Best Moorings in 20 years -plus flood works

 So after another break - more on that later -we continue our look back over 20 years of enjoying Herbie.

How many times we've moored up for the night is anybody's guess. It'll be in the thousands at any rate. So over all that time which ones do we recall as our favourites? We couldn't just list all the good ones, that would be far too many, so here are the ones which stand out in our memory.

Well in th early days we loved the trip from our base down the Slough Arm into London and we'd often stay for anything up to a week in Paddington Basin. Sometimes in the basin itself

and other times just round the corner where we would occasionally have it all to ourselves (unimaginable these days.) Here's Kath entertaining Rick and Marilyn just yards from the Station side entrance.

Not only was it a good safe mooring -they even had security guards in those days- but it was only a minutes walk to Praed Street where you could get on a bus to almost anywhere in London.  Aah we did love it. Nowadays you have to book ahead and pay a fee. Oh well.

Another old favourite is at Great Linford in Milton Keynes where you can moor up alongside a peaceful park

Here's the view from Herbie's side hatch

At the other end of the park is the Nag's Head, a lovely old pub where the ceiling is so low that the rather tall landlord couldn't stand up straight behind the bar.  People who don't live in the best New Towns often look down on them, but those of us who do live in them know their delights.  Lots of green space, safe walking and cycling, good facilities, and in the case of Bracknell Forest where we live, huge numbers of trees. 

Our next favourite is urban, but you wouldn't know it.

It was our good friend Bones who encouraged us to reverse down to this spot and the very end of the canal in Oxford.  There's no turning place so you have to reverse either in or out. And it's barely a couple of hundred yards from the centre of Oxford and all its attractions. The trick to getting a good mooring in Oxford is to make sure you arrive around mid day, when the leavers have left and the other visitors haven't arrived yet. Sadly their 48 hr mooring limit is too short to really get the best out of Oxford.

Here's a serious contender for best of all - Kirtlington Quarry on the South Oxford Canal

Its a failry rough old bit of ground and the bank is rocky and uneven, but it's a lovely quiet spot.  Gret for a summer barbecue

 Kirtlington village is a half hour walk away.  The reason we like it is the ancient Roman quarry itself up these steps

at the top it opens out to the flat quarry floor, now grassed over and scattered with chalk loving plants including a lot of orchids. Climbing up more steps to the top of the quarry sides you get a great view

And our final favourite is on the Thames at Abingdon

Unlike its grumpy  neighbour Wallingford, with its dubious knowledge of the English language

 Abingdon has plenty of good free mooring (at least is was free last time we were there). You can just sir about and watch the river or do a sketch like I did once. (I got O level art you know (at the second attempt)

 The riverside is well kept and just across the bridge the town itself is a cracker.

Aah there are so many others -Tixall Wide on the Staffs and Worcs, Evesham on the Avon, the wood between Polesorth and Alvecote, Coventry Basin(!), Cambrian Wharf in Brum . .  I could go on. I suppose the award should go to Kirtlington Quarry with a Highly Commended to the rest.

Now then, I said at the top of this post that this was after a break and would say more.

Well we have been away visiting Rick and Marilyn in Long Buckby. They took us to explore the Napoleonic era Ordnance Depot at Weedon. No longer connected to the canal, but still retaining its own bit of canal.

I might do another post about that later.  Meanwhile I have other problems to solve.

Who would have thought after we were marooned last summer through lack of water that we would now be suffering from too much water. You might have thought that our house, being on the slope of a hill would be immune to flooding but you would be wrong. The problem is that the garden slopes towards the back of the house where we have a pation beneath a retaining wall.  That drains into a soakaway, but after all this relenless rain the soakway is saying " Enough, I can take no more" so every morning the patio is underwater and threatens to invade our conservatory.  For a few days I tried baling it out with buckets carried out to a drain in the public footpath outside, but that was exhausting so here is what I did next.

Yes I bought a pump from Jeff Bezos. Well not from him personally but you know what I mean.  The hose goes out to the footpath drain outside.

It works but it takes up to two hours to drain the patio and if it rains hard overnight (and it has done) I have to do it all over again next day. So that's keeping me busy.

Hey ho. See you soon for another "Best in Twenty Years of Herbie"

Why The Nene is our favourite river - plus quiz answers

 Soirry to keep you waiting (I've been busy).  Can you tell a red kite from a marsh harrier, or a wren from a sparrow?  Find out in the answers to the questions in Part Three of our Best Ever Cruise saga  at the end of this post. 

Meanwhile I'd better finish of the tale of our Best Ever Cruise. last time I left us in March on the Middle Level Navigations.  Well there's no much to say about the rest of the Middle Levels because most of the time you're in a ditch with high sides. I doi remember that the water was wonderfully clear and we passed over some shoals of large roach or possibly rudd I suppose.

