Free Apples for Boaters, Wild Parakeets, the Fuel Filter Fiasco & Adventure Moorings near the Hell Fire Club!

The end of the Thames!!



What a mad few weeks! Wils and I are now back on the Grand Union, having completed not far off one hundred miles of the Thames in about a week. Covering as much ground as possible has been the priority recently, and I've averaged about 17 miles a day! Which is fine for the Thames, but of course I couldn't think of going that far in a day on the Grand Union, particularly as I'm single-handing through those lock flights...

Below: A welcome sight!



I can't now recall the name of the lock but there was a lock on the Thames, not far from Goring I think, that are giving away all the apples you can carry, the trees in the small orchard beside the lock keepers cottage are still laden, and the boxes outside the office were full when we came through, so I helped myself to a few choice eaters and we were on our way. Mooring at Goring was easy, the moorings near the bridge/lock are very well maintained, and free, which makes a change for the Thames. I was feeling brave so it was here that I attempted to change the fuel filter. Note to self; even if you follow what's written in books, things go wrong! And they did. But I have a far better idea of what to do next time, and with the help of a man who knows how to do these things, I was back on track, new filter and all. This man also knew more than I did about impending winter stoppages on the Thames and southern Grand Union, which is something that, with everything else that was on my mind, I hadn't even thought about yet. He warned that severe stoppages were due very soon and encouraged me to get a move on if I didn't want to be faced with the prospect of having to turn around and come all the way back the way I'd come. As this was clearly not an option, it was at Goring that I decided to get the Thames over and done with ASAP! And so it was that a few days, and an awful number of hours cruising later, Wils and I appeared at Teddington lock at the beginning of the Tidal Thames.

Now I'd done my reading and timed my arrival at Teddington to coincide with high tide, which it did. At 8.50am. I had got up at 5am to get there for that time and when I did - I was told that, as from October 1st, the Thames is on Winter Timetables now, so passage MUST be booked 24 hours in advance. The Collins map book makes no mention of these pesky Winter Timetables! I could've chanced it, but the moorings at Teddington (although costing £7 per night) were very solid and inviting... So it was an early morning in vain, but I got to have a day off to mooch around Teddington, where I found a copy of Cormac McCarthy's novel Suttree; about a man living on his own in a disintegrating houseboat on the Tennessee River - had to be done! It's reads extremely well so far, if a little heavy on the dense and slightly abstract poetics sometimes, like his other one, Blood Meridian. But you couldn't have it without the poetics, it's like reading Tom Waits lyrics sometimes, which can only be a very. very good thing! If a little exhausting after twenty pages...

Below: A night at Teddington.



It was after Goring that I ended up near Henley, where I wasn't prepared to pay £8 to moor up beside a park with no services provided. It was at this point that, with myself craned over the side of the stern trying to read the sign regarding moorings that Wils decided on a bit of a makeover for himself (a photo of the streamlined cratch that Wils styled for himself coming soon)!

In truth I was planning to remove it anyway but the work was done for me by an obliging tree at Henley. We had no forward movement at the time that I could judge, and the tree came out of the engagement without a scratch, so the cratch clearly wasn't going to be standing all that much longer anyway! Most of it was rotten wood.

I carried on through the town, it was getting a little dark by this point so I pulled over to read a sign advertising moorings for £6 a night. (Again, photos of the bizarre "Adventure Moorings" at Henley coming soon!)

It said it was payable on demand, and given that nobody demanded it from me I saw fit not to pay. I imagine in summer it is packed with boats along there and well worth the farmer's time to walk alongside and collect £6 per boat - but I was the only person moored there for miles... I imagine there are a good number of accidents at this spot too, getting on and off the boat, tying up and the reverse was more than a little daunting, even for a lithe, young athlete of a man such as myself. HA!

The summer crowds seem to be long gone on the river now, which is one wood stove away from being blissful! Although, saying that, the number of people still pushing cameras almost right up to the windows is as alarming as ever! I got talking to the owners of Thomas H, a stunning Dutch Barge that moored up in front of me at Teddington, who said they'd just come down from Kent, where a man had come halfway onto their gangplank to photograph the boat and was irritated that they should have the nerve to question what he was doing!

