Going The Wrong Way! 5th May

Home Farm Footbridge to Braunston Lock 2

A sunny morning waking up to green outside and not having to be up and at it straight away. That’s better. Although taking our time did mean that plenty of boats went past us on the way to the top of the Watford Flight. Oh well, no hurry.

Only half a mile on the M1 rumbles over the top of the canal close to the start of the Watford flight. Ahead two boats were shuffling themselves on and off the water point, so we fell third in line to go down. Mick walked down the flight and found the Lockie to sign in, only one boat to wait for on the way up then we’d all take it in turns down the staircase.

We helped get NB Salamander going down through the first single lock and setting the top of the staircase for them before we were on our way. I worked the locks, light gate beams and no negotiating the bend towards the bottom, Mick could do that bit. Apart from the noise from the M1 this is a lovely flight, the horse chestnut trees were in flower and the sun was shining.

 

In the pound below the staircase there was a boat waiting to come up. The crew were chatting away watching as I worked Oleanna down, opening and closing gates, limping as I went. Have to say I did find myself limping that bit more as we reached the bottom and I opened both bottom gates as three people stood watching me. Down the next lock and the boat waiting below set the next lock for us, I made sure my limp was reduced and thanked them.

 

Meandering our way now away from the M1 towards Norton Junction. The yellow of the rapeseed fields isn’t quite so photogenic with a blue boat as it used to be with Lillian. At Welton Haven Marina we peered through the hedge to see if we could spot the Carefree Cruising Boats, just visible was our old shareboat NB Winding Down. We’ve been very surprised with all the time we’ve spent around Crick not to have seen her pass once. But at this time of the year we are unlikely to know the people on board now as all the original yellow share owners have sold up.

We knew we would soon be passing a familiar boat, it would be predominantly grey, but we weren’t expecting it to be NB Jubilee. With Halfie at the helm we had a brief conversation as we passed, they were heading up to Crick. No sign of the boat we were expecting along the 14 day moorings before the junction, but as we reached it we could see the red pram cover of NB Waiouru moored up near the top of the Long Buckby flight. This was the way we should be heading, but Mick turned us towards Braunston Tunnel instead, the wrong way! Then he reversed Oleanna towards the locks, the right way but the wrong way round!

NB Waiouru is for sale, Tom and Jan are currently busy going through their possessions deciding what to ship back to Australia and what to get rid of. Their five years of exploring the canal network is coming to an end, but there are new adventures ahead for them. It was good to catch up with Jan and wish them well for the next chapter, hope Tom’s snooze was restorative.

The ropes that Oleanna came with are fine, but we’d rather have thicker ones, my right hand cramps up with the ones we’ve got at the moment. So we continued heading away from London to see what Tradline in Braunston would have to offer us. This meant Braunston Tunnel, one of Mick’s favourites. There is a large bend part way through betwen 400 and 500m from the south portal, of course we could see someone coming the other way so Mick slowed down hoping we would pass on a straight bit. This we did and today there was no boat to boat contact, just a gentle grating noise from Oleanna on the tunnel side, luckily only a scrape on the rubbing strake not the cabin side. By now there was a tunnel light following us so when we reached the lock we waited for them to join us going down.

 

Our partnering boat stopped after three locks and we stopped after the forth. Even though we were moored within sight of the Admiral Nelson pub we managed to refrain and cooked on board whilst Tilly came and went. Plenty of woofers here so at times I stayed on the cat walk, occasionally I had to duck behind the grass so they couldn’t see me.Our boat seems to have shrunk!

11 locks (4 of which a staircase), 6.63 miles, 1 wrong way, 1 right way facing the wrong way, 1 wrong way again, 2 blogging boats, 1 goodbye, 40 winks for Tom, 1 friend for Lillian, 1 tunnel, 2 mysterons, 2 hours with the furry fence, 8 pirates, 1 large sledgehammer. 

 

At Last! 4th May

Crick Marina to Home Farm Footbridge

It’s taken us over five years, lots of patience, wrong turns, research, more patience, drawings, models and more patience to finally be setting off on our bespoke narrowboat Oleanna. NB Lillyanne was only ever intended as a bridgeing boat (as it were) whilst we waited for Oleanna to be built. Three years later we have finally started the clock on our ‘year afloat’, well that was the original idea, we’ve already got plans formulating for summer 2018!

The last of the rubbish was disposed of in the marina bins, Houdini’s shelf ended up going into our neighbours shed for future possibilities (good it will have a third life), a new gas bottle purchased, electric and mooring fees settled, there was only one thing left to do, a visit to the garden centre.