So we come to our return up the river Nene.  The weather was very hot and sunny so we took to rising very early and putting in a few hours before the heat got the better of us. We should do that more often as the misty dawn mornings are beautiful. And I have to say that most of the Nene is beautiful too. I'll let some photos do the talking. (Some of these are from  on the way down, including thoise with our best friends Rick and Marilyn). On the way up our son Peter joined us which was a help in the burning heat.

Why we loved the Nene:

Lovely old mill buildings

Clear water

Wildlife

Vast water meadows

Interesting lock structures, some mercifully electrically operated

Would you want to lift this one manually?

Sometimes you just have to, where you spin the lift wheel forever to lift the huge guillotine gates. Thank you Rick

Others in rare formats

Lovely old bridges

Moorings are scarce but the good ones are really nice

The view from the mooring at Irthlingborough

Bucolic scenes

Well in fine weather the Nene takes some beating don't you think?

Kath left for home at Northampton and Peter and I sweated back up the narrow Northampton arm with its 17 lock flight to get  back to the Grand Union.

Peter doesn't normally take the helm but he soon got into the swing of it -encouraged no doubt by the fact that I would have to work the locks in the scorching heat.

And so we reached the Grand Union at gayton junction.  Home would be reached by turning south but we headed north to take Herbie back for another rest at Buckby after which it was the home stretch all the way back to the dear old Slough Arm where Herbie had her own berth. On those final days we were lucky enough to get in at one of our favourite stops in Great Linford, Milton Keynes,

and another at Apsley

then a visit from our grand daughter Grace (now 18). What a sweetie

And so ended our Best Ever Cruise. 569 miles and 330 locks.  What a spring and summer. Is it any wonder it wins our award.  I hope you enjoyed all the pictures and maybe someone might now be tempted to take in the Anglian waterways. Just make sure you do it in fine weather.

And so to those quiz answers.

.Of course Adam, as ever, had been pretty good at recognising canal places but this time we had some wildlife questions too.  You might need to look back at my previous post as a reminder of the phoitos

Q1 Concerned our concern (see what I did there) over the alarming behaviour of Herbie in a lock on the river Ouse. At one point we were afraid she might capsize. It was all down to the grab chains on the lock wall getting caught on Herbie's base plate edge. 

As the water in the lock lowered Herbie began to tip over at a frightening angle.  In thise locks you can' t just drop a paddle like you can on most canal locks and it takes a while to shut the sluices or paddles or penstocks or whatever they are called in that place. Anyhow with the help of Rainman we acted as fast as the pesky lock mechanisms would allow. I shut the lower and and Rainman raised the upstream Guillotine and all was saved and Herbie slipped off the chains with a bang.  I suppose those chains are some sort of safety feature but I fear thay may be anything but.

Q2 and Q3 were bird pictures  2 was a barn owl, and 3 was an oyster catcher (presumably after freshwater mussels)

Q4 asked about the number of alcohol uints we each consumed at the Fort St George in Cambridge in a few short hours.  I fear that that answer is 12.78 which is 90% of a woman (Kath in this case) allowance for a whole week and 60% of mine (all according to UK medicl advice) .  

Q5 was a picture of a Marsh Harrier

Q6 showed a Common Tern

Q7 showed a Wren (Kath used to be a Wren but she never looked liked that)

Q8 showed a sugar refinery> i'm not sure whetehr those silos contiined sugar or  beet pulp or what but anyhow lots of sugar beet is grown around the fen area.

Q9 The traditional worker we passed as we cruised the fens near Salters Lode was an eel catcher.  I saw him on TV after and he claimed to be the last person to earn his living from the traditional wicker traps.

Q10 featured a picture of a tower and I don't know what it is. Neither does our old pal Rainman although he did cunnigly confirm its postion by looking on Google Streetview so I wasn't imagining it. That still doesn't explain why such an interesting building doesn't seem to be described anywhere on the internet.

PS Oh yes it is. My mistake was looking for it in Outwell when it is in fact in Upwell. It seems it dates from the 15the century!

The copyright on this image is owned by Michael Garlick  and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Stay tuned for some more 20 years of Herbie Awards -they won't be nearly as long!

Best Cruise Awards quiz

   Here's part three of our quiz based on our Herbie Award for our Best Ever Cruise. It had been pretty good so far but the best was yet to come.  Leaving Bedford we were joined by three old friends, Paula and Roy who lived in Bedford and David (Rainman) who had driven up all the way from Rickmansworth

Rainman totally failed to live up to his name as the weather was(and would remain) SCORCHIO!

Somewhere near Great Barford we stopped fr a pub lunch which will always be remembered for the machine in the toilets selling inflatable sheep! I can't remember where our pals disembarked but waving them goodbye we pressed on to somewhere near Godmanchester where we very nearly sank Herbie

It was in this lock

 

1. Can you guess why the boat was in danger of capsizing in the lock?

Visitor moorings on the Ouse are provided by the Environment Agency and by the Great Ouse Boaters Association (GOBA). The EA ones are very neat. Here's one we stopped at on a balmy summer evening

How nice to have mooring bollards. 