I didn't realise until I was within half a mile of Medmenham that the Abbey there was the site of the original Hell Fire Club; "The club formally styled itself the Monks of Medmenham, and originally occupied the caves beneath the ancient Abbey. Its members could reach the Abbey by boat from the river at night and thus not be bothered by `paparazzi'.

The abbey was well located in a grove of trees which nearly concealed it from view. The nearest road was some distance away, but members would be able to approach it easily in private boats... and ... could return to their homes in complete privacy. ... Workmen were sent in and the abbey was rebuilt and the grounds landscaped ... to make them into a `garden of lust.'

Marble pillars were erected on which were carved pornographic inscriptions in bastard, or `macaroni' Latin. Small Grecian-styled temples were put up here and there. The groves were filled with statuary in indecent poses. ... Hollowed from a hill was the Cave of Trophonius. A fresco within it pictured sexually robust animals, a crowing cock, and a laughing nun..."

Ahhh the good old days. From Henley it was a hotstep to Windsor, the centre of which was extremely depressing for such a historic town. Its bland, corporate frontage could have been anywhere, and that's precisely the problem. From there I hammered through Staines to Hampton and onto the tiny, tiny section of wall that passes for moorings there.

Sunrise over the High Rise; a night at Hampton:




It was from here that I made the extremely early start, and it's a strange experience untying moorings lines and heaving the pins out of the ground when it's still almost too dark to see and the moon is high... Also it was here that a large, fluffy white cat decided to befriend Wils and I. I had gone outside to check the pins in the soft mud on the bank late in the evening, and he appeared out of the tall grass behind me. When I asked him whether he thought the bow pin would hold, he sat beside it and curled a paw around it as if he was holding it in place for me! That was before he made a mad dash through the length of the boat! Cats can be hard to catch... And only yesterday on the Grand Union I passed an RSPCA Cat Shelter... Somebody is trying to tell me something...

I wasn't expecting all the parakeets either! Along the final 20 miles or so of the Thames there are whole flocks of the things, all brightly coloured and noisy and - well, parakeety. Apparently this is what happens when you let a couple of them into the wild! I was impressed!

I think this goes some considerable way to explaining the loss of speed I was experiencing yesterday! Pulled out of the weedhatch at the time:




Wils at sunny Brentford:




Below, a very poor photo of one of the few boats I've seen that I would call my Dream Boat!! I spoke to the owners, a couple who had lived for 5 years on a narrowboat previously, and had only taken charge of this beauty two days before I met them. Imagine the amount of space in something like that compared to a narrowboat! Although this photo doesn't come close to doing it justice, it was a stunning boat. Look at all that room for a veg garden on top!




It's a very difficult thing to take a good self-portrait when you're cruising at top speed; but as you can see I succeeded admirably:




More photos to arrive soon, once I figure out all the relevant technogubbins...

Photographically Speaking...

And now the photos that relate to the previous post!

The lizard in the engine bay:



Duke's Lock:



A valid question, near Duke's Lock:



Poor, wrecked boat:



Headed for DANGER!



Wils contemplates the Thames:



There are some amazing boats around here:





And some truly terrible ones:



Moored in Oxford:



The Isis Sculls take over the Thames:



Approaching Lock Wood, near Abingdon:

Lizards in the Engine Bay, Infuriating Wonka-Locks & onto the Thames!

Sadly this post will be sans photos, not for lack of photos taken in the last few days, but for the severe antiquity of current onboard computing technology. I would love to kick it up a gear and maybe get a few photos online, but I fear the boiler would explode.

