The GRAND Union Canal!!

Just below Bascote Locks on the Grand Union Canal is a mooring suitable for a 70 footer. There is no room nearby for anyone else so if you want to be alone and go back to nature that is the mooring for you! Luckily, when we got here it was empty so tonight it is ours. There is nothing else here, apart from the various birds, the occasional biplane flying over, and the farmer checking out his sheep on a quad.

Also, bearing in mind this is the GRAND UNION, where are the boats? We were going down the locks, the Calcutt 3, the Stockton 9 and the Long Itchington 2, we met up with a lovely couple on a boat at Calcutt and shared 13 locks with them. They were from New Zealand , they live in New Zealand and come over here every year for five months of our summer to cruise the canals. They moor over winter at Crick when they go home for their summer. What a life!! I am trying to remember the name of their boat, it is named after a pure white heron from New Zealand and was something like WOTUKU, apologies if I got it wrong.

We were the only two boats going down the locks, we started at Calcutt about 1030 and are now moored below Bascote Locks, the time being almost 2100 hrs and nothing else has come down the flight! As to those going up, we could count them on two hands, BUT, our progress was slowed by the increasing number of moored boats. On the approach to Stockton there are so many moored boats that progress was severely limited. It seems as though most of them go nowhere, I don't know whether the adjacent road and ample parking had anything to do with this!!

I know that BW say that more and more boats are being licensed each year, BUT, how many of them have a recognised mooring and how many of them actually cruise the canals!! I know there are numerous genuine continuous cruisers and I follow their blogs on a daily basis, but so many others are taking the **** and BW seem to be doing absolutely nothing about them. It seems to be that if you are licensed and have a recognised mooring that you pay for, BW check you out but if you have neither, nobody bothers about you!

Enough doom and gloom, tomorrow we will be at Warwick and my son and his mates take over the boat,. Good luck to all that meet them!

Things to ponder

Usually when I am out boating I try to publish a blog each day, however, when cruising the Ashby Canal getting an internet connection is definitely a hit and miss affair.

This blog will cover the last few days, for a start, which town/city qualifies for the worst canal frontage in the country?

Having recently travelled through Nuneaton, I think there will be very few challengers. They have made nothing of their canal frontage and the amount of rubbish in the canal makes the local tip look underused!

As for the Ashby, it is still very shallow, still very busy and still has a lot of "continuous cruisers"!! But the countryside is still great.

On Saturday we were joined at Sutton Cheney by two day trip boats full of friends and acquaintances. (Is that spelt right - I don't think so? Where is spellcheck when I want it) there were 36 trippers in total hence the need for our boat as well, ages ranged from 2 years to 84 years. The two day boats went first followed by GUELROSE. We were the lucky ones, we picked up all the comments about b****y day boats!! Nevertheless, we cruised up to the winding hole just past Market Bosworth, had a BBQ lunch and then cruised back to Stoke Golding, (Whoops - probably just disclosed the location of the day boats).

Sunday was quieter, just the 5 of us, Mum, the wife and of course the two dogs, Alfie and Lewis. Progress was slow, the canal was shallow, there were so many moored boats etc...... Our favourite mooring near Burton Hastings was already double booked, so we had to go on as far as Bulkington Bridge to moor, passing a miserable so and so on the way who complained I was well over on his side as I came through a narrows of an old bridge hole, my wife's comments to him are unprintable and people like him should not be on the canal full stop!!

On Monday we came off of the Ashby, down to Hawkesbury and onto the North Oxford. We found a nice mooring at Newbold on Avaon and can thoroughlty recommend the chippe in the village/suburb/town.

GUELROSE is still moving...

When you are landbased you take for granted the speed of connection to the internet..... however, as soon as you get inside that steel tube called a narrowboat internet connection speed seems to go out of the window. At the moment my dongle is hanging in the side hatch giving me some sort of service....

A leisurely start yet again today, but, surely, isn't it what it all about really, moving from here to there at a leisurely pace and mooring up in the countryside enjoying what looks to be the promise of an glorious English summer.....

We cruised for 4 hours today, taking our time up the Atherstone 11 as there were a lot of boats coming down as we were going up, we cruised as far as Hartshill where we moored up at 1500hrs. It was a beautiful afternoon and we cleaned the brass and polished one side of the boat, tomorrow we will polish the other side.... probably.,

After that, it is onto the Ashby Canal, and on Saturday it is the day boat cruise, more of that later

GUELROSE is on the move......

