Monthly Archives: September 2015

It’s a Small World (Part 732)

Back from our train trip, the Captain was taking a constitutional, and we’d vaguely noticed a boat mooring up behind us. Somewhat surprised to hear a voice say “Hello, Biggles”, it turned out to be a couple of chaps on a narrowboat who we’d chatted for a while back in Elton, when we were both heading the other way. One was a cat lover, with a new British shorthair kitten at home and on his iPhone: probably why he remembered us. Since we’d pottered slowly down to Ely and back, they’d been all the way to Bedford and Cambridge, intent on covering serious mileage during their three week break.

It being a bit chilly, and well after whisky o’clock, we invited them in for a drink and a natter, as you do. Turned out the other chap was retired, but had worked for Raytheon and British Aerospace, and knew quite a lot about the Raytheon Premier I business jet that was for some years the bane of the bo’sun‘s life (in a past existence). Seems he was for some time an oppo and sidekick of another British Aerospace/Raytheon chap who we actually knew quite well. Over a couple of years the latter sold several Premier I jets to “Russian” outfits operating via a Jewish New York lawyer’s office, who wanted them put on the Bermudan or Cayman registry, and got the bo’sun to do some of the regulatory paperwork: a strange affair, but a mutually beneficial arrangement!

As they were catching the first train on the Sunday morning while we were merely going to watch it depart, we shuffled boats around and breasted up to allow room for the trip boat. Biggles decided that he might change boats for a while, but when we told him how much cruising time per day these chaps did, he decided to stay with Song & Dance.

Diesel and Steam: Peterborough and Back

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The chief trainspotter/cook had decided that we would take the last trip of the day on The Nene Valley Railway, stay the night, then watch the first Sunday departure, which was supposed to be steam hauled. Who were the Captain and I to argue? Pictures were taken.

Tornado, a newly built steam engine was there for a day or so, and supposed to be operating one of the Sunday trips before heading to Scotland, but there were rumours it was unwell. Must be something doing the rounds.

A Train to Catch

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We had a loose arrangement to meet up with some friends on Monday further upstream at Fotheringhay, and still had a fair way to go. We’d also hoped we might manage a trip on the Nene Valley Railway, so a prompt departure from Peterborough was called for if things were going to work.

It was a pleasant run on a Saturday morning, with plenty of people out and about. The river winds round and round here (who mentioned oxbow lake formation?), and at Milton Ferry Bridge the sun started to come out.

Some convenient bollards in the weir stream at Alwalton Lock (no relation!) enabled a quick lunch. The river runs close to the railway line quite a lot, and several times we’d heard the unmistakeable sound of a steam engine. But passing under the railway near Orton, we saw a stationary train by the bridge with the engine dribbling a bit of steam but seemingly not going anywhere, and wondered if it had broken down.

Water Newton Mill and lock is particularly attractive, but suffers from the affliction that both times we have been there it started raining (in one case raining with extreme prejudice), so we pressed on.

Anyway, we made it to the Nene Valley Railway HQ at Wansford Station, and there was enough room on the pontoon for both the trip boat and Song & Dance, so a train ride beckoned.

Our suspicions were correct: their steam engine for the day had broken down. The last trip of the day would be pulled by a diesel engine. Ah well – can’t win them all.

If It’s Friday, It Must Be Peterborough

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Tina the Stanground Lockkeeper had said that from Whittlesey to her lock was an hour and half, so the Captain issued an edict that we would cast off at 11:00 at the latest to make our 13:00 lock passage, with half an hour’s slack for unscheduled problems. The crew thought that if they got up early, there might be time for another quick look round town before leaving, but with a cold overcast morning and too much to eat and drink the night before one of the crew didn’t manage to report for duty until 10:45…

We cast off at exactly 11:00.

The first thing you come across after the leisure centre moorings is very narrow channel with concrete walls, running for about half a mile through the old part of town. There’s also 90° plus bend, rumoured to be tightest/narrowest bend on the whole system. Apparently people have got a 70ft narrowboat through, but we wouldn’t fancy trying. 58ft with bow thrusters was quite enough of a challenge. The navigation notes suggest putting someone ashore to check for oncoming traffic, but as we’d noted coming the other way, (a) there isn’t anywhere safe to do so, and (b) there isn’t anywhere safe to take them back on board. Ho hum…

Just out of town and back on the wider drain, we came across a narrowboat pottering gently along in the opposite direction. “We’ve been going slowly because Tina said you’d be leaving about now, and we didn’t want to meet you on the narrow section… there are a couple more behind us”. Clearly the Middle Level grapevine is in a class of it’s own.

