A whole 8 days. No work. No plans. Apart from a bit of summer boating. With nothing specific planned except sporadically rescuing Betty from the canal and a trip up the Coventry stretching out before us. Needless to say we are a little excited and arrive at our mooring laden with the usual overabundance of food, alcohol and extra Betty towels. We have about 2/3rds of a tank of diesel and so plan to top up in Shobnall Marina on our way home as I like to keep the tank full, theoretically to avoid the dreaded diesel bug, especially as we recently had our diesel tank and engine cleaned.
As I said, the itinerary has been planned with military precision. Leave the mooring in the direction the boat is facing. Arrive in Fradley and turn left. At the 3.5 day mark, turn the boat around and bring her back to the mooring. We have done the Coventry Canal before, from the opposite direction in one of Neil’s boats (HOEN.co.uk) and I remember it as a twisty little canal with long boring…tranquil…bits interspersed with random tight turns and some nice mooring spots.
We manage to get Betty on the boat without any drama and set off. I have noticed a common theme to every trip we take. It’s called Narrowboat chicken and on this trip is manifested unusually early. Immediately as we leave our moorings there is an aqueduct followed by the site of an old bridge. The bridge is not there anymore but the narrowing on the canal still is. Between the aqueduct and the old bridge the canal widens for approximately 150ft. As we leave the aqueduct there is a boat in the distance, well past the old bridge, and it looks as though it is about to moor on the towpath side. I (incorrectly as it turns out) assume this because the bow is moving directly towards the bank and the boat is at a 45 degree angle across the canal. I’m not going very fast as it is difficult to see any boats heading towards us as we enter the aqueduct from our mooring, so I tend to drift in, in the full expectation of an approaching boat. At this point my nose is just passing out of the narrowing of the old bridge and I am in neutral as I’m struggling to work out exactly what the boat in front is actually doing, so am trying to give them as wide a berth as possible given their erratic trajectory. Randomly, their bow swings out from the bank, pushing little telltale waves before her, so she is now heading directly for my portside bow (port = left, remembered by the helpful adage ‘darling, there appears to be no port LEFT in my glass’). I have nowhere to go and in desperation put her into gear and force the bow hard right, dragging my starboard side through the vegetation covering the old bridge as my bow buries herself in the offside bushes. I swing the tiller back around to slide my stern through the old bridge and force my nose out of the vegetation, narrowly missing the oncoming boat, who seemingly has failed to either see me and my 20 tons heading towards him, or, just expected that I would magically remove my boat from the bit of water he thought he should currently be occupying. Due to him missing the opportunity to use my boat to correct his course for him, he drives his boat into the remaining brickwork of the old bridge, bounces off and we pass stern to stern with inches to spare. There is a pile of people on his stern, a few wave their beer bottles cheerfully at me while the steerer stares straight ahead. Just as he passes, he shots me a murderous look and loudly mutters ‘f***ing hireboaters’.
Interestingly, this is a familiar scene. I generally pootle along, minding my own business whilst enjoying the surrounding nature or having a good nosey into peoples gardens. And houses. I am not beyond having a good look and judging the decor. I use horn signals at bridges and blind spots. I try to be mindful of moored boats and pass on tickover. I will find myself to be the closer boat to a bridge and yet, strangely, the oncoming boat will seemingly speed up or just make no attempt to adjust their course. Or, we will be approaching a boat in the middle of the canal (it is best to try to stay in the middle unless passing another boat as the sides are often shallow) and the oncoming boat will not make any adjustment to their course, seemingly expecting us to bank our boat to allow them to pass. This does not happen all of the time but it does occur frequently enough for me to comment. I have two theories. Firstly, I am a complete narcissist and think I am being a considerate user of the canals but am sadly, unknowingly, mistaken. Well, that is clearly incorrect, I wouldn’t have even considered it had I been so narcissistic. So. Firstly, some people on the canals are the same as some people on land. Entitled, miserable and simply rude. Secondly, some narrowboat owners do not like hire boaters and are outwardly hostile towards hire boats. Our boat still has some of her hire boat colours, from the front she is still easily recognised as part of a hire fleet. Thirdly, and yes, I know I failed to state three theories but I am the author and can therefore do exactly as I choose, we do also meet the occasional hire boater with scant regard for either the canal or other canal users.
