Miles Away Again

Back at Beeches Bend.

2012-01-15T20:20:00.000Z

2012-01-13T09:51:00.000Z

Burma

2012-01-13T09:46:00.001Z

More political prisoners are being released from Burma. Fantastic news. Things certainly seem to be improving there. Over a year ago, when Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, it started to look as if, after all these years, tourism to Burma would be something that everyone in the travel industry could now promote with a clear conscience, including Puritanical me. I could break my self-imposed no-flying regime: the social story trumped the environmental impact, perhaps. A travel feature that also discussed the ongoing political improvements and the way that Suu Kyi’s authority with the tourism boycott has played a part in bringing about these changes, was, possibly, more important than the issue of carbon emissions, I told myself, hesitantly. I could travel to an exotic destination, without the pangs of environmental guilt (oh for those days when we barely thought about it). Golden temples, river cruises, one-legged rowers on serene lakes, cool, colonial highland towns and smiling people beckoned. I couldn’t wait. I suggested to Tricia Barnett, then director of Tourism Concern, and a long-time advocate of the tourism boycott, that we travel together. Her insights would add to the meat of the feature. After many attempts to plan a trip, it finally looked as if we were off. I even had a visa. But then the tour operator that was supporting the visit (in other words, giving me a freebie in exchange for the feature in a newspaper - that's the way travel writing works) decided that it would pull out of the deal as I made the mistake of mentioning that I would also be writing about issues such as the situation on the Thai-Burmese border. Here, according to NGOs such as the Burma Campaign, the minority ethnic groups are suffering escalating human rights abuses, including rape and torture at the hands of the Burmese army in a strategy to secure the area for multinational oil and gas companies. Although in many ways the situation in Burma is improving, the military regime still wields its power ruthlessly at times... (I've since read that new ceasefires are being agreed.)

You can read a feature I wrote about Burma (or rather a Burmese exile) for Financial Times, here and you can read the piece that Tricia wrote about our attempts to visit for the Independent on Sunday here.

Time for a change?

2012-01-02T20:47:00.001Z

The New Economics Foundation maintains that the working week should be reduced to 21 hours. What a preposterous idea. Twenty-one hours? That’s far too much. By the time I’ve had tea, listened to the radio, done my (attempts at) salutations to the sun, been for a run, made porridge, moved the boat for an hour or two, had coffee, listened to the radio, cycled off to explore, done a bit of food shopping, had a swim, read the paper, cut some firewood, made a fire, watched the moon rise, made some dinner and listened to the radio, it’s time for bed, to read (John Updike at the moment.) I don’t seem to do much work these days, worryingly little in fact. I need to try to do at least ten hours a week I think. But, hey, 21 hours, maybe I could hack it? Perhaps I’ll go to the free talk tonight at the LSE? I’ll travel on the slow, cheap, London Midland train from Birmingham.

In the same week as a respected economics think-tank says the future lies in everyone working less, the government has announced that the new hideously expensive London to Birmingham (and beyond) ‘High Speed 2’ track will go ahead. One of their main arguments is that the time saved on the journey of 49 minutes, instead of over an hour (or over two on London Midland) as at present, will boost the economy. As many have argued, this completely ignores the fact that people work quite productively on train journeys. They just need to be comfortable with enough room for everyone to sit and move their elbows, not squished together on seats apparently designed for anorexic ballerinas, as on London Midland. (Well, it is cheap.)

I agree with sustainable transport and it’s good to invest in rail instead of flying or roads but I’m just not convinced that wrecking what little that remains of our countryside so that travellers can save a few minutes is worth it. (I know, most of our countryside is manmade and, yes, I know, ever since the canals were first proposed, Luddites have objected to the impact that transport infrastructure will have on the landscape and our quality of life.) But, as Gandhi said ‘there’s more to progress than an increase in speed.’ Ironically enough, I first saw this on a poster at a train station.

