About me

I moved onto my narrowboat in July 2016. My first long-ish trip was the transfer of the boat from near Lichfield down to London. In summer 2017 I went on a very long cruise from London to Liverpool and back via Birmingham, Manchester and many smaller towns and villages along the way.

Since 2017 I have only been around London and the South East, but in 2020 I am embarking on another longer cruise to the Midlands. Depending on how things are developing in this extraordinary and unpredictable year, I will decide on the spot where to go next.

I am travelling single-handed most of the time, so it takes a while!

Popular posts from this blog

The "Great" Harecastle Tunnel ....

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... or so the guidebook calls it. I had done two difficult long tunnels on this journey already, Blisworth and Braunston. Both are "wide" tunnels, where two narrowboats can pass each other. I am not a big fan of long tunnels, so the prospect of going through an equally long tunnel (2675m), but with only one-way traffic, because it's so narrow was not something I was looking forward to. Unfortunately on the route up the Trent & Mersey, there is no other option. The Harecastle tunnel was built by the already mentioned canal pioneer James Brindley in the very early days of canal building. It was built for one narrowboat only. As it takes about 45 min to go through, this led to major congestion quickly. A second tunnel was built by Thomas Telford (another famous canal engineer of the later days) completed in 1827. The new tunnel included a towpath (now removed), but also only space for one narrowboat. The original tunnel suffered from subsidence and was subsequently c
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Successful weekend with some drama - Rickmansworth to Tring

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For the weekend I picked up my first crew, my friend Sabine, to make it all the way to the first "summit" of the GU in the Chilterns. There are lots of locks scattered in short distances in between all the way up. Sabine joined me early Friday afternoon and off we went - and got as far as the first lock ten minutes into the journey, when the engine cut out, just as I was in the middle of the lock entrance. Hm. Not good. We pulled the boat back out and tied up on the lock landing. On the first couple of attempts the engine wouldn't start again. Then it started OK, but cut out as soon as I put it into gear. I had no idea what the problem could be, let alone know how to fix it. Fortunately we were broken down just opposite a marina and found an engineer, who said that it's likely to be a fuel problem (water in the diesel) and that the fuel filter would need changing. But he said he had no time until possibly(!) later in the evening. Very encouraging, especially as t
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From quiet to bustling canal life - Blisworth to Braunston

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The first day of this part was a route with no locks, which I did in lovely sunny weather. Quite uneventful and relaxing. But the main features of this part of the journey are the Buckby (7) and Braunston (5) locks and the Braunston tunnel. Yes, another long tunnel. Hopefully the last one for quite a while. I tackled the Buckby locks on one day and the tunnel and Braunston locks the next day. Shortly before the Buckby locks there is a section where the canal is flanked by a high speed trainline on the left and the motorway on the right. I always find it curiously satisfactory when the slow route meets a fast route, like I know something that they don't. This time it was even more satisfactory, as my progress on the canal was actually faster than the traffic on the M1. I am faster than the lorries! Then I arrived at the Buckby locks. I saw from a distance that there was a boat in the lock mouth and it seemed stuck there. I had been hoping for another boat to share the lock
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