Huddlesford Boat Gathering 2009

Every two years (is that biannual or biennial? or are they both the same?) Lichfield and District Canals Restoration Trust hold a boat gathering at Huddlesford Junction on the Coventry Canal. The event is held courtesy of Lichfield Cruising Club who kindly donate their clubhouse and grounds for the event. The main organiser of the event is Sue Williams of LHCRT and the amount of effort she puts into this event must be highly commended!!

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My part was a little bit easier than Sue's, I had to harbourmaster the historic boats, trade boats and LHCRT members boats moored between bridges 82 and 83. All other boaters were expected to find their own moorings on a first come first served basis, although, owing to the number of boats attending this year, we may have to seriously consider extending the organised moorings to cater for the visiting boaters in future years.

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The event was only a one day event, and was open to the public from 1000 to 1600 hrs. Most boats arrived on Thursday or Friday preceding the event. Under the guidance of my mentor, Pat Barton , I attempted to sort out the historic, trade and LHCRT members boats, and, hopefully, most of them were reasonably happy with my efforts.

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Trade boats included The Cheese Boat, The Fudge Boat, The Ice Cream Boat, TR Boat Handling, Smart Stitch (who embroider your boat name onto T shirts and Polo shirts, ) Fox who sell giftware and Ian Smith Chandlery who sell, well, chandlery!

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Historic boats that attended included President and Kildare, Nutfield and Raymond, Swift (part of the BW Heritage Fleet), Marquis (an ex BCN? Tug), Hawkesbury (one of the last Woolwich boats to have been built?), Monarch (another ex Fellows Morton and Clayton steamer that has been a steamer, then a diesel, then a steamer and back to being a diesel with butty Grimsby, Trout, Dove, Bream, Tipton, Corona, and Minnow, complete with its beautiful sounding 9 hp Bolinder! (My sincere apologies to any historic boats I may have missed out).

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Another boat at the gathering was A J FELGATE, a Truman Enterprise Narrowboat Trust boat that is charity based for youth groups, plus, of course, all the other boaters who turned up and helped to make the day a success.

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On the actual day there were numerous stalls trying to tempt you to part with your hard earned cash, as well as displays by the Knot Tyers Guild and a display of historic cars (I believe there were about 70 of them!) who definitley put to shame the display of historic cars at the IWA National Festival at Redhill!

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During the event the LCC clubhouse was open to all and was selling an excellent real ale especially brewed for the event by Blythe Brewery in Staffordshire appropriately called L & H Bitter.

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During the evening the ladies of LCC prepared an excellent meal for all of us, followed by entertainment provided by a jazz group called Funktionality. I am not a great lover of jazz, but this group were good, and considering their ages, one was 16, 3 were 18? and one was 23, they were brilliant!

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All in all a very good event, and once again, a special mention for Sue Williams who put so much into making this event the success that it was!

Almost Home

You can tell we are almost home - we get a decent connection on the internet for the first time for weeks!!

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Yesterday was another day of waiting at locks, although only two or three boats at a time ahead of us. Found a mooring in Alrewas and had a little wander around the village via the butchers, just had to have one of their pork pies and some of their sausages!!

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No queues today but we made very slow progress - I was 'caching' all the way up the flight. Moored up for the night just short of Hopwas Woods - a mile from home!! Got to make the most of it!! Winter is a long long time.

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Out again the weekend after next for the Huddlesford Boat Gathering in aid of the LHCRT and then 2 weeks later GUELROSE gets a younger crew as my son Jon and his mates take her to Birmingham and back for a long weekend.

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Speak to you soon

Returning Home

Is it Sunday already? Where ndoes the time go? Friday was spent cruising from Shardlow to Willington, passing on the way n.b. Granny Buttons but no sign of life on board. Perhaps he had been out prowling with his camera again in the wee small hours and was catching up with a bit of sleep!!

As an aside, whilst getting ready to leave Shardlow on Friday morning, a conker, complete with its prickly covering, decided to detach itself from the tree and land immediately behind me. No problem, you might say, but the thing was the size of a cricket ball and if it had hit me on the head...........