Wouldn’t it be better to take what has, rather pejoratively, been dubbed the ‘patch and mend’ approach, and upgrade the existing railway line so it can take longer trains? Big transport infrastructure projects are impressive, yes, and may generate jobs and income, but meanwhile rural transport dies. Why not invest in restoring some of the branch lines axed by Beeching in the 1960s, improving rural bus services and internet access and making the countryside somewhere people can live and work even if they don’t own a car?

Now it’s turned into such a lovely, mild day here on the canal, with the sun shining and birds singing, that I really can’t see myself trekking into London – a two mile walk, a half-hour bus journey and then a two-train trip of two and a half hours – just for the LSE lecture. If only it were available as a podcast or on a video-link up…

The picture was taken a week ago on a day like today, as I moved through the locks at Bratch, near Wombourne.

Offside moorings?

2011-12-28T11:32:00.003Z

This traditional coal carrying vessel passed by today. It had just started its journey, selling sacks of millions-of-years-old sunshine to boaters. I hailed it and bought one. Generally, I prefer burning wood to coal, but there's no denying that a few knobs keeps a fire going for a long time. Talking of which, it's time I moved on from Dimmingsdale really. I've already overstayed this mooring spot's five day limit. I don't feel too guilty. There's room for two other boats and, so far, only one other has moored next to me, for one night.

This is an unusual mooring spot as it's on the non-towpath side and so is more private and tranquil than being by the towpath, where, over the holiday period, a steady stream of cyclists and walkers passes by the windows. In boating terms, that's like living on the High Street. Whereas, here, with the sound of water rushing over a weir and a view of the lock and wintry trees, it's extremely restful and therefore difficult to find the motivation to cruise on. Tomorrow?

I'd be interested to know of other 'offside' official visitor moorings in rural locations. I don't think I've come across any.

Anglers vs the rest

2011-12-22T20:24:00.002Z

This morning, just as I was setting out for a bike ride, this beautifully painted boat passed through the lock near where I’m moored (you can see my boat moored in the background). It had just been to have a paint job by master painter, Phil Speight, I was told, and was on its way to Great Haywood. It was the only boat I saw on the move all day. The canals are blissfully quiet in the winter.

As I was going through a lock near here the other day, a man in his sixties stopped to chat. He saw me winding the paddles on the lock chamber, as the boat was hidden inside, and came up to me on his bicycle. “Oh, I thought you were going the other way,” he said. “Only there’s a fishing competition on down there and they wouldn’t be very happy about it.”

I’d come across the row of anglers strung along the towpath earlier in the rainy day, as, when out cycling, I had had to dodge around their umbrellas, planted in the ground and casting enough shelter for most of the nearby village. When my new friend saw that I was heading away from the competition, he started regaling me with stories about his fishing escapades. He was particularly proud of one time when he outwitted everyone else in the competition. “They were getting nothing but I was getting a fish a chuck,” he said, proudly, with a whiskery grin. “The others asked me, ‘how are you doing that?’ I said, well, to tell the truth, I’m cheating a little bit. ‘What do you mean? Cheating?’ they said. I was using bread, see. You see women come for walks here with their children and throw bread for the ducks and the fish are getting used to bits of bread, see, so I catapulted in some bread pellets and then used a small barbers hook, a 35, with bread and I was getting a fish a chuck.” I wonder now if he did say barbers, or whether he said ‘barbless’ and I can’t say I remember exactly the size he said. I’m sure it ended with -five but I have no idea if size 35 hooks exist or whether, if they do, they would catch a shark or a minnow. I think he said “Roach” and then he continued. “Some of them sit there right next to the edge and I tell them ‘you’re not catching any ‘cos they can see you’.” And I had to think for a bit whether he meant the fish or fishermen. He agreed that the amount of gear some of them carry (fishermen, not fish), necessitating trolleys the size of something you might be forced to use at LIDL, is all rather ridiculous. “I just carry my rod on my bike!” he laughed, and then remembered again, proudly, “A fish-a-chuck!” I said how I thought fishermen should not have all their gear – especially big umbrellas – causing an obstruction to the towpath. “It’s very awkward when you’re cycling and have to keep dodging them,” I said. The umbrellas are like enormous awnings under which the fishermen shelter like gnomes who have fallen off a garden toadstool. Whether walking or cycling, you have to slalom around them, as they poke across the towpath. Sometimes, it can’t be helped, you knock an umbrella as you cycle past. No wonder I learnt that anglers not only dislike boaters, who have the temerity to sail past, forcing them to raise their expensive carbon-fibre rods that stretch the width of the canal, but that they dislike walkers and cyclists who have the audacity to use the towpath when they are sitting there peacefully with their tiddlers and trays of multi-coloured maggots. “One (angling) club told me they’d sorted out their problem with mountain bikes,” said my fisherman friend. “When they have competitions, the first and the last pegs (that’s the numbered positions on the towpath, where they sit all day) have a plank of wood with nails on it that they put across the towpath. That soon dealt with the problem,” he said, mischievously.