Allbeit briefly, we are out for 9 days........

When you live on a boat it is easy to go cruising, just pull up your pins, stow the ropes and off you go. When you move onto the land and want to go cruising it is entirely a different matter! What clothes do you take, what kitchen implements (i.e. saucepans) have I taken from the boat and put in the house etc.....

It took us all morning to sort out the bits and pieces so it was 1300 hrs before we managed to start cruising. We arrived at Glascote locks after one and a half hours to find the usual queue, after waiting for an hour it was our turn to lock. We then cruised on and moored in one our favourite locations in the middle of nowhere just before you get to Bradley Green, just us and the dogs until a hireboat decided the mooring was good so moored up as well!

Tommorrow it's the Atherstone 11, then maybe a mooring at Hartshill.

Today's totals were 9 miles and 2 locks, with 5 hours cruising, just 2 lock miles per hour, quite slow even by our standards.

Watch out for an update tomorrow.

Going Ashore

I have no doubt that few of you have followed my blogs through the last couple of years but to those who have, I say a huge thankyou!

Circumstances have dictated that we move off of nb GUELROSE that has been our home since April 2001 into a house, my father has passed away and my mother is suffering from Alzeihmers so we have to move into the house to look after my mother for the next few ?? years.

Consequently, we will not be cruising much so there will not be much of a blog. GUELROSE will revert to her original role of being a holiday boat, for the time being!!!!

If anything of interest crops up, rest assured, I will publish it on my blog.

Meanwhile, I shall continue to follow my favourite blogs, Granny Buttons, Sanity, No Problem, Gypsy Rover etc.

What is a liveaboard?

GUELROSE is still moored at Hopwas and the engine is still not going, however, Diesel Dave, late of Streethay, is on the case and is coming to fix my problems soon . Apparently the problem I am experiencing with my starter motor not disengaging from the flywheel is not that uncommon, so hopefully I will at least be mobile enough to go and get a pumpout soon!

I am not that worried as Jenny and I are off to Les Menuires in the French Alps for a weeks holiday in a ski resort. I am not going for the skiing, I am more interested in the apres ski and being on the piste!!

Now to the main theme of my blog...... Liveaboards......

To my mind there seems to be various categories of liveaboards and continuous cruisers. Obviously the main liveaboards are those that have a residential mooring and go off cruising when they can. Brandywine and Thistle are just two examples. Then there are the genuine continuous cruisers such as No Problem, Gypsy Rover and Sanity. Granny Buttons obviously fits into one of these categories somewhere along the line!!! The one thing that stands out about the boats I have mentioned is there standard of maintenance. They all seem to be loved and are all maintained to a very good standard (yes - I know Granny is badly in need of a paint job but I am sure that Andrew will sort that out very soon!!) Then there are the other boats like the one's that have been moored in the same location for the last three months....... These people obviously have no love of the canals and see a boat as a cheap and convenient place to live, their maintenance standards are far lower and the roof of many of them looks more akin to a scrapyard than a narrowboat....

Yes, I admit I am jealous, I would love to be a continuous cruiser but circumstances prevent that from happening at the moment. But one day it will happen....

But, what really p****s me off is that the residential boaters pay their dues, the true continuous cruisers continuously cruise, the likes of me pay their licence and mooring fees, but the ones that moor for three months in the same place and have no love of the canals and treat a boat as an alternative to a house, pay nothing..... Why do I bother to pay my fair share when they don't!!

Happy New Year

I know it is a bit late but I would like to wish you all a very happy new year.

GUELROSE is still laid up at Hopwas - I have a starter motor problem that I need to solve - i.e. the starter motor does not work hence the engine will not start and therefore I cannot move even if I wanted to! I might have to resort to posting a question on the Canalboat website, www. canalboat.co.uk - it has to be cheaper than calling out an engineer to solve the problem - I cannot take it to a boatyard to solve the problem as with no starter motor the engine does not start and therefore I cannot move.

The car still works though, so I made a trip to Wheaton Aston to buy some red diesel for the diesel stove. The mathematics worked out at a 56 mile round trip costing about £6 in petrol to buy diesel at 51.9 pence per litre. I bought 148 litres of the stuff, even if I could get that amount locally in cans it would cost at least 62 pence per litre, I will leave you to work out the sums but at the end of the day I saved a few quid and had a nice trip out in the car!

Now, back to that problem with the starter motor........