And as predicted, we made Stanground Lock/Sluice at exactly 12:30, with Tina waiting for us and the lock all set up. Once in the chamber, she asked for our top rope, shook it out of the fairlead and tied it up to a bollard well back on the lock. “Put the boat in tick-over forward; it will hold you on the chamber wall when I open the paddles”. And it did. Not a technique we’d ever come across before… we always put a top rope ashore going uphill on wide locks, but not to motor against. Clearly the Middle Level lockies have a different attitude to the Environment Agency ones on the Great Ouse and Thames: they insist not only on roping up front and back, but the engine off as well.

And so, as the lurid green duckweed of summer turns into the plasticene-brown sludge of autumn, we said goodbye to the mysterious Middle Levels with its drains, high banks, big skies and sluices, the old River Nene and the fens, and slid imperceptibly onto the new River Nene.

Mooring up on a reasonably goose-crap free bit of Peterborough Quay in time for a late-ish lunch in town, it was time to take stock…

The Middle Level Spy Network

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Thursday (it said on the ship’s chronometer), and after washing off the mud spatters, we left Upwell for March, and maybe further. About an hour and a half out of Upwell lies Marmont Priory Lock. Usually womanned, when we’d headed the other way it was unattended, and we narrowly managed to stop some boaters draining Well Creek. This time, on making the requested courtesy call, the lady lockkeeper said “You must be the narrowboat that came through Salter’s Lode yesterday…” Didn’t know they actively kept tabs on boat movements through the Middle Levels: perhaps they’re an obscure branch of MI5.

Anyway, the lock was all set up for us, so in we sailed. There’s a road bridge crossing the middle of the lock. It’s quite low over the lock sides, although not a problem to boats on sitting lower on the water, and it’s liberally festooned with “Mind Your Head” and “Low Bridge” signs. With the lockkeeper selling home-grown fruit and veg there was a certain amount of running around finding money, shopping bags, retrieving Biggles from going walkabout etc. Here are the results…

Marmont Priory Lock Bridge: 2 Bob: 0

Nursing a sore head and setting off for March, we realised that we needed to book a passage through Stanground Lock as they require a minimum 24 hour’s notice. “Wondered when we’d hear from you…” Tina the lockkeeper said. Spy network still working then! Turned out that for “sound technical reasons” the latest passage available on Friday was at 13:00, so the plan to overnight in March was abandoned, and replaced by a plan to overnight in Whittlesey, keeping fingers firmly crossed that there would be space on the minimal visitor moorings at the leisure centre.

Arriving at the joys of Ashline Lock (definite contender for our least favourite lock – a real PITA), the visitor moorings just beyond appeared occupied, but on closer approach there was just enough room for us to squeeze on the end. We’d intended to explore the town, but by the time we got there it was getting a bit late, but we had a quick wander, and did find Vesuvio: a splendid Italian Restaurant that was cheap(ish) and cheerful, with excellent food, and – unsurprisingly, in the circumstances – pretty mobbed on a Thursday evening. Well fed and watered, but having failed to see any Straw Bears, we wandered back across the playing fields in pitch dark… the nights are drawing in with a vengeance.

Wooden Angels From Heaven

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St. Peters in Upwell looked worth a quick look round, and indeed it was. Set in a very large walled garden/cemetery with, for some reason, a large unused area in the middle.

They obviously made a thing about their tapestry kneelers, and there was a seriously impressive ex-rectory out the back.

But inside, the most remarkable feature was the roof, with dozens of wooden angels, hovering over the congregation.

Retiring to the next door café, in the newspaper there was an article and picture about the completion of a major restoration of wooden angels at a more notable church somewhere exotic. Subsequent research (a.k.a. Google) suggests the wooden angels are relatively common in East Anglian churches, but St. Peters is a particularly fine example.

Go boating and learn things!

Pennies From Hell

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With all the excitement of the tidal transit, it was only when we moored up safely on Wells Creek at Salter’s Lode for some well-earned lunch that we realised one crucial difference between Denver Sluice and the Nene guillotine locks.

When recently raised, the Nene guillotine locks drip relatively clean river water all over the boat. When recently raised during a monster high tide, the Denver Sluice drips old pre-decimalization-penny sized splats of wet mud that dry rapidly in the warm sun.

Nae bother… heavy rain showers were forecast late evening, so we assumed it would all wash off.

Moving on, we made an pleasantly unremarkable afternoon trip back through Wells Creek on the Middle Levels to Outwell & Upwell (or is that Upwell & Outwell?), before mooring up at the nice staithe just under St. Peter’s Church at Upwell, where there were nice raised beds with roses, rosemary and a particularly pungent curry plant.

Wednesday night was clearly bell ringing practice night: makes a change from Morris Dancing I suppose, but maybe a bit too close for comfort!

