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| Back to Braunston, and farewell to the Grand Union Canal |
To quote one of literature's most famous gardeners, "Well. I'm back!" After almost two months away, Uplander II slipped out of the north portal of the Harecastle Tunnel just after 5.30 yesterday afternoon, and moored back at Kinnersley Wharf a few minutes later.
After so long on the move, it is a strange feeling being back on dry land and knowing that the same view will greet me as I open the curtains each morning. Actually, hopefully not exactly the same view as at present, since the grass on the back lawn is almost knee-high (and that's to my knees too!) and the Hairy Bittercress is seriously over-represented in the vegetable patches, but my plans to remedy this situation have been thwarted by a downpour, so it's back to the keyboard.
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| Sunshine in West London - near Kensall Green |
It had been fun travelling down to Cavalcade with Tickety-Boo, and reassuring to know there was always a friendly boat to share those big Grand Union locks, so the return journey with Uppie alone seemed a daunting prospect when we reached our first lock and considered the hundred plus still ahead of us. A good helmsman (or helmswoman) can easily take a narrowboat in and out through one gate of a broad lock, and Jon is more than capable of this, and roping up in the lock saves the boat being bashed about when the paddles are opened, but it's still a longer, heavier job for the lock-winder working alone, especially if the offside gate swings open as you close the towpath side one and you have to scurry to the closed end of the lock, scramble across the gates and close it, then dash to the paddles to start some water moving before one of the blasted gates swings open again (a particular hazard in windy weather). Luckily, Uppie was to make some new friends on the return journey.
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| Uppie looking very small, all alone in a big lock! |
Our first stroke of luck was being caught up by a posse of Waterways Recovery Group volunteers returning a hired boat to its base, who came through some of the locks between Uxbridge and Rickmansworth with us. They had been members of the industrious and efficient crew looking after the site logistics at Cavalcade, and were heading back to Gayton Junction. "Wergies" are generally blessed with good muscles and decent helpings of common sense, since they do all the grubby jobs associated with rescuing and restoring canals that would otherwise languish in a state of disrepair, so with a couple of them to assist each time, it was a good time to volunteer as lock-winder.
We then had two very pleasant days travelling in the company of 'Estia' from Devizes and her human and canine crew, progressing all the way from Rickmansworth to Berkhamstead and only parting there because I needed to make plans for another return home for college and gardening work. The dogs Frankie and Star, with their little orange life-jackets, were constant entertainment, leaping intrepidly from lockside to boat, boat to towpath and back again, or trotting across the tops of the lock gates inspecting progress as we ascended lock after lock.
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| Fearless Frankie watches Uppie and Estia |
Working on through Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, we arranged to meet some friends just north of Milton Keynes with the provisional arrangement that, if they enjoyed narrowboating and we felt they were safe enough doing it, they could look after Uppie for a couple of days while both of us came home from Rugby, our last planned intermediate stop. Both are quite tall, but the gent is, at 6'4", one of the few people who could get away with calling me 'shorty'. He could just about stand upright in the boat, but getting in and out without serious head injury took more practice than usual!
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| Sunshine and approaching stormclouds at Cosgrove |
However, at the end of a couple of days and practice ascending the cumbersome Long Buckby flight of locks and the Blisworth and Braunston Tunnels, we were confident that our 'rookie' crew would be safe enough in charge of the vessel and they duly piloted Uppie safely from Rugby to Atherstone, including performing a successful, indeed elegant, transit of Hawksbury Junction from the Oxford Canal to the Coventry.
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| That bloke's nicked our boat! |
We collected Uppie safely at Atherstone after a couple of days at home, welcomed back aboard by our shipmates with a freshly-cooked meal, but unfortunately they had to be away home the next morning, and we had eleven locks to tackle! Without the need to get anywhere urgently, we called it a day soon after, making gentle progress to Fradley Junction by the following evening, despite daunting hailstorms, one of which loomed over Tamworth as if the Martians had just obliterated the place, and deciding to go nowhere at all on the Friday since the weather was even more evil.
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| Sunny morning at Fradley Junction |
We had two days of sunshine as we started our return along the Trent and Mersey Canal, familiar waterways from our first journeys on Uppie in the autumn of 2011, but sure enough, as we approached Stoke-on-Trent after leaving Stone on Monday, clouds gathered and rain started to fall. Stoke-on-Trent doesn't currently do a great job of looking welcoming to boaters heading north; there are mooring rings at odd places, but nowhere you'd feel all that confident stopping, even by day, and no indication of places of interest accessible from them.
We pressed on up through the locks and decided to moor at Etruria overnight and possibly for a couple of extra days, as it's an easy place to turn the boat and I hoped to finish painting the name panels on both sides, but the rain put and end to those plans and had it not been for a kind friend visiting on Tuesday evening, bearing tasty food into the bargain, I would have put the day spent at Etruria down as a washout.
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| Under the railway at Stoke-on-Trent |
So on Wednesday, after the welcome gift of chicken buryani had been scoffed for lunch, we set off for the Harecastle Tunnel, passing more sad signs of dereliction and the altogether happier sight of welcoming moorings and the smart visitor centre at Westport Lake. As the water started to turn more orange, we knew we were getting close to home, and after waiting for some southbound boats to exit, got the "okay" to enter the tunnel.
You can do some amazing time-exposure shots going through canal tunnels, especially with the weird colouring in the water at Harecastle, but need a flash to catch the skeleton. The question is, would he be found fit for work by Atos?
The rain had stopped briefly and the song of blackbirds drifted in as we exited the tunnel and cruised the last few hundred metres to our mooring. I packed up the things to come home - spare food, laundry - while Jon went for the bus to retrieve the car. The rain fell again. It felt desperately sad to be at the end of our excellent adventure, but looking at the pile of 'Nicholson's' guides, the question has to be - where to next, Uppie?