Wils and I have made it onto the Thames! Leaving Thrupp, we spent one night at Kidlington, where tiles, adhesive, grout and a number of associated and equally fascinating tools were ordered, and collected the next morning. Toby now knows that tiles are heavy. Adhesive is heavy. Grouting is also rather weighty. Carrying the above in a backpack on a BMX bike is therefore HELLISH, and not an experience I'm likely to repeat soon! But at least it's all onboard now. Now if only I could tile... I started, then I stopped. It's a work in progress. Every morning I wake up in a cold boat and a sudden pang of energy to get on with it and get the stove in suddenly kicks in, but then the days heat up (I have sunburn - it's nearly October!) and the importance of the job dwindles slightly.

Lately the job of cruising on the Thames has taken priority, and what a contrast it is from the Oxford canal! They definitely haven't heard of a narrow lock on these waters! This afternoon Wils and I passed through Sandford Lock where I learnt the lock takes in 1.2 million litres of water every time it fills! I was impressed.

Also discovered a lizard in the engine bay whilst removing old paint/rust and applying new anti-rust paint in there, who seemed glad to have a new home beside the canal, hope he managed to avoid the many, many herons around these parts...

The Oxford Canal ended unceromoniously at Dukes Lock, where I skidaddled onto Dukes Cut, thus avoiding the madness of attempting to moor in central Oxford. Dukes Lock is a fitting closure to the Oxford Canal, fitting in all its fine tininess. It's like a pixie shipping canal! A very cute little affair (yes, I did just describe a lock as cute), nestled under the railway bridge and between veritable walls of plantlife, this boater advises mooring before the entrance to the lock, although going right in does cover your centre line in those prickly thistle-like baubles, which look good but won't aid you when you come to need to actually USE the centre line - anyway...

After the small scale of Dukes Lock it was on to the widening (and widening, and widening and...) Thames, and to Kings Lock - where the brilliantly mustachio'd lock keeper sold me the right to cruise on the Thames and a winning smile. Afterwards he mentioned that every British subject (remember, we're not techincally citizens these days, we're still subjects), has the right to cruise on the Thames unheeded, since the Magna Carta was drawn up, and that the Environment Agency can't stop a boater proceeding into a dangerous part of the river, they can only advise. What then, I later mused, is the deal with the EA selling licenses? If we have the right to cruise on the Thames, how can a government body permit and penalise boaters? Hmmmmm....

Past Kings Lock and on towards Godstow Lock, which is where I, temporarily, came unstuck... Getting Wils into the lock was no problem - closing the gates behind Wils was no problem - but on all of the many written instructions and push buttons available, nowhere did it say; "now that your boat's inside the lock, look over to your right and observe the terminal from which the opposite lock gates are controlled". Muggins 'ere was pushing and pulling and pressing and jabbing at control box A for nearly twenty minutes, before he realised you have to walk over to Control Box B to open the second gate. Yes, it's ridiculously simple, and if I'd seen anyone else doing it before me, I'd have had no problem - but in my defence, the entire lock is drawn up on Control Box A, with buttons beside the second gate - ok, nuff said, I'm a fool. At least now I know, right?

Past the bathing cows of Port Meadow, I come under the (enjoyably low!) Osney Bridge and there's a mooring waiting for me right in the middle of Oxford! So a shower and a night-time ramble into a town I know well was on the cards, and any pub serving Hobgoblin on tap is a good one in my book.

Early this morning we were off again, down to Osney Lock, where I'm told the Sculls are on today just a little way down the river. They certainly were, I came passed the superb island buildings beside Folly Bridge and was directed by a Race Marshal over to the moorings, where I and a number of other boaters were waiting for the race to finish so we could move on. Turns out I had a good seat right on the finish line. 50 rowers later we were allowed to continue down-river. Huge houses, huger forests (Lock Wood, apparently) and some extremely impressive underbridge art went by, photos to follow shortly of course! And here I am just below Abingdon Lock. I make that a little over 25 miles in the last 4/5 days, not bad going!

The Thames is a seriously refreshing contrast to the Oxford, it's so very, very wide; though mooring and water opportunities seem rare and even boatyards seem hard to come by... I was able to fill up with water above Abingdon Lock, so just diesel to get now... On to Wallingford! Now bring me that horizon... The next pipe bridge'll do.