It’s going to be interesting to see how anglers, cyclists, walkers and boaters all get along in the new Canal and Rivers Trust. I hope everyone remembers that if it weren’t for boats, the canals wouldn’t be here in the first place. I’m biased of course, but I can’t help thinking that it might be nice if boats and boaters have more say than some of the other users of the canals, especially anglers. Or at least those with big umbrellas that reach across the towpath and those who scowl at you when you pass by them in a boat (even when you’ve made an effort to slow down to save dragging their keep-nets) and those who chuck all their rubbish in the hedgerows. Ones like the friendly man on his bike are welcome anytime. A fish a chuck!

Pylons

2011-11-07T12:37:00.003Z

Was it WH Auden who wrote poems in praise of pylons? I think so if I remember rightly from a little exhibition at the British Library not so long ago. I'm not sure I see their beauty. I can maybe concede that sometimes, they have a certain industrial grandeur as they march, like robots across the land. Yes, I know most of our landscape owes its appearance to human intervention. It's just that we usually find stone walls, hedgerows and fields more aesthetically pleasing than cables and columns of coathangers but, for some, they're still an integral part of the British landscape. Author Andrea Levy writes of going on car journeys from London. "We knew we were in the countryside when we saw pylons," she writes (or something like that.) But I did feel that these pylons rather got in the way of the otherwise bucolic scene on the Staffs & Worcs canal.
In Scotland, the people of Stirling are sorry to hear that, finally, the Beauly to Denny powerline, that will need 600 pylons, each 60m tall, marching past their castle and across relatively flat land, is too expensive to bury underground. Well, there's a surprise. But how do we bring all that offshore renewable power to where it's needed otherwise? Perhaps we could provide hundreds of jobs and dig the trench by hand? It would result in far fewer emissions than making 600 steel pylons. After all, the canals were all dug by hand. Could we do such a mammoth infrastructure project just using muscle power today?

Going with the flow

2011-10-30T09:00:00.002Z

Narrowboat living is surely one of the most relaxing and tranquil ways of life in the UK, especially when you can moor your home anywhere on 2,500 miles of waterways. Here's Andy, perched on the gunwales by the side hatch, enjoying some autumn sunshine. The boat was moored on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal near Stafford.

Tixall Wide again

2011-10-14T19:56:00.002+01:00

It was lovely to get back to one of my favourite spots on the waterways, Tixall Wide, where the canal opens to the width of a lake on which geese honk and swans sail and, when I was there, dozens of youngsters had canoe lessons one morning. One pair of girls capsized. They were wearing dry-suits which was probably sensible as it took them quite a while to right the boat and get back in.

The Idler

2011-10-14T11:01:00.001+01:00

Today I received a copy of The Idler 'magazine', a book format, now annual, themed publication, in which I have a feature about narrowboat living that has been very beautifully illustrated. You can buy your own copy - Idler 44, 'Mind your business' - from The Idler store. It isn't cheap.

Heartbreak Hill

2011-10-10T22:16:00.002+01:00

I left the Llangollen Canal and, instead of heading back down the Shropshire Union the way I'd come, I ventured further north and took a right turn at Barbridge onto the Middlewich Arm, eventually coming out on to the Trent & Mersey at Middlewich and its post-industrial, salt-making gloom.