Our friends Bridget and Storm gave us some bean plants when we saw them at Keadby a few weeks ago. My normal potting medium has been mole hills, but we haven’t come across any and we needed a bigger trough and some canes for them to grow up. Andy and Irene from NB Kamili came with us so that they could stock up on herbs, which of course meant a rosemary and parsley plant for us too.

With plants and compost stowed we were ready. The paparazzi arrived (Lizzie) to help record the event. Our trip from Sheffield was Oleanna’s maiden voyage, but today we were heading off on our new adventures, leaving Crick as we had done back on 9th June 2014 on Lillian.

Of course the wind had got blustery just for us especially as we would have an audience. Andy stood on the rear of NB Kamili whilst Lizzie headed with Irene to the other side of the marina to take photos. Despite the wind the reverse out from our mooring went well, thank goodness we didn’t have to introduce ourselves to a new section of the marina as we have in the past. There were many waves goodbye from Irene and Lizzie as we disappeared from view. One last wave to NB Lillyanne as we passed by the brokerage moorings.

Tunnel mode was engaged with waterproof coats, Crick tunnel is always dripping wet even though there has been so little rain of late.

Shortly after we’d entered the north portal Oleanna reared up a little in the water, a couple of bumps under the base plate of something soft. Mick cut the engine and we glid over whatever it was. As we approached the mid point a boat coming towards us kept in the centre, he stayed there and stayed there, only just nudging slightly over. Luckily we had both slowed right down, we were as far over as was possible, so the inevitable happened, bump! He soon discovered that there was more room to his starboard side than he’d thought!

Once through to the other side and back in the sunshine it felt like our adventures could start properly. So what did we do, we moored up for the day. Well not quite straight away as we couldn’t get into the side! With all our possessions now on board, Oleanna is sitting low in the water, we think a bit too low, her gas vents are below the water line. There is some ballast that we can move from the starboard side, instead of moving it from one side to the other we may actually move it off the boat altogether. A bit further on the water was deeper and we managed to pull in with full sun on our solar panel. This will now become a deciding factor on moorings, the quality of sunlight.

With the trip computer turned off, the music played! and Tilly was granted shore leave for the rest of the afternoon. With tail held high she spent her time coming in through the side hatch and then immediately exiting through the open rear hatch. As yet we still need to sort out Tilly friend protection for Oleanna so that we don’t swelter in the summer or have the patter of tiny rodent feet at night.

0 locks, 2.22 miles, 2 herb plants, 15 litres dehydrated compost, 1 new gas bottle, £19.95 compared with £2.75, 1 reverse, 2nd time of starting out from Crick, 1 big thank you to Crick Marina, 1 belated goodbye to Noel, 1 long goodbye wave, 1 yellow boat tucked away, 1 soaking, 1 centre hogging Willow, 3rd attempt at mooring, 2 hours permitted, 4 hours enjoyed, 0 friends, 8 circuits, 3 trees, 1 good new adventure, 1 new climbing frame, 4 glasses of fizz to celebrate the 5 years of waiting.

 

Musical Boats. 3rd May

Various places around Crick Marina

 

By the end of Friday Lillian was just about cleared of all our possessions. Finding space to sit down on Oleanna in the evening was quite hard as things still needed to be sorted on her. I found somewhere and stayed put in fear that should I leave it it would be filled with far less important stuff than me. The list of jobs instead of getting shorter seemed to be growing, not a good thing. Still with a few things on the list for the day I popped over to help Lizzie on NB Panda fill with water, this ended up with us opening a bottle of white and sitting out enjoying the early evening before it got too cold. Once Mick had finished his chores in the engine bay he came to join us.

Saturday we started to play musical boats. We wanted to take Lillian out to Cracks Hill to touch up her gunnels, she was on the inside with Oleanna on the outside tied to her. So we retied Oleanna to the pontoon at the bow, I held onto the centre line whilst Mick reversed Lillian out into the marina. Once I had pulled Oleanna back in I hopped on the back of Lillian and we were off, hoping no-one else had beaten us to the mooring. With the thought that the port side would be left to dry longer at the end of the day we winded so that I could paint the starboard side first, giving the maximum amount of time to dry before we got back to the marina.

A sand down of the sides with a bit of extra on the scrapes followed by a wash and a coat of multiforte was all she needed. I was very glad I’d done a good job on them back in September. Once the port side was done we winded again and the process was repeated. As Lillian was now empty we had packed ourselves a picnic which we had sitting on the bench seat over looking the hill, it is a lovely spot.

 

They thought they were being clever. Changing the view from my window would make me think that they’d been busy moving the outside. But it was too quiet for that to have happened. Then it changed again. Yellow to the right, yellow to the left, just what is a cat to think!