A Travelling Man's Diamonds; Calcutt to Thrupp & The Ubiquitous Floating Lettuce

Well I'm certainly overdue for a post here!

Suffice it to say that Wils and I have continued on down the Oxford having left our temporary mooring at Calcutt some time ago... So there I am, on my first day cruising single-handedly, and only just around the corner from Calcutt Marina, when DISASTER STRIKES! Well, not really disaster, let's just say I am now well aware of the importance of withdrawing all fenders from the water when entering narrow locks... Amongst the many, many various things on my mind that day, and having never tackled a narrow lock before, it simply slipped my mind. Good thing I hadn't bought that nice, new set of manilla fenders yet! So, two rope fenders lighter than before, on I went, only thanks to the superb help I received from three boaters coming the other way. In all honesty, the generosity and open willingness to help one another that I've found on the canals is incredible and only serves to highlight the lack of it in "normal" bricks-and-mortar life; it's something I hardly realised was so pronounced until I started living on the canal. It really is the case that you can be walking along a main road over a canal and everybody will ignore you in the usual city way, then you move a few metres down onto the towpath beneath the same bridge and everyone acknowledges you! Sometimes, people even smile. Gasp! Of course that's not always the case, but recent experiments have provided convincing results...

Hoping to moor up before the connurbation of Banbury was upon us, we were "mildly displeased" at finding nothing but 48 hour moorings in the centre of town, such is the nature of urban boating I'm sure. Wils and I needed to find something more in the region of 7/14 days, because a visit by train down to the south coast to visit Jem was fast approaching. Moving from the fields of the Oxfordshire countryside into the centre of Banbury is quite a contrasting experience! And there I was confronted by my very first lift bridge, which did indeed require lifting - with only a minor two hundred or so onlookers, shoppers, coffee drinkers etc surrounding me on all sides and on many tiers of shopping centre... Now - here's where I first discovered an issue for single-handers with regard to the operation of lift bridges, which remains unresolved as such; how is one supposed to operate said contraption when the lift arms are on one side of the canal and the moorings on the other? I was saved in central Banbury by being able to moor Wils very cheekily behind the hire boat that lives outside Tooleys Historic Boatyard (that looks disappointingly unhistoric until you get round the back...) which was moored on the same side as the lift arms. Long story short, I got through fine, and found a good spot to moor up just past Bridge 170:




Which happened to be a mere mile's walk from the timber yard, so over the next two weeks I visited Jem (who is coping very well with everything cos she's so brave), bought in lengths of timber and sheets of cement board, which I lugged by hand down the towpath in an extremely manly and energetic way, naturally.

There are a number of interesting walks over the fields around the outskirts of Banbury, this was etched on a footbridge sign:



The "dismantled railway line" was disappointing, I expected to find four children and a dog getting into scrapes and being chased by a ghostly, one-armed signalboxman called Eyepatch Joe, and given that such were my expectations, I was a little put out by the lack of such a scene. But I did meet some very friendly pigs on part of the farm that lies on the footpath route if you leave the canal at lift bridge 172 and head east-ish. The woods just beside the canal there are full of HUGE spiders and make for an excellent weaving patch of ground, the trunks being thin enough to take a loom tie-cord very comfortably (the spiders, as nature's weavers, were clearly a good indication of something appropriate in the air...) Below: a new project begins, a belt this time...



Two more photos from my time near Banbury:





The timber and cement board is, by now, installed as the surround for the wood burning stove to be - well - surrounded by. Only tiling and stove installation to go! But the mornings are getting colder, I can't deny it... Must work faster! Here it is before all of the cement board went on:



I'm having to skim everything that has happened because I have so much time to fit into one post, so here goes:

Recently brewed up another batch of real ale! This is now bottled and "aging" nicely! Prudence Pig Porter is its name, and very tasty it is too!



One of the most attractive lock keepers cottages I've seen, at Somerton Deep Lock, also recently traversed by NB Ubique I believe! Our paths have crossed a great deal recently, it seems!