For about three days I did four hours or so of travelling a day, just doing lock after lock, solo. They call it Hearbreak Hill - some 31 locks spaced out over a stretch of maybe ten miles. Some of the locks are double - two locks side by side, meaning two boats can be passing through at the same time; sometimes though one lock has been filled in or lies abandoned.
Operating locks solo is a fun challenge. There's lots of climbing up and down slimy ladders inside the chambers. I've learnt that it's best to leave the boat in forward as it sits in the deep chamber, riding up the cill as the water level rises. This stops the boat getting bashed about by the force of water rushing in. However, I discovered there is a downside. At one point, as I was efficiently readying the next lock ahead, I turned around to see the boat merrily pushing open the gate of the previous lock below (the water levels having equalised) and starting to cruise across the pound towards a distant hedge on the far side. I ran as fast as I could and was just able to jump aboard and control its eager progress.

Marbury cum quoisley

2011-09-29T19:58:00.002+01:00

During the recent hot spell I moored near Marbury on the Llangollen Canal in Cheshire and discovered that there is a mere - or small lake - in the village. The area around here is full of such meres, formed at the end of the last Ice Age by retreating glaciers. This one, prosaically named Big Mere, is a picture, edged by reeds and with a sandstone church watching over it. A footpath runs across the field by the mere and the church. I stripped off, put on my trunks and slipped into the cool water. I imagined there might be fishermen around the shores so I swam without making a splash and floated on my back as house martins swooped into the water around me and flitted about in the sky, like musical notes released from a hymn-sheet. Heaven. The next day, after exploring other meres nearby, only to find them all out of bounds to anyone except paid-up members of angling clubs, I returned to Big Mere and slipped silently into the water again. After drying off, a fisherman approached me. "I saw you swimming yesterday and didn't say anything but this is the second day," he said, gruffly. "We pay to fish here. The owner will have the police on you." There are no signs saying 'No swimming' so I remonstrated with him a little. "I used to swim here myself when I was a kid," he admitted. "But things change. That's the way it is now." I hadn't caused any bother to their fishing as far as I could tell, it was just the fact that he pays for his pleasure and I was getting mine for free that seemed to irk him most.

No wonder kids are playing on computer games and getting obese if the outdoors is increasingly out of bounds.

Viking Afloat

2011-09-16T20:11:00.001+01:00

A mustard yellow Viking Afloat boat on the Llangollen canal, approaching Ellesmere. Nothing too exciting there. I now recognise various hire-fleet liveries from a distance. Many holiday hire boats do a good job of impersonating a 1980s static caravan. They're rather depressingly functional, full of formica and pale veneer, the kind of seat coverings you may find on a public bus and nothing that might be considered too comfortable or cosy. Few have wood-burning stoves which is a shame for cold weather cruising. One company whose boats do have wood-burning stoves and where the hire boats seem to have some character is Armada Boat Hire near Rugby.

Just a few inches

2011-09-13T18:57:00.001+01:00

This is all that separates your boat from the drop 125ft to the waters of the River Dee when crossing the Pontycysyllte aqueduct. By the holes in the steel trough, it looks as if there used to be railings. They probably caused trouble by snagging boats? Or perhaps they were removed in WWII to be melted down for arms?

Just a few more inches is all I needed to get my friend's head in the picture too. Sorry John.

Another snap taken on the iPhone using Hipstamatic. As mentioned, my proper pics will be on Axiom Photographic Agency's website sometime in the future.

The perfect boat toilet?

2011-09-10T17:02:00.000+01:00

Bill and Melinda Gates want to reinvent the toilet. Imagine a loo that needs no sewerage system, no water, no mains power and, unlike composting toilets, doesn't need space or time. A toilet that converts waste into power and useful minerals in an instant thermochemical reaction. If the Gates Foundation's 'Reinventing the toilet challenge' is successful, then such a toilet may be around the corner. It would be perfect for a boat but, of course, that is not the reason millions of dollars are being invested in research. To find out more, you can read a feature I wrote for The Ecologist that was picked up by this interesting website.