It did rain heavily that night. It didn’t wash off the mud splats.

Je Ne Egret Rien

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Aiming for the 12:30 high tide transit through Denver Sluice, we set off from The Ship Inn at the crack of 10:00 without letting the Captain have a pre-cruise sharpener. Somewhat concerned that while the flight-plan programme said it would take us about 1:45 to get to Denver Sluice, the SatLav was confidently predicting an arrival somewhat after 12:30. A nice deep river enabled more throttle than a shallow canal, heading downhill helped, and slowly the SatNav ETA crept down to before 12:30, and we eventually arrived at Denver Sluice about 11:50.

En-route we put up a Little Egret from the reed beds at the side, but didn’t manage to get a picture. We really haven’t seen many of these nice little white herons at all, despite the fact that they are supposedly becoming more common in the UK.

Presenting ourselves at the lockkeeper’s cabin, there were two Environment Agency chaps drinking coffee. “Have you come for the high tide? If so, you’re too late…” which caused a modicum of consternation, until further discussion discovered that (a) the high tide had been a monster one and had been overflowing the sluice big time half an hour earlier, (b) I was carrying a camera, so he’d assumed I’d come to photograph it, and (c) he wasn’t the lockkeeper but a maintenance chappie, and (d) the lockkeeper had the day off. A phone call established that someone else was coming over to lock us through, but not until about 12:45 as the tide was still too high for us to get under the brickwork.

We were eventually launched into the tidal river, with stream running at about 4 knots, not much less than Song & Dance can do flat out, and a nearly 180° degree into Salter’s Lode. Get it wrong, and you can end up on the sandbank, going a long way down river with a real struggle to get back, or just T-boning the Salter’s Lode lock landing at full power. No pressure then.

It all went absolutely perfectly, even that tricky bit where the front of the boat is in the slack water of the Lode, and the back is in the fast running tidal stream, and despite much critical revving of engine and bow thruster and judicious use of reverse, we brushed gently up to the landing before easing into the lock.

The Captain, Cook and Salter’s Lode lockkeeper were most impressed. Little did they know that it was just down to about 10% skill and experience, with 45% luck and 45% sheer blind panic. Think we might avoid these tidal transits in future…

Oh… of the two maintenance guys (who were greasing the sluice while it was raised), one was a European championship grower and shower of Dahlias and Cacti, and the other a major breeder of Scottish Fold pedigree cats, with some 36 of them at home. Must be something in the water.

Biggles goes to the Pub

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Ely waterfront might have been quiet in the morning, but on return from the “free” coffee it all became chaotic, with three boats appearing out of nowhere to use the pump-out and waste disposal facilities just up from where we were moored, and wanting us to move up so they could squeeze in and so on because others had moored antisocially leaving too small gaps.

We’d more or less decided to brave the Denver Sluice to Salter’s Lode River Great Ouse tidal transit scheduled for 12:30 on Wednesday, and it was about four hours cruising from Ely to Denver, so we needed to be away from the fleshpots. Hence, after lunch and availing ourselves of what is probably the only free pump-out left on the waterways – it would be rude not to – off we set.

Looking back, it was quite clear why Ely Cathedral is known as The Ship of the Fens; the rather fine and new looking Piper Dutch Barge Hereward is also aptly named if she’s based around here.

About halfway from Ely to Denver Sluice is another ship: The Ship Inn – this one with fine overnight moorings. The cruiser, incidentally, is named Scand-L-Us, which just kind of fails to hit the spot on several counts.

Being by now a pleasantly warm late afternoon, the Captain declared that the sun was firmly over the yard arm and followed us to the pub, where he agreed with the first mate that Adnam’s substitute for proper Guinness really didn’t hit the spot either, and settled for supping some of the dog’s Adam’s Ale instead.

We were sharing the moorings with a chap from Northampton who was camping with canoe and pup-tent. Unemployed and seemingly unemployable for some years, he spent the summers canoeing round the country waterways on his own, and enjoying every minute.

We’d met someone doing exactly that last year on the Kennet & Avon. It could have been the same chap, but he couldn’t remember whether he’d been down there last year or the year before. Anyway, after some time putting the world to rights we returned to cook some dinner, although Biggles seemed curiously reluctant to do the same – perhaps he wanted to eat at the pub.

How Much is that Doggie?

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Tuesday morning, and a fair one at that. The waterfront was quiet, there were no obvious boat movements, and the cook decided that she really did have to spend time on her favourite hobby, and make another trip to Waitrose for milk and bread. After all, they do do decent free coffee… and the walk would take us past a fancy chandlery, where we could stock up on boaty things.