On our return we were spotted by Micky and Dave from NB George, once Micky realised that we had Oleanna moored up she was straight round for a nosy. With all the planned painting completed back in the marina and Lillian’s stern out of bounds until it dried we headed to The Red Lion with Lizzie and Gary for steak and chips all round. A well deserved evening off.

 

 

 

On Sunday the serious cleaning continued. The ceilings and cabin walls were washed down, windows polished and a couple of wood work jobs were ticked off the list. Mick made an impressive job of the oven and fridge and started on the brass. We discovered that the people whose mooring we were occupying had returned early from their cruise on Saturday and had been quite irate at there being a boat in their spot, luckily we were out on Lillian at the time so were oblivious, wonder what they would have thought if there had been Lillian there too?

On Monday the owners of NB Jacaranda came back from a couple of nights away and decided that they would like their mooring back as they had changed their plans and wouldn’t be heading back out. So we quickly stopped what we were doing and once we knew where we could move to we brought each boat out of the mooring in turn and moved onto the next pontoon, the other side of NB Kamili. Yellow back to the right, but a different green boat the other side.

Borrowing Lizzies bench and hose pipe I spent much of the morning giving Lillian’s covers a good scrub to remove the worst of the winters green. A few touch ups on the grab rail and a thorough floor wash whilst Mick washed the roof down and finished off the brass polishing. We were starting to run out of steam by the time we’d finished. Poor Oleanna looked like a bomb had hit her with possessions everywhere. At last we tried my drawing board in the specially made slot at the end of the galley and dinette. The manufacturers had given me the folded dimensions of the board but they had omitted to include the knobs that stick out that hold the parallel motion in place! It was too tall on it’s side for the lid to close Grrrr!!! I was hoping to be able to store folding stools in there too. However with a bit of careful positioning everything would still fit with the drawing board on it’s side. Phew.

Now that Lillian was clear of all our possessions apart from pictures and she’d been cleaned to within an inch of her life we had to dress her for her publicity photos. Lizzie lent me a few photos in frames and some nicer looking place mats so that the table could be laid. A few books and dvds were popped on some shelves and the bed was made up with our spare duvet. Some spices put in the racks and our kettle and cast iron pot strategically positioned in the galley. We had done it, pooped we certainly were.

Tuesday arrived and there was a chance that some chaps from Finesse might have been turning up to do some snagging on Oleanna, but luckily they plan to come later, which left us both free to be able to chat with the boat inspector from ABNB. As we bought Lillian through ABNB it saved quite a bit of time as they still had a record of her details. Over the years we have replaced halogen bulbs for LEDs, altered the dinette and cupboards and bought a sofa bed. So the details were amended.

A long exterior shot was required and so was a pump out. But first we had to move Oleanna out of the way, we moored her at the bottom of the grass bank and then returned for Lillian. No Yellow, but grass and people to watch. The pooh sucky machine was hooked up for the last time, plenty of rinses and flushes of the toilet. Once Justin from ABNB had taken photos from the other side of the marina we climbed aboard for our last ever cruise in her. Only a third of a mile, the sun was shining, the wind was minimal. We turned out onto the cut pootled along and turned into the other part of the marina where some ABNB moorings are. Mick reversed her in and she was tied off to NB Kestrel.

We finished off the paperwork for her sale over lunch and popped it into the office with a set of keys. All that was left to do was to reclaim the dressing. Oleanna needed a good sort out before anymore could come aboard, but we did get our duvet back.

On Wednesday morning we caught the No.96 bus into Rugby from outside the marina. We needed a few bits that Wilko would provide us with, a door mat, clock etc. and whilst we were there we managed a quick look around the centre. Worth a longer visit the next time we are near. Then it was time for us to say our last goodbyes to Lilllian. The last picture to be taken down was one of my mum, Lillian, that has travelled with us for the last three years. Once she was down we locked the stern doors and left NB Lillyanne to find new owners through ABNB.

A last supper before we left had been arranged at The Red Lion with Lizzie, Irene and Andy. This time we all managed to try something other than the steak. My Pepper and Mushroom Stroganoff was very tasty and the trout looked good too. With good company, good food and beer it was a fitting way to end a full on week and an emotional day.

0 locks, 0 miles (on NB Oleanna), 0.3 miles (on NB Lillyanne), 1 trip to Cracks Hill, 3 winds, 3 boat shuffles over 4 days, 1 so not impressed cat, 2 pristine gunnels, 6 brass mushrooms, 1 clean roof, 2 sad boaters, 2nd and 3rd visit to the pub, 2 steaks only, 1 immaculate Lillian, 1 untidy Oleanna, 1 week of hard work, 1 boat for sale.