Autumn and aqueducts

2011-09-10T12:49:00.001+01:00

It's very definitely Autumn now and a constant stream of golden leaves, hawthorn berries, acorns and ash keys drifts slowly past the boat. The canal here is clean and clear, having only just left the River Dee. In fact, it goes on to become Cheshire's drinking water. The tallest and longest navigable aqueduct in the world, carries the water across a valley in which the Dee sparkles below. It is for this that I've slowly journeyed here over the last few weeks: the Pontycysyllte aqueduct, designed by Thomas Telford and completed in 1805. It doesn't disappoint. Steering the boat onto it reminds me of the feeling of stepping out onto a very high diving platform. I've been over it four times now, back and forth with various friends, who grip hold of the sides of the boat as we fly across the valley in the stream in the sky, with a sheer drop of 125ft to one side of the boat. "It's like being on a log flume" said one child.

All my pictures so far are on my Canon camera and will be with photographic agencies soon. They're tricky to upload onto this blog so perhaps I should go and take some snaps with my phone? Watch out for some pics, coming soon.

2011-08-26T13:21:00.000+01:00

Ellesmere

2011-08-26T13:20:00.001+01:00

This is the quaint little town of Ellesmere, on the Llangollen canal. The bunting was out, the sun was shining and there were lots of boats moored in the basin or heading on to Llangollen, when I passed by a few weeks ago. (I've abandoned this blog for a while, apart from uploading some pictures direct from my phone...) For me, the best thing about the place though, is the meres - small lakes - that dot the area. I went swimming in one, Colemere. Rather organic in its visibility - i.e green - but much cleaner than the Thames if the illness suffered by David Walliams in his ongoing charity swim is anything to go by.

Nantwich

2011-08-18T09:55:00.001+01:00

A lovely open-air brine swimming pool in Nantwich is a nod to the town's history of salt making. Natural brine springs occur along the River Weaver. There are streets with names like Salt Meadows and quaint Tudor houses with drunken glazing and walls. Some of the most picturesque, such as the bookshop and cafe in the church square, were rebuilt after the town burnt down in the 1500s. Elizabeth I donated £1,000 to the rebuilding. I learnt all this in the little museum, where there's also a display of cheese-making equipment. All the churns and vats are in the museum now as, sadly, there are no artisan Cheshire cheese makers in Cheshire anymore, despite the largest cheese festival in Europe being held in Nantwich every July. The only Cheshire cheese still made by hand is made in Shropshire. I bought some from a long, narrow deli near the museum.

The 48-hour visitor moorings in Nantwich are unlike most town moorings as the canal is higher than the houses, so it felt like I was still moored in the countryside, with nary a glare from streetlights nor any traffic noise. What with lots of recycling facilities and the large supermarkets in town, rather than a drive away, it's a pretty perfect place to visit by boat. I think I'll come again. In July.

I've now moved on, to the Llangollen canal, which, unlike the Shropshire Union, is twisty and narrow, like the Staffs & Worcs. I moored last night in a middle-of-nowhere spot (above) and watched the sun set over fields as a buzzard mewed overhead. Later, the moon rose, the colour of orange Cheshire cheese.

2011-08-12T08:43:00.001+01:00

The Cheshire plains remind me of places in the tropics: expansive skies of towering cumulus, sunlight punching through; a horizon of trees, like a jungle. Instead of rice paddies though, the foreground is maize or pasture. The Midlands seem far away now. I’ve left the Shropshire hills, which could be glimpsed occasionally when the canal wasn’t passing through a cutting and here I am, floundering around on the plains. The horizon seems too distant. I don’t have a guidebook to this stretch of canal and I don’t know where I’m going or what, exactly, lies ahead.

Outside my window, ducks play in the water, ducking and diving, disturbing its fractal patterns, sploshing and flapping, getting water up into their feathers. The males have moulted and now look like females. They lose their bright colours so as to be better camouflaged during this time when they can’t fly well. They seem content to flap about on the surface, to preen their plumage and prepare for the skies again.