2. Can you name this bird  that patrolled the far bank as the light faded?

3.Or this one we saw earlier that afternoon

Next morning we made our first detour by heading up the river Cam

and managed to nab this perfect mooring right outside the Fort Saint George pub

and spent  a pleasant evening drinking Old Rosie cider with our son Peter who lives in Cambridge.

4.  I fear we may have drunk 3 pints of it each. At 7.3% alcohol -how many 'units' of alcohol did we each consume? ( a bit off topic I know)

Back down the Cam are various creeks whose entrances look like this

Squeezing through one of them we found the entrance to the wild and wonderful Wicken Fen.

Wicken Fen is renowned for its wildlife and we weren't disappointed. Creeping up the narrow and shallow cut

we were soon accompanied by this bird. 

5. Can you identify it?

6. Then name this next one that minutes later came to join us.

Finding a lush mooring at the end of the dyke, we tied up and set off exploring. 

Wildlife was evident everywhere. It didn't take us long to find this little fellow on his/her nest.

7. Can you identify it?

I wont insult you by asking what was in this next nest we saw

Or who was skulking in the long grass

or what these are. I just love the stripy chicks

Have you ever tried to grasp a nettle? You can do it without being stung if you put finger and thumb above and below the leaf and quickly clamp them. But at Wicken Fen they have a rare variety of  stingers that don't sting. Here's proof

The day and night of we spent at the Fen was a highlight of the trip. Next morning it was back down to the main river but not before negotiating this tight exit onto the little cut which feeds the main river

Soon we were to leave the Cam and rejoin the main River Ouse once again passing through Huntigdon and Ely.  There was one more detour we wanted to take and that was down the River Wissey

Turning into the Wissey we soon found a really good mooring for the night

and next morning set off to expore this lovely little river. Well I say little, at one place the river widens into (or perhaps passes through) this lake 

8. but what's that in the background? What do those silos hold?

The Wissey is quite short and we soon came to the end of the navigation at Whittington

So we turned and headed back in the blazing sunshine where even the weed cutter boat needed shelter from the sun (note that we are well and truly in plastic boat territory)

So we rejoined the  navigable Ouse which stops at the mighty Denver sluice where, when the tide is just right, they release you for the short but scary run up to Salters Lode entrance.

After all the tranquility and remoteness of places like Wicken and the Wissey  we were about to get  a boost to our adreniline levels. Crossing the short tidal section between Denver and Salters Lode is scary but exciting.

It's reasonably scary because you have to sight the almost hidden entrance and turn the boat at right angles against the outgoing tide. Make a mistake here and you could end up getting washed towards Kings Lynn!  The first thing you see is a boat exiting Salters Lode frantically gunning their engine to turn the boat against the tide.  That's your best clue to where to aim for. As you can see, the entrance is not visible at this point

At last you see the rubber tyre fenders and start judging your turn

After a rapid handbrake turn and a boost of full throttle we were back in the safety of the lock and back on the Middle Levels

Being safely back on the Middle Levels we pushed on towards Upwell and Outwell, and while doing so we passed a man working on his ancient trade, and we since learned that he was the last one in England to do so in his way. later I saw a TV item about him. so

Question 9 is what was the man doing?

We made our first stop on the short mooring pontoon in Upwell and went to look at the church with its angelic interesting ceiling

Now here's question 10.  While we were there I took this photo. At least I think I did. The time stamp shows it to be when we were at the church, but combing the internet I can find no reference to this structure. Does anybody know what it is because I have no idea?

Then it was back under the pesky bridge which seemed even lower than before. We had to dismantle the top of our roof box.

All I will say about our return across the rest of the middle levels was that the weather was really hot, and we spent a great evening in the pub in March with our good  friends John and Irene who were travelling in the opposite direction in their lovely little narrowboat Rosie Piper. Here are our boats moored up below the pub. 

Well, a super cruise so far . By the time we reached March we'd done  394 miles and 185 Locks and we still had the Nene and the Grand Union to come, but the weather was getting really really hot and lifting the guillotine gates on some of those Nene guillotine locks are hard going. 

Stay tuned for that, but meanwhile here are the answers to part two of the quiz. from my previous post.

The first question was about the factory we saw across the fields. It was McCains oven chip plant, right there among the spud fields

Q2 asked how many miles of navigable waterways does the middle levels have, and the answer is almost exactly 100 miles!

Q3 The villages were Upwell and Outwell and they are in Norfolk

As has been pointed out I seem to have two Q3s. Anyhow the next answer is:

The opening times of the final Middle Levels lock, Salters Lode are set by the timing and state of the tide outside

Q5 (I think)  The building is Ely Cathedral

Q6 The river dweller we saw below Hermitage lock was a seal

Q7 The town with the beautiful bridge is St Ives

Q8 Thar's a carp, identifiable not only by its shape but by the long dorsal fin along its back

Q9 Thats Godmanchester

Q10 Penstocks is what they call the paddles

and finally

Q11 The Ouse is seen by narrowboaters crossing the high aqueduct just below Cosgrove (Adam, I'll allow Wolverton)