A photo from my one night moored near Somerton, where the towpath was simply one edge of this huge field populated by cows. And boaters.



Which brings us almost up to the present! Currently moored at Thrupp, within shouting distance of Ubique & Maffi, the latter of the two was waiting beside my mooring when I pulled into Thrupp, always nice to find a familiar face after a long solo cruise, even if you've never seen it before in person! And it really was a long day, about 10 miles on Tuesday, about 9 miles the day before - I don't think 19 miles is too bad for two days work!

A recent venture out into the world surrounding Thrupp lead me to Hampton Gay, an abandoned village, the ruins of the Sixteenth Century Manor House still stand (partially), and there are a number of farm buildings and strange, lock/sluice-like features dotted around the undergrowth if you look hard enough... A fascinating place really, an internet search afterwards reveals that it was cursed. And then burnt down. And there's me skipping gleefully through the remains!







In that last photo; the ground floor window is HUGE from inside! Gives a superb view out onto the grounds... What a renovation project it would make... Hmmmmm....

And finally, just to prove that all sorts of things grow in the hedgerows adjacent to the canals, I found wild hops growing directly beside Bridge 220! Excuse the poor photo!



As for the ubiquitous floating lettuce - at the last three locations I've moored; there has been a perfectly intact lettuce floating in the canal nearby! Is someone laying a trail for me? Is it, in fact, the same lettuce each time, hitching a ride somewhere on Wils? Is it following me?

Meanwhile, back in the 21st Century...

Boat related goings-on are fast and furious at the moment! We've been around the Napton Junction area for some time now, moving the boat well in advance of our 14 day allowance of course, but having to stay roughly in the same area because of all the work we're having done.

In the last fortnight we first had a visit from Nick Sherratt, a 'Field Service Engineer' who works out of Welton; a most excellent bloke and a real all-rounder by the sounds of it, in his own words; "there's nothing I don't do on boats!". In a matter of an hour or so he had converted our mind-boggling 12/24v split system into an all 12v system (mildly less mind-boggling). I know what some of you are thinking, that there are benefits to the 24v system - but our electrical needs are so simple that overall we decided that the superior availability of 12v parts was enough to tempt us to having just the one system. The only thing that remains is to sort out a way of running 240v appliances now - either by purchasing a 600 watt inverter or by sourcing an alternative way of taking 12v and stepping it up to 240v. Luckily we have no washing machine, tumble dryer, TV etc to worry about.

Martin Kedian, famed for his work on Bones side hatch earlier in the year, amongst other things - had finished constructing our amazing brand new amazing stainless steel water tank of amazingness! In preparation for the new tank we had to destroy the interior front end of the boat - good thing our stove hasn't gone in yet, eh?! We had to remove the corner cupboard (due to come out anyway, for the stove), the central heating pipe that ran parallel to the front bulkhead (which involved draining the entire system of course) - which we hoped was going to be all of it, but Martin's visit the day before the fitting revealed that due to the size of the tank we needed to remove laminate flooring, the plywood underneath and all of the concrete ballast in the front end! AGH! So for one day (gloriously sunny, unlike the rain-soaked ones before and after it!) we had our new tank and our precious blocks of concrete out on the towpath:



The job seemed like an incredibly quick one to this layman, who watched as Martin and Trevor cut into the bulkhead to provide a hole through which the new tank would fit:



This is a man half-proud of the progress being made, half-terrified of the huge hole that has just appeared in the front of his boat...



After that it was my turn to spring into action, slapping down three tins (!) of anti-rust paint on the surrounding old tank walls, with the new tank temporarily removed of course. It dried in the sun very quickly, so we set to lining the old tank with a couple of rolls of insulation (to keep the water in the new tank from freezing in mid-winter), before fitting the new tanks back in, connecting them together and screwing in the filler pipe.

After a few very well-earned cups of tea and a good night's sleep we set to moving the boat from Napton Junction down to a marina nearby where we filled up with water for the first time! Due to the changeover of electrical systems we also had to change the main water pump, the shower water pump and the bilge pump - which are all working successfully!