After a sedate but long day we find ourselves facing our old foe. The Kraken of the Alrewas river section has, I am in no doubt, been sulking in the depths of the river, awaiting the distinctive sound of my finely tuned Isuzu engine, knowing that I will have Keith and Betty on the stern, both oblivious to its presence and, therefore, both easy pickings. It will rise from its stinking pit to devour us, linking our souls to the fetid chambers of the lower depths of hades, committing us to trial by fire for eternity…
Given the fate that so clearly awaits us, we still enter Wychnor lock and move onto the river section. The sky is clear, mirrored perfectly by the still water. I have my eye on a mooring on this section but there are already a couple of boats settled in so we continue towards Alrewas. Approximately half a mile before the Alrewas lock there is a large weir (you will already be aware that this is where the Kraken resides) on the left when travelling from this direction. I worry a bit less when moving from Wychnor to Alrewas as boats pass on the right, so we will be on the right side of the river and any oncoming boat will be closer to the weir. Except this time we encountered a hitherto unforeseen problem. The reeds are rampant this year, probably due in part to that pesky little virus reducing travel on the waterways, so we were mid-river on approach to the large weir with the reeds brushing against the right (starboard, dear brain, not dexter, I am, after all, socioeconomically derived as working class despite wishing I trained in The Folly) when we just stopped. Completely. Still. No tilting of the boat to suggest sliding up a sandbank. No noticeable reduction in engine power suggestive of a catastrophic engine failure or another sadly lost bra wrapped around the prop. I respond in the appropriate manner as befitting a person in charge of an engine and increase the revs. Nothing. Nada. I cannot move us forward. I try reverse and have the same response from the boat. Looking directly to my left, I can see the weir. I literally have no control over my boat, but that’s ok as we are clearly not going anywhere. There is a walkway to my right but we are unable to reach it to secure the boat as there must be 20ft of reeds between us and it. It is not even close enough for us to throw a rope to any of the hundreds of onlookers who are now using the walkway as a great spot for a bit of free entertainment, namely to to watch the sinking of my boat. The water passing under the boat is beginning to seethe and boil, the sky deepens from light pink to venous blood red and I can feel the Kraken starting to rise up, its misshapen body forcing shoals of terrified fish into panicked disorganised fear driven flight, huge grey crayfish desperately clawing over each other in a futile attempt to escape as the Kraken views our boat with sightless eyes, instantly dismissing our insignificant, tiny, brief mortality, recognising the vulnerability of our steel hull under its powerful jaws, eyeing Betty as a bony toothpick…
Actually, the water was very low and I had banked us. Remedied by Keith and the trusty barge pole with a generous sprinkling of hard reverse. Looking down at the water, I could see the bottom of the river, with the ginormous crayfish waving me on. The onlookers, deprived of a sinking spectacle, put their phones away and wandered off. Frankly, it was all I could do to get through the lock and find a mooring in Alrewas (always behind the same house, the guy will be charging us rent) before Keith handed me a huge glass of wine so we could settle down to bickering about whose job it is to evict the spiders.
A peaceful few days passed, punctuated only by maniacally waving at Fran and Rich from Floating our Boat as though I’m a long lost friend, in my excitement shouting ‘I watch you on the tellybox’ leaving Keith to explain that I was also starstruck when we met the guys from Holly the Cafe Boat so I have form. The Coventry Canal is lovely, passing through Fradley and Whittington, it has some tight twisty areas made more difficult by encroaching weeds and the occasional speeding boater. Just past Whittington, we realised our batteries had not been charging so stopped to assess the situation. After said assessment, Keith declared he did not know what the issue was and opened a Guinness. We decided to wind the boat and have a think as the nearest boat yard, Streethay, had recently serviced our engine and tidyed our engine electrics at their depot in Mercia. The what3words for the winding hole are into.harmonica.prune. It is the most picturesque winding hole we have used to-date, with a lovely willow framing its apex and fields covering its base. We wound and moored immediately past it in the shadow of the trees to consider our next steps. I have downloaded and read the operating manual for our inverter, which was no real help and Keith was looking through the magic book we have for boaty emergencies such as this. Unfortunately, this was beyond us so we had settled in for a good argument about each others failures as boat electricians on the stern in the sunshine when a single handed boat appeared behind us and proceeded to wind. We ignored him, all the better to focus on the discussion at hand. Keith was adamant that he had reset the inverter but could not articulate exactly how. ‘I’ve turned it on and off’ says he, in the face of my inverter manual waving. ‘But have you actually reset it???’ I calmly screech, resisting the urge to push him over and to tie his body under the boat, risking increasing the draft for the immediate period. I’m contemplating how to best rope him to the hull singlehandedly when I realise that there is a boat approaching us at speed – the driver does not seem to have seen us, let alone the 70ft boat half way though winding behind us. Let me set the scene. We are moored with the towpath to our right. The winding hole is a good 60ft behind our stern. The oncoming boat is from the direction of Whittington, so he is approaching us head on and I estimate his boat to be 40ft in length. There are 2 ladies who were enjoying the weather on his bow until they realised he was steaming past us and heading for the winding boat. The winding boat, clearly a competent single hander, was already across the canal, effectively blocking it to passing boats, deftly moving his bow back in the direction he had appeared from. The 2 ladies on the bow jump up and began frantically gesticulating to the steerer, while I ineffectually waved my arms at him and shouted. Worryingly, his stern was almost next to mine and his bow rapidly approaching the winding boat before either he or his companion registered the commotion. Slamming his boat into reverse with blatant disregard for his gearbox, he contrived pretence at planning whilst maintaining the time honoured ‘stare into the distance’ ignoring the boat I’ve just flown past, despite the fact that I was creating waves and am now so physically close to said moored boat that I really should have bought it a drink first. Recovering from this bit of excitement, I remember what the manual says about resetting the inverter and press the appropriate buttons. Oddly enough, after a little cruise to a nice open mooring opposite a bit of farm land, Keith announces that we are now holding a charge. Hurrah.