I was becoming addicted to boat life. This new 162 mile round trip to Chester I was about to embark upon was fraught with the unknown. The only thing I did know was I was going to have to learn a lot and quickly about single handing through locks, swing-bridges and tunnels. Eek. And navigating, booking passage through specific locks and timings! How was I supposed to know how long it took travelling? How was I supposed to know even which canals I needed be on? There were a myriad of questions going through my mind. Where could I moor safely? Would I be desperately lonely? I had been such a rubbish girlfriend up to this point, I was now single.
Bugger it. I decided to just set off on the new unknown adventure and hope for the best.
The first hurdle was getting through Appley Deep Lock. No one in their right mind single hands through the dreaded Deep Lock and I wasn’t about to either. Cue facebook. I put a shout out on the Leeds and Liverpool canal facebook for help. Help came in the form of a lovely young solo boater who brought me gently up through the terrifying Deep Lock and through the next lock, 2 miles further on. Where he left me to get on my way to my first mooring for the night at Crooke, whilst walking the whole way back to his boat. How lovely is that? Someone will take the time and effort to help a complete stranger out. Boating life, it’s a different kind of life entirely and one I was completely besotted with.
My intention at Crooke the next day, was to find another boat that was going up the next locks into Wigan and buddy up with them through the locks, as I still had no clue how to do them solo.
I dawdled the next day not having the courage to set off until at long last a boat went past and yes! I could join him. He’d even set the lock and wait for me so I could just sail straight in! (Didn’t have the heart to tell him that me sailing straight in anywhere had never happened yet, he’d have to find out the hard way..)
There began another friendship with my new boat buddy Paul, another fortuitous meeting and what was to become a crash course (literally) in single handing and navigating.
We got through to Pennington Flash, a charming series of lakes created by subsided mines from the nearby Bickershaw Colliery, where Paul left me to moor next to Andrea (my tolerant neighbour from the torched towpath on the Lanky). She was trying to get back to her home moorings but was stuck due to low water levels.
We went wild swimming. Wild swimming! I’d never been wild swimming before (not in the canal, I hasten to add. Only boaters go accidentally swimming in the cut, never spontaneously, as we all know what’s in there)
Yet it’s just another thing I love about boat life, other’s random hobbies that you get to join in on.
After swimming, we barbecued and bonfired and drank red wine, it was a great catch up. At dusk, Andrea suddenly leapt up. She’d seen an otter! Oh my god, an otter! Giant swimming rat more like. We decided to call it a night at that point as clearly enough red had been drunk. Monkey was jumping on the boat the next day to sail into Manchester (somewhere he’d never been! He only lives an hour away from Manchester!!) so god knows what was going to unravel with that one, an early night was prudent.
Next day Monkey duly jumped on the boat and the boat immediately broke down. Knew I should have called him Jonah. I got my butter knife out again and after a couple of unintentional donuts, we set off again, Manchester bound. Something I had always wanted to do was sail my own boat into Manchester.
Before we got there, however, we had to cross the Grade 2 listed Barton Swing Bridge. The world’s only swinging aquaduct, which magnificent not only in the feat of Victorian engineering, but the overwhelming scale it gave you of the immense Manchester ship canal it stretched across.
Sailing into Manchester, past the Man United football ground was everything I’d hoped it would be. I moored in the heart of cosmopolitan Manchester, in Castlefield free of charge. This was my opportunity to get dressed up, go out and drink glamorous cocktails! Up to this point I’d been running around bare footed watching swimming rats, so I was really looking forward to going out, out. Except oh my god, it was like dragging Crocodile Dundee around the city with me. Monkey, not used to tall buildings, cars or people and only used to drinking cans of Skol was a bit perplexed by it all. He got the hang of it after about 11 cocktails, though. I had an extremely entertaining night out being Monkey’s carer and poured him into the last train home.
The next day I was to begin the next stint of my journey. Dunham Massey.
Now then, this is an absolute peach of a place to moor up. Dunham Massey is a National Trust country manor with a deer park full of fallow deer. The best time to see them is at dusk when everyone’s gone home and they come out of the shadows to eat and play.
I’d promised my best friend in all the world, Jelly, this special trip and it did not fail in it’s promise. It was breathtaking in the park that evening. We sat down in a clearing, soaking up the serenity of watching the deer slowly appear at sunset and waited to see what would unfold. A massive stag sauntered out of the gloaming, stared at us majestically, and suddenly reared up on his hind legs. He thrust his antlers into the branches of the oak tree he was standing under and shook the tree. We couldn’t work it out at first, but then came to realise he was pulling the acorns down to eat! A truly magnificent sight to behold and a memory I will always cherish. This was boatlife. A chance to capture nature in it’s most precious moments.
