was steering along Tring cutting with me sitting in the well-deck socialising with Tilly, who suddenly saw something interesting across the cut and ran down the off-side gunnel. I called to Wendy to warn her, Wendy replied, the cat took fright and ended in the water. She swam to the offside bank (about 20 ft high, wooded, nearly vertical) and went up it like a rocket.

It was too shallow to moor on that side, so we moored on the towpath side a few yards further on, right by Tring Station Bridge. I went ashore and crossed the bridge to explore the top of the bank that Tilly had climbed. I found a field of oil-seed rape with a rough path round the edge next to the canal. Quite a lot of calling produced no response from Tilly. We each went and called her at various times until dark, without much hope that she'd be in a mood to come back until she'd got over her fright, probably in the morning.

Day's run 9 hrs 59 mins, 12.2 miles, 27 locks

We were up there again soon after first light, but again with no response. "If she doesn't come back now," we thought, "the next most likely time is around sunset." So we went back up to the top at intervals during the day, and Wendy walked into Aldbury to buy some bread. A pretty village, but with a rather limited shop.

By afternoon Tilly was answering our calls from time to time, clearly from the bushes on the cutting-side rather than the field behind. A boat called Raven was moored nearby, also with a cat on board, and its people offered us the use of their dinghy if it would help.

In the evening Wendy decided that the best place from which to call Tilly was the corner where the road bridge met the cutting-side. We took with us a dish of one of the smellier cat foods to entice her to us. She was answering our calls, getting nearer, and came into sight. Two or three times she was almost within our reach when she was startled by a car and went back into the bushes. Eventually it became dark, and the cars started to become less frequent. We were peering through the bushes by the light of the street lamps.

A time came when she'd not answered our calls for some ten minutes or so, and we'd not seen her, when we looked down at our feet, where we'd put down the dish of food, and there she was tucking into it. So I picked her up and took her back to the boat. After some discussion Wendy persuaded me that it would not be a good idea to shut all the doors and windows, on the argument that now Tilly was back, things should be as normal as possible for her, and she would come and go as usual. Which she did, coming and going several times during the night.

But not coming back in the morning! At least this time she'd gone off under her own steam, and could find her own way back, so we were more inconvenienced than worried. Wendy caught the bus into Tring for some more shopping.

Tilly finally came back in the evening, in time to be put into her box for the journey home, as Wendy was going home tonight to a family commitment. I stayed on board as I'd arranged for our friend Ben to join me for a day's boating the next day.

Ben arrived as scheduled at about 08:30 by which time I had breakfasted and cleared up, so we were able to set off almost at once at 08:42.

We had no partner for Marsworth locks, and, as so often happens here first thing in the morning, some were for us and some against. Towards the bottom of the flight we met a couple of boats coming the other way. We were quite pleased with a time of 1 hr 22 mins down the flight.

Rather later we had a partner for a couple of locks, but they stopped below Grove with a bladeful. We used the rubbish point at Leighton Buzzard en passant and then got involved in a queue of Wyvern hire-boats and others at Leighton Lock.

We shared Soulbury locks with a pleasant crew of first-timers (Aussie, from their accents) on a Wyvern boat. They stopped at the bottom of the locks to visit the pub. We were in two minds whether to stop at The Plough at Simpson, but as the weather was good, decided to go on the to the Black Horse at Linford, which we reached at 20:54. The pub was currently closed for refurbishment.

We got a taxi to the station for the journey home. Ben had offered to take a day off work for another day's boating with me to make it possible for us to reach Brum in time for the Marathon, and will join us again for part of that event. I the event we never got Felis Catus II to Brum for the Marathon, and I went and crewed for Jeff Dennison instead. Click here for the story of that trip.

Day's run : 12 hrs 12 min, 25.5 miles, 24 locks
Cruise totals (3-and-a-bit days' boating) 32 hrs 51 min, 52.9 miles 70 locks