20 years - 6 marinas. All with pros and cons. Which is best?

Herbie has moved home a few times in 20 years.  Which did we like most?

Let's list them first:

1 Stanstead Abbots Lee navigation just south of Ware (Where? Ware). This is where we bought Herbie and we had to stay for about 6 weeks waiting for British Waterways (as it was then) to finish a lock stoppage before we could escape.  We used those weeks to potter up and down to Hertford - quite a peasant run actually.  Here I am pouring soem cheap bubbly over Herbie's bow on takeover day.

2 High Line Yachting on the Slough Arm. 2006-2011. Our first 'permanent' mooring and only 35 minutes for home in the car.

 We're down there somewhere, breasted up outside our friendly neighbour Geoff..A s you can see it can get cold and icy down there. 

3 Crick marina.  2011 -2016

Home of the annual Crick Boat Show, and as moorers we got free passes to it.

It was bit of a culture shock after High Line Yachting - there were a lot of posh boats.

A nice spot to sit out by the boat

4. Cropredy Marina - 2016 -2020  and 2024 - date    South Oxford canal

Yes we came and stayed, then went away, then came back. The Marina was failry new when we first came but it's well established now.  We're currently in our fourth spot in the marina, albeit al those spots are within 25 yards of each other.

Cropredy is well known for its sunset views

Here's how it looks nowadays

5. Wigrams Turn Marina 2020-2021

We ended up at Wigrams by misfortune. We were in the process of moving up to a mooring booked at Kings Langley marina in March 2020 when the first Covid Lockdowns were imposed. We abandoned that trip and made a bolt for the nearest marina which was Wigrams Turn.

Here we are on one of their long multi boat pontoons - a swine to get in and out of, and a long trolley push from the car park when loading up.  Abit like being in the middle of a big car park.

6. Ventnor marina 2021 - 2024

Less than a mile from Wigrams turn but a world away.  It could hardly feel more different.

I mean just look at these picures. What's not to like.

Well that's all of them. Which is best?  Well it all depends. The loveliest and best kept is definately Ventnor. The on site access roads, the car parking, the lush surrounding, the good facilities, the friendly staff. It has it all. and it is very peaceful, almost too quiet sometimes. The nearby village of Stockton has a good pub and it's only ten minutes or so by car to Southam which has the shops you need.  So why did we move back to Cropredy?

Well the problem with Ventnor is where it is.  Turn left when you exit and there are the (to my mind) unpleasant Calcutt locks, then you go to Wigrams and either Braunston or Napton
which we have done so many times that we were getting bored with it.  Turn right out of Ventnor and you have Stockton locks which are hard work and then the run down to Leamington which is not the most inspiring canal town, and then onto Warwick and Hatton locks which are hard going for those of us approaching 80 years old.

So Cropredy is our current choice being nearer to home, having good facilities and friendly and helpful staff. As a place to sit about without going out it's fine.  The canal outside has  good cruising right down to Oxford and the Thames with plenty of quiet rural spots to stop for the night, and Banbury is handy for shorter cruises or popping to the shops in the car. The only real complaint is the state of the internal access roads which can get potholey and mucky in winter.

The wooden spoon goes easily to Wigrams Turn of which I have very little good to say apart from the fact that it gives three ways to cruise.  The place is run OK but we didn't like the pontoons or the surroundings and you can't get your car anywhere near the boat for unloading. Sorry Wigrams.

As for the others - we have a soft spot for the much maligned Slough Arm and the community is good, but the clambering over other boats and the huge distance from car to boat is not enjoyable, nor is the summertime weed making cruising up the arm very onerous.

Crick is absolutely fine. We enjoyed it very much and found it friendly and well run.  Having free passes for the show was good too.  The cruising routes from there are not that inspiring though. Maybe in our old age and not so keen to go far or do so many locks we'd like it more. Tootling along to Welford, Foxton and Market Harborough would be easy work. Food for thought I suppose.

Lastly the place at Stanstead Abbots was unobjectionable but had no real merits, except for tootling up to Ware and Hertford, both pleasant towns. Facilities on site were very limited.

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!