Monthly Archive: September 2016
No, Cleddau has not slipped her moorings at sunset and sailed off into the gloom – but the John Bunyan did! While home-based for a few days in Beds, a friend had extended a kind invitation to join her on a birthday cruise. Since 1995 the Bedford and Milton Keynes Waterway Trust has been promoting the development of a canal link between the Buckinghamshire town of Milton Keynes and the county town of Bedford. Close the Gap (not the same as...
The thing about the unexpected is that there is no warning of when it may occur… Take Sunday for example. A prompt start from above Willey Moor Lock was successful for all of one minute – and then a high pitched bleeping sound sang out from the rear end of the boat. Engine off. Warning gauges inspected. Engine boards up. Loss of water coolant diagnosed (the cause of the slightly blue tinged water in the bilge at the...
There was nothing quick about the start on Wednesday morning… Cleddau and Tentatrice had spent the previous evening and night about two hundred yards above New Marton top lock. From untying the mooring ropes it took nearly an hour to enter the top lock. The reason? Cleddau was number four in a boat queue, Tentatrice number five … and as the minutes ticked by so the queue grew! Once through the two locks a meander of a few...
The last five miles from Trevor to Llangollen are spectacularly beautiful. The canal runs on a contour along the side of the Vale of Llangollen, the River Dee running in parallel below along the valley bottom. For boaters crawling towards (or from) Llangollen the trip can be a nerve-wracking business. There are three stretches of Narrows, where there is room for one boat width only. For the second time in recent weeks the hand-held radios were deployed...
And so to Llangollen… In all the time Cleddau and crew were heading north west to Liverpool and back earlier this year no boaters showed any curiosity about how to say “Cleddau” or why the boat is so called… Heading west on the Llangollen Canal however, folk can pronounce the word (think: CLETH-EYE) and some even recognise the reference. “Ah, Pembrokeshire!” said a walker one day. “Is that the eastern or the western Cleddau?” Then, at Ellesmere (Ellesmere in Shropshire...
There’s been a fair bit of lurking in recent days: there were hours huddled inside the boat below Hurleston Locks on Saturday, drying off and warming up after a very wet cruise along the Middlewich Arm. Then on Sunday morning there was more lurking while waiting for the Cheshire Three to arrive with a promised mail drop. Along they came – by which time there was a boat queue. Seven boats one side of the bridge, four the...
The boat trip to Llangollen continues. Boating is great but occasionally, just occasionally, it’s good to go ‘off piste’. Moored still on the Macclesfield Canal at the Ramsdell Hall Railings Boatwif and the Tentatrice First Mate ploughed across the fields (and the odd cow pat) to Little Moreton Hall. It was not the first visit for Boatwif, nor the first guided tour. Viewing the long table in the Great Hall leaves you impressed. It’s...
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