The Move. 27th April

Crick Marina

Life has become somewhat chaotic.

Emptying one small space into a slightly smaller space.

Realising that the corner cupboard held a lot more than you thought.

Being strong and throwing things out that haven’t been used for three years, that you once thought were vital to life.

Feeling good that part of your old boat is empty, then realising that you can’t sit down anywhere in your new one.

Taking things out of cupboards that were destined for the bin, but somehow had been put away.

Constantly putting Tilly behind the one door she can’t get under just so you can open another. Prison, it’s not a boat it’s a prison!

Leaving the one thing that has a definite place to go till last, knowing it will fit, not knowing if it’s possible to get it in there.

Liberating the second Brompton from the bottom of the wardrobe for the first time since August 2014, less than three years so we can keep it.

Seeing the bottom of rear lockers for the first time.

Guided tours of ‘The new boat’ in the marina.

Hoovering everything in sight and out of it.

Wishing the forecast had been correct so that the stern deck can get a coat of paint.

Getting four text messages at once when you walk through that inch of mobile phone coverage that Crick has.

Listening out for a tap on the boat next door that the cat has heard before you.

Yellow thin grab rail.

Blue thick grab rail.

Hoping to not have to play Jenga with our possessions.

Replacing pink nappies with dry.

Hoping that the covers you’ve just washed will go back on the dinette.

Finding five toy mice, two pens and six silver balls behind the sofa. They were safe back there!

Dodging hail storms and sideways snow.

Yellow right foot first.

Blue left foot first.

Keeping two stoves going.

One/two houses full of soft furnishings ruined by cats!

No ITV 4 for the Tour de Yorkshire and views of home home.

Whilst not moving the outside once and leaving me with this boring view!

When Old Meets New. 25th April

Cracks Hill to Crick Marina

Before moving off this morning we knew we’d have to give Oleanna a quick tidy and sweep through as she’d be on show as soon as we reached Crick. The sun was shining but boy was it chilly, a beautiful winters day for April. We wound our way round towards the marina on our shortest cruise yet, just over half a mile.

Our friend Lizzie was on NB Panda waiting for us to arrive with Him and Her (two of the marina residents) so we had a welcoming committee as we came round the last bend. We did however think that she could have made more of an effort, still in her dressing gown at nearly midday! She is recovering from an operation so she has special dispensation.

We knew were we were heading with Oleanna as they have allowed us to pull alongside Lillian for the next week. She is blocking in a couple of boats further up the pontoon but they are unlikely to be moving whilst we are here, but if they do we’ll gladly move. Mick brought her in very gently into the tight gap and I tied the front rope for the first time after passing it around Lillian’s T stud. Our old and new boats were at last together. A very strange feeling, one yellow very much loved home for the last three years and the new already feeling like home sat next to her. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve found ourselves starting to refer to Lillian as Lillyanne, something we haven’t done since 2014.

Andy and Irene from NB Kamili next door were about so we had a catch up with them and gave them a guided tour. Lovely to see them again, I suspect later in the week we’ll be meeting at the pub for a drink or two.

The next few days we’ll be moving the rest of our possessions over and giving Lillian a good clean. Today we’ve emptied the bedroom and the bathroom, apart from the obstinate bike in the wardrobe! All the outside lockers are empty too. I so hope we’ve got enough space for everything, well if not we’ll just have to downsize. Mick’s wardrobe will certainly have to reduce as I’ve filled all my cupboard space and he’s got less on his side of the bed.

A phone call to ABNB has put the ball in motion for Lillian to go on the market. Some sprucing up needs to be done and make her look homely for a photo call in a weeks time.

Lizzie has been round in between snow and hail storms for an internal inspection. Oleanna, we are glad to say has passed with flying colours, especially the cooker.

We are going to be busy over the next few days with our shoe horns and polishing cloths, so there may not be time for blog posts and the internet round here hasn’t improved! Today is the last of the dual posts between blogs. NB Lillyanne will get updated as and when things happen with her sale, but there will be no more cruising posts on her blog.

0 locks, 0.53 miles, 1 quick tidy, 1st night with the stove going, 1 imprisoned Tilly again! 1 welcoming committee, 8ft for Oleanna, 1 new, 1 old, 2 lovely next door neighbours, 150 watts solar, 4 Ikea bags full of clothes, 1 big bathroom cupboard into 1 little one, 2 many clothes, 2 many shoes, 6 new cupboards explored, 6 snow showers, 3 piece suite up for grabs, 2 mattresses also, 1 Yellow boat preparing for new owners.