We reached Willington at 1500 hrs to find the main moorings full up, but, being Willington, there were plenty of towpath moorings still available although further from the facilities. Later that afternoon my niece drove over from Chruch Gresley, picked me up and took me to Redhill to pick up my car which I drove back to Willington, all in under an hour, the boat journey had taken several hours!! That evening we went for a meal at the Green Dragon with Jerry and Helen from n.b. Josephine. The meal was cheap and cheerful and filling!

Saturday was spent driving my car to Church Gresley, picking up my niece, her husband and son, and taking them to Birmingham Airport where they were flying off to Spain for 10 days. There flight was due to leave just after 3 but I later learnt that their flight was delayed several hours, goodness knows what time they eventually left! No such problems on the canal, or so I thought!!!

That evening I set off to find 3 caches in the Willington area, the first I couldn't find (but neither could anyopne else over the last 3 months - is it still there - I doubt it.) The second one I found easily but time I got to the third one it was getting dark. I was in the right place but the light had gone and I just could not find it.

Sunday was an easier day, we moved up to the facilities, filled up with water, emptied the loos and dumped the rubbish. Whilst there, we were moored alongside another boat who were pumping out their loo. Why is it that boaters always end up talking about toilet facilities???

We left Willington just before noon and pottered along slowly, worked through Dallow Lane Lock with no problems, passed through Burton on Trent and reached Branston Lock to find six boats waiting to go through. Where had they come from?? I went up to the lock and helped the boats through, some people just don't seem to do this and soon it was our turn. We passed through the lock, cruised a short distance and moored up at Branston. I then went off and did another cache, not really realising how far away it was. Tomorrow we will do a few more.

Returning Home

This morning we woke up to the sound of wind, more wind and even more wind. Jenny was not inclined to move at all, BUT, if we stayed and it rained more and the wind still blew, would we be able to get off the rivers before it was too late?

Anyway, we spent the best part of a couple of hours drinking coffee and putting the world to rights with Jenny and Tony off of N.B. TOM TUG. About half past noon I decided it was time to leave so off we wnet, up to the lock and tried to rurn round. Whether it was the current, the wind or just me, I made a real pigs ear of it and took ages to get round!!! Then it was up the Soar, no problem, onto the Trent, no problem, and through Derwent Mouth lock and up to Shardlow to moor, no problem.

After walking up to the post office in Shardlow to pick up a paper we wandered back to the boat and on the way picked up a takeaway menu from the Tandoori Nights Indian Restaurant. Just after six we made the phone call, 25 minutes later I picked up the meal, and WE must admit, it was absolutely gorgeous. Thank you Tony for the recommendation.

IWA National -Redhill

This will be my last blog under this heading, tomorrow we leave the site and head back towards Hopwas and our home mooring. We will not be the first to leave, many of our friends, colleagues and co-workers have already left.

In my view the festival was quite a success, I do not know how many visitors passed through the gates and how much profit, if any, the IWA made out of the festival.

I spoke to many of the traders over the weekend and most reported good sales. A couple of traders were worried that they would not have enough stock to last until Monday and one sent out to his son in law to bring more supplies.

Monday night was spent in the beer tent (yet again) although the selection of real ales was by then strictly limited. The Beatles tribute band, THE BEATLESS, were quite good and audience participation was excellent - we all seemed to know the words of the songs, probably showing our age in the process!

Tuesday, four of us hitched up the jet float and flat, worked up through the lock, and stripped out all the scaffolding and stagings on F section.. The flat was almost on the point of sinking under the load, it had two inches of freeboard and three inches of water in the flat! The evening was spent in the WRG tent, where the wergie chef, Allie, created a medieval type banquet based on Robin Hood. After nibbles we were presented with a trio of meats comprising large chunks of beef, pork and turkey accompanied by large amounts of roast potatos. The deserts were not quite so medieval but were very nice as was the cheese and biscuits.

Wednesday, we dismantled all the scaffolding we had erected on the trade moorings before going back up river to strip out the ferry stagings. As we returned down river we stripped out all the H frames from the stagings and had the lot finished by lunch time.

It had taken us the best part of two weeks to put in place all this equipment, and only a day and a half to strip it all out.

Tomorrow we set sail, heading for the Trent and Mersey canal, and ultimately back to Hopwas, more of that later.