This morning I finally finished negotiating about the Honda Generator that turned up a fortnight ago and spat petrol everywhere - it was returned, serviced and should be due to arrive tomorrow. HURRAY! Here's hoping it works this time... The gennie will provide us with emergency 240v power, and our new battery charger will mean we hopefully won't have any problems with dead/dying batteries - but then again, this is a boat, and if there's one thing I've learnt - boats break! All good fun though, in a quintessentially English sort of way...

I am extremely pleased to say that Jem is recovering well, and the current plan is to move on down the Oxford quick smart, negotiate the non-tidal Thames and then the K&A at least as far as Devizes. We'll see....

And now, to cleanse the palate, a few photos from recent weeks/months:

The working boatman's Familiar graces Wils with a surprise visit at Cosgrove:



The centenarian President passed us on its way to Crick I guess:



"HERE I AM!" Jem scares the **** out of me, next to the handspun wool drying in a very convenient place:



That same wool going to good use in the construction of a rug on the peg loom, beside Jem's creature creations (SHAMELESS PITCH TIME: Rugs and creatures are currently for sale! Either click here to visit our Etsy page; or send us a message on blogger, or comment on this post etc):



A pint of the first batch of brew: Brown Bear Ale! A huge success it was too! Sitting next to our trusty wool cards. If you see us out and about on the cut, give us a shout and we'll give you a bottle or two if we've got some brew made up! (Is that a dangerous promise to make in a blog?)



Always good to see heavy horses on the canal!




In other news; I finished building a backstrap loom, and I'm slowly learning how to use it, and hopefully in time more elaborate blankets/rugs will be possible.

Brain melting from blogging, and it's sunny outside so....

Down to Candles and Solar Power now...

Reading the previous post reveals just how long it's been since we updated this last!

To bring things up to speed; we are currently suffering from both a lack of electricity and running water onboard. The domestic alternator (which we soon learned was 24v, a fact that had admittedly been lost on us amongst the myriad of technical details we received when we bought the boat) was recently broken, and not by us - long story. Our visiting mechanic unwittingly replaced it with a 12v model, and since then we've been almost completely on candles and my tiny portable solar charger, not to mention internet-less. The thought that has been going through my mind is that, if 24v is such a superior system for a boating environment (apparently due to its lack of voltage drop compared with 12v), then why has 12v become the ubiquitous standard? We are faced with two options therefore; change a (growing) number of the appliances onboard from 24v to 12v, including all of the light bulbs, the two water pumps, the inverter and possibly even the starter motor - or find a 24v alternator.

The latter would seem the easiest to do, but for the fact that 24v alternators seem to be very hard to come by.

On the subject of the running water, we are investigating the possibility of having a flexible tank installed inside the current tank, after we de-rust and repaint it with regular anti-rust. If that turns out to be prohibitively expensive, there's the option of having a stainless steel tank welded inside the existing one, or simply repainting with the right kind of potable anti-rust paint...

More significantly than all of this however, is the fact that, on our return from a fantastic Sunrise Celebration festival down in Somerset nearly two weeks ago, Jem became very unwell very quickly, and is currently recuperating with her parents on the south coast. She is getting better every day and hopefully the boat can be improved to a far more comfortable standard for her return. At present I am doing what I can to move between Jem and the boat to move it, to keep the veg alive, to sponge the bilge (no electrics means no bilge pump! So the bilge pump is 24v too... Add it to the list of things to replace if we go down that route, which is looking less and less favourable), etc. We're moored a fair distance from the south coast of course, and without a car this is proving "interesting"... Time for me to get back onto Liftshare, not to mention stretching the muscles in my hitchin' thumb...

On the plus side the second batch of ale has turned out well, though it seems that bottling is definitely a two-person operation if you don't want to get sticky, sticky beer all over the galley.

We have started to look for a mooring, and we hope that having that extra bit of stability will be good for both of us for the time being, though how long it takes us to find something suitable remains to be seen.