To get here, halfway between Audlem and Nantwich, I’ve just come down through 15 locks. They were Thomas Telford’s last project. He kindly made it so that each one doesn’t have much of a drop, so it’s possible to step onto the roof of the boat without having to use the slippery ladders on the chamber walls. Audlem is a pretty village – or small town – with Union Jacks flying from flagpoles everywhere: on its deli and antique pine shop, chichi cafes and upholsterer’s with fabrics at £90 a metre.

The picture above is taken at Adderley, before going down the Audlem locks. It was a pretty mooring spot, after a flight of five locks.

Lock cottages at Tyrley

2011-08-05T17:40:00.000+01:00

High bridges and narrow cuttings of Shropshire canal

2011-08-05T17:39:00.000+01:00

Sunset near Shebdon

2011-08-05T17:38:00.002+01:00

I'm on the move, on the Shropshire Union Canal. I want to get to the tall Pontycysyllte aqueduct on the Llangollen Canal by the end of August. It would be a shame to be so relatively near the most famous and picturesque canal architecture in Britain and not have a go at flying in mid-air across the valley. 'Near' in narrowboating terms means weeks of travelling. From rural Staffordshire to Pontycysyllte and back is a journey of some 200 miles and nearly 150 locks (that's returning a different way - on the Trent & Mersey - for some variety.) British Waterways' stoppages start in November. So, I've been moving a few hours a day now.

The journey didn't get off to a promising start. "It's my least favourite canal," said the man at Lime Kiln chandlery in Compton, before I'd even moved on to the Shroppie. "It's like the M6 in summer: lots of boats." I almost turned around and returned to my haven of Beeches Bend. It's true, so far, it is pretty busy with boats and it is very straight. Much looks the same, passing through wooded cuttings without a view. For the first time, I don't have the appropriate Nicholson guide so I'm never quite sure what's around the next corner (when there is one). I do have the large scale Nicholson inland waterways map of Great Britain, which is probably best as it makes distances seem less daunting.

This sunset picture was taken from a tranquil mooring spot just before Shebdon cutting after travelling from Wheaton Aston - a mere thumb's width on the claret coloured line - without even a lock, or Happy Chef, to break the three hour journey.

Sunny Wales

2011-07-26T10:35:00.001+01:00

A few days away from the boat to go camping in Wales near the long, sandy beach of Dyffryn Ardudwy. The train journey there from the Midlands, passing over this broad estuary at Barmouth after trundling along the clifftops, has to be one of the most scenic in Britain.

This picture was taken with a new app I've downloaded, hipstamatic. I like the borders especially and the more saturated colours. There are various combinations of 'films' and 'lenses'.

Swimming squirrels and co-parenting geese

2011-06-28T11:52:00.002+01:00

I was reading in my hammock, which hangs next to my side-hatch, when a ball landed in the canal, splashing me awake. That's what happens when you moor opposite a cricket pitch. At least there are signs warning of the dangers.

I've moved on from the missiles near Bratch Locks at Wombourne and am now at Dimmingsdale, a very quiet spot above a lock with shady trees and moorings on the non-towpath side. There's the constant sound of water running down an overflow and, outside the windows, comfrey and hogweed, backed by ash and willow trees. I didn't know that squirrels eat comfrey but yesterday I watched as one sat on the grass, pulling at stalks and nibbling seeds. I didn't know that squirrels could swim either until I startled one when I cycled down the towpath and it jumped into the canal, swam across to the other side, clambered out and shook itself.

Near where I'm moored there is a family of Canada geese, two adults with three goslings. They appear to have employed a nanny: a white, farmyard goose follows them everywhere, often swimming in a single, neat line. He/she stops to look after the youngsters on the water while the parents go foraging on the canal bank. When the downy adventurers want to go ashore too, the nanny goose follows the family up onto a patch of meadow, where the three adults adopt a triangular look-out formation, peering over the long grass, while the little ones amuse themselves safely in the middle.

This picture is not of Dimmingsdale, it's one I took at Beeches Bend a while back and meant to post earlier.