Mike Stevens' UK Inland Waterways Pages

TRIP REPORTS : THE FELIS CATUS II YEARS

A DISASTROUS SUMMER : AUGUST 2001

Part 3 : To the National, but not much further.

We resume the story at Welford, on the branch on the Foxton summit.

Wendy saw a kingfisher just before we started at 07:20. At Welford junction we re-joined the main line of the Old Grand Union, and later were about fifth in the queues at the top of Watford locks, with Wendy's friends on Flimby behind us. It was nearly an hour-and-a-half before we started down the locks. Then came Norton Junction and the Grand Junction Canal. We shared Buckby locks with an experienced 4-person crew and decided to aim for Bugbrooke, moor on the towpath side and have a barbecue before going to the pub.

Arrived at Bugbrooke at 19:26, we couldn't see a suitable gap between other moored boats, so decided to moor on the pub side (it's called the Old Wharf, but is a new pub) and eat there. Soon after we moored, John Bennett (from the Cutweb) introduced himself (he was moored some way down the towpath on his way to Stoke Bruerne) and told us there was a quiz on that evening, so we decided to go for the bar food rather than the restaurant, and to make a quiz team with John. The bar food was excellent, and we did very well in the early rounds of the quiz, until they gave us a bonus round with double scores, all about football, whereupon our hopes collapsed. In the end we came seventh out of twenty teams.

Rumour has it that a number of regulars from The Boat at Stoke Bruerne have switched their allegiance to here, as the former isn't as good as it used to be. I certainly met one of the old regulars from The Boat, Howard Bowden, in whose company I spent a pleasant weekend boating back in the days of our old boat, and who more recently did an engine repair for us. Alan and Trish Akhurst were also taking part in the quiz. It was a very pleasant evening, but we were both very tired and glad to get to bed.

DAY'S RUN : 26.0 miles, 15 locks in 12 hrs 6 min

We set off early, at 06:44, in the hope of getting through Blisworth before it was too busy. It was misty to start with, and one could see the mist burning off the water and waterside plants. Near-horizontal sun from in front of us, plus reflections, made the steerer's vision difficult, even with a brimmed hat. We made the tunnel in time not to meet any other traffic, but Wendy felt she'd must have steered for twice the tunnel's length as she couldn't make the boat go straight.

We shared Stoke Bruerne locks with Aloysius from the Stort. We were in a procession, all heading for Stoke Bruerne, and were helped by Tony Greenwood from Iberia (in the lockful ahead of us) opening a paddle for us each time, and some energetic lock-wheeling by Dave Harris from Lucy (in the lockful behind us). They told us that in Blisworth Pam Harris had taken some flash photos, which had convinced the chap on Aloysius that BW had fitted speed-cameras in the tunnel. At the penultimate lock of the flight we met some up-hill boats.

We stopped at Yardley Gobion wharf for a pump-out and filled up with diesel because it was quite a good price. Then we stooped again at Cosgrove sani station to dispose of rubbish. We had a long stop by Wolverton station where I shopped for provisions for the duration of the "National". Then we headed into Milton Keynes and the Festival at Newlands Park. We weren't exactly sure where our mooring was, so stopped in what we thought was the right general vicinity past bridge 82 at 18:40 We decided that it was too late to find somebody to ask where we should be. Peter Cardy was around and came on board for a drink.

DAY'S RUN : 21.3 miles, 8 locks in 8 hrs 11 min

I went on site to find out our mooring number and collect our papers, then came back and we moved to our proper mooring, near bridge 83, which involved re-mooring Pete Thompson's Colonel a few yards further back. Boats who arrived early weren't due to be in their proper mooring slots until later that day. We were supposed to be outboard boat of two, but our neighbour hadn't yet arrived. Once we'd moored, I went onto the site to start work on the newsletter with Martin and Wendy went back to London to feed the cat before setting off for Dad's place.

DAY'S RUN : 0.5 miles, no locks, in 30 mins

I was at the "National" working on the newsletter as usual. Our S London IWA friend Lesley Pryde stayed on board from Friday evening until Monday afternoon. We didn't see much of the boat, except for sleep and the occasional breakfast, except on the Sunday evening when we sat aboard to watch the illuminated boats.

There were lots of folk I knew moored near us. Inboard of us was Dusty Miller, the waterways artist, whom I'd not met before. The next pair to us were Margaret and John Gwalter (from the London Canal Museum) on Ernest and Terry Stroud and his wife (Terry is an art dealer whom I know through Canalway Cavalcade) on Florian. Also moored nearby were Chris Coburn, Mike Stimpson, Peter Thompson and Aileen Butler.

Meanwhile in Marlborough there were some family problems, so Wendy wasn't sure when she'd be able to rejoin the boat. Martin was equally unsure when he'd have a WRG van available to take our computers back to London (and had some things he wanted to do on the computer before leaving), so once we learnt that our cabin didn't need to be cleared until Tuesday we decided to leave it till then.

In the morning I cleared up my stuff in the cabin ready for Martin to load into a WRG van. Wendy was now back in London and had ascertained that she wasn't needed down in Marlborough for a few days, so would come up by train and meet me at Fenny lock.

On doing the engine checks, I thought the oil look suspiciously thin, but decided to start off anyway at 14:45 and call in somewhere for help if things didn't seem right. when we were under way. Soon after setting off, I was gently increasing the revs after passing a moored boat, when the engine ran away, raced like b*gg*ry and emitted huge clouds of white smoke - so much that I couldn't see the front of the boat, and the boat behind us couldn't se us at all. Putting the control to neutral took us out of gear but didn't stop what the engine was doing, so I dived below and turned off the fuel stop-cock. The engine eventually stopped and the smoke cleared. The boat following us was David King's, and he gave us a tow to Milton Keynes Marina.

I 'phoned Wendy to redirect her there. David dropped me opposite the Marina at 15:22, and I was towed into a berth there by an attractive wooden cruiser steered by one of the twin brothers who run the marina, Ian and Graham Lockhart. They diagnosed the primary trouble as the injector pump having leaked fuel into the sump, thus causing the engine to run away on the oil/diesel mixture What they couldn't be sure of was what further damage had been caused by that happening.

DAY'S RUN : 1.1 mile, no locks in 37 minutes.

The Lockharts continued exploring the engine next morning. It became apparent that some fairly substantial damage had been done, but they couldn't tell quite what until they got the engine out of the boat and took the head off. There would be some delay about this, as whichever of them is the mechanic (Graham?) was about to go away on holiday. We arranged for the calorifier which Grebe Cruisers at Pitstone Wharf had ordered for us to come here and be fitted while the other work was being done. We set off for home in the afternoon.

A few days later they rang us to say that having taken the head off, they'd traced the damage, and while there was some, it wasn't anything as like as bad as it could be, as the pistons had been marked but not actually damaged, so all the work needed was on the top end.

CRUISE TOTAL : 195.8 miles, 168 locks in 99 hrs 54 mins over only 17 day's actual boating.