Things were going pretty well on this journey it seemed. I was managing happily on my own, with friends jumping on the boat, exactly as I had wished it to be at the beginning of this rash gamble into owning a narrowboat, that at the beginning I had no real idea how to move, moor or navigate. At this point in the journey I was feeling relaxed and like a proper boater that looked like they knew how to do things.
As I continued my journey, admittedly getting through the 3 tunnels with 2 of them timed, was a bit crash, bang, wallop, but by then I was on the Trent and Mersey canal! And okay, it was quite hairy going past all the hire boaters coming the other way (I was moving on a Saturday and all the hire companies set their boats off with extremely keen holiday boaters aboard, a bit like Wacky Races) There were some erm entertaining interference fits on the narrow stretches of canal just before Anderton, including moored boats, hire boats and me, but we all managed to get past each other in a bashy kind of way.
At this point I’d been out on my own, singlehanding for 9 days with only 1 small stop lock to negotiate, but there was no avoiding it, I was now in Middlewich and I had to go up Big Lock. In front of all the al fresco drinkers at the pub right next to the lock on a sunny Sunday. This had massive room for error for my boating skills as Paul had accompanied me up any previous locks.
I pulled up to set the lock, bracing myself for potential humiliation, when I heard a familiar voice. My boat buddy Paul on his push bike. He knew I was feeling shredded and had biked down to help me. Bless him. He was moored further up ready for our tandem journey into Chester. Big relief and disaster averted.
Just as well he was with me, there was a tricky sharp right hand turn that I was totally unaware of to get me onto the Middlewich branch of the Shropshire Union canal.
Navigation and directions were still a big issue with me but I was ramping up new canals now! Like a proper boater!
We were motoring along, chomping through the miles at, um, 3 miles an hour.. Until we got to a staircase set of locks. A big fat navigational issue for a boater of my calibre.
This potential ’navigational issue’ is affectionately called the ‘Bunbury Shuffle’. It’s even got a name, so there’s a hint of trouble right away.
Basically, it’s a staircase of locks with no gaps to manoeuvre if there are any boats already on the staircase coming the other way.
The Bunbury Shuffle goes something like, if there is a boat coming the other way, you have to shuffle your boat sideways to allow the boat coming towards you, to fit snugly into the lock beside you and some other tricky shuffling stuff.
Turns out it was a lot more complicated than that. Turns out it was more a jam the lock with the entire length of your boat sideways trauma for me.
I panicked, you see. Paul had managed to get through earlier with no trouble and all the other lovely hire boaters had you-tubed themselves to death, so knew exactly what to expect. Full disclosure, I did try and do some homework beforehand, except all the searching I managed to get up on You Tube, was porn. I’m not sure if it was my settings to blame or a slight misspelling of the word ‘bunbury’, but it distracted me enough not to go any further with the homework anyhow.
( I have since revisited YouTube and put the word ‘bunbury’ into the search bar. For investigational purposes only, I promise. It auto corrects to ‘bumburp’. Which is actually fabulously appropriate for my experience with it. I did the Bumburp Shuffle!)
Even more canal carnage followed at yet another lock slightly further along the Shroppie. This was a lock made oddly from iron. Apparently because of subsidence, they made an iron tank into a lock or something like that.
Paul’s on the towpath, dropping the water out of the lock, I’m on the boat, his boat is unmanned next to me. No problem, we do this all the time these days (being cool single handed boaters, and all). He opens the gates, one will only partially open. No problem, he only has to get on his boat and go out first then I’ll follow. Turns out there’s no ladder in this lock because of it being just an iron tank. We didn’t even notice until it was too late. Paul couldn’t get on his boat and mine was stuck behind the jammed lock gate. Now what to do? There will have been more reasoned and clever ways of solving this problem but my solution was ramming the bejesus out of his boat to move it forwards. It worked of a fashion too. My little boat booted his big boat out of the lock and crashed it into the towpath. Not the most graceful of manoeuvres.
At least I was using my crashing skills in a creative way for a change.
The medieval city of Chester was stunning. Mooring up right alongside the ancient city walls was magnificent. I spent a few luxurious days walking along the tops of the walls, drinking in the fascinating history of the city and meandering through the cobbled streets. I love the fact that boat life enables you to slow down, submerse yourself in your surroundings, enjoy all it has to offer, rather than rush through at a pace of an expensive mini break’s tick list.
I had to get going though. I’d been away 2 weeks. My real life (okay, my bank manager) was breathing down my neck, I was going to have to be sensible and go home.
Before I did that, however, I took a slight detour, because I had a date!
I had arranged to have the boat at the bottom of Hurleston Locks, the mouth of the bewitching Llangollen canal. Somewhere I was desperate to go and somewhere I absolutely had run out of time to go along.
Since launching my boat I had been posting my idiotic boat life on facebook, those postings had caught the attention of a production company who got in touch with me. They were making a pilot film for a new series on Channel 4 called Narrow Escapes.
My date was with a film crew.
And it couldn’t have possibly gone more badly wrong if I’d planned it to.