Diear Motley Crew,
Note the date – Saturday 5th September. Today, the good ship Matanuska filled up, emptied out and headed off into the wide and not-so-blue yonder. With light hearts and a dizzying sense of freedom, we turned right out of the marina and set sail in the general direction of Middlewich. Having a need to spend some time in rural solitude after our weeks of living shoulder-to-shoulder with others, we moored up just a few hours along the canal to savour the view and enjoy the surroundings. And here we are …
Whilst the crew were off enjoying the highlights – and, we suspect, the low lights – of Nantwich and Crewe during our MarinaLand experience,
The Chief Engineer seems to have had a particularly good time - shades of his shore leave in Japan we're guessing
our time in the marina was put to good use. With ready access to shore power and unlimited water, we sanded and scraped and filled and undercoated and sanded and painted the inside of Matanuska until she was light and open and airy; a huge contrast to the dark, closed-in and depression-inducing interior that we'd inherited.
What we started with - varnished ply walls
Mid-way through the transformation -
I'm not certain which yoga asana this is but from the look on the Captain's face, I don't think that he can hold it for much longer!
Living in the middle of renovating a 57’ x 6’.10” space is a little tricky as there is nowhere to store all “the stuff”; rather you just move it around constantly.
Playing musical chairs to use the toilet
Before and after - so much better than nasty brown panels!
The finished result - painted panels and walls. Curtains re-hung, furniture back in place. Such an improvement that we can hardly believe it ourselves.
In addition to Matanuska’s insides being given a makeover, we had her under-carriage inspected as well, in order to assess the damage sustained to her propeller on the run though from Birmingham. This obviously necessitated her coming out of the water.
We were rather curious – and a little apprehensive – about how this was to be achieved, but as it turned out, the guys clearly had carried out this process many times before. Piece of cake really!
And there she is ..... high and dry.
One look at the propeller convinced us that repair wasn’t an option,
Over the years, the blades have worn down to about 3 mm and the damage from hitting the rubbish in the canal is obvious.
The blades on the newly-fitted propeller are 5 mm thick - quite a difference
Matanuska now sports a new, very shiny propeller that will see us safely through the canals and rivers that lie ahead. The boat is now a little heavier to handle, but as a balance, our wallets are a good deal lighter.
The canal on which we’re currently cruising is new to us, but not unknown to us. In 2018, we had planned to travel its length, in company with the Cook and the Storeman as it happens, so that we could explore the Cheshire Ring. Unfortunately, a fairly serious breach put paid to that idea. Late one night, “someone” opened all of the gate paddles on two sets of locks, allowing an estimated 3 million gallons to flow into the canal. This volume of water caused the canal to overflow at its lowest point and then break out a section of the embankment. The Middlewich canal, which is the northern link between the eastern and western systems, was closed for over ten months and the repairs cost around £3 million.
How lucky was the crew of this narrowboat!
Seeing the stop planks stored at the entrance to the marina reminded me of the breach. Most commonly, these planks are used to close off small sections of the canal to affect repairs, but in this instance, they were put in place as a safeguard at the mouth of the marina when the breach first occurred.
The boards are fitted vertically into slots in the concrete
I remember being asked some time ago by someone – hopefully not the same “someone” who emptied the canal – was there a plug to the canal system? I snorted scornfully at their ignorance, but then, my interest piqued, I did some googling, and, to my absolute amazement, discovered that my scorn was not justified. In 1978, a British Waterways dredging gang pulled up a chain that had a lump of wood on the end. This lump of wood turned out to be a plug about which no one knew, and the entire canal between Whitsunday Pie Lock and Retford Town Lock drained away into the River Idle! So my belated apologies to whoever it was who asked me the question.
If this character was the “someone” who pulled the plug, you’d have to say that he looks mightily pleased with his efforts. I love everything about this picture – his chuffed expression, his big floppy boots (WH & S approved no doubt, like his clobber), but most of all, I love his haircut!
History can be found all along the canal system. Sometimes it comes in the form of towns and villages of considerable, historical significance, and sometimes it comes in a smaller and more human form.
We came upon this house alongside the towpath and realised from its unusual doors that it had, in a previous life, been stables. These would have been used to spell the horses that pulled the pre-mechanised canal boats along the “towing path”. I hadn’t realised that horse-drawn narrowboats were still being used well into the 1950’s in the Midlands and that horses were still at work on the Regents Canal in London until the 1960’s.
It's a living history really, as many of the bridges that we pass under bear the marks of the tow ropes, the deep grooves being an indication of the weight that the horses would have pulled. Cast-iron sheaths, which were easily replaced, were installed on many bridges to protect the stonework.
Many of the bridges bear these grooves
I’ve always felt for these animals, and the load that they would have hauled along, but apparently they could pull 50, possibly 100 times as much weight in a boat as they could with a cart on the road. We know from pulling the boat ourselves, that once you get it going, it moves rather easily. This fact, however, might have been lost on the Cook and the Storeman, who, due to an inadequate engine and a strong flow through the Chirk Tunnel in 2018, had to pull their narrowboat the entire 459 yards! We wondered what was keeping them!!
Although they might not have been thinking it at the time, they were fortunate that the tunnel had a towpath; many do not. In these cases, the horses would be unharnessed, led over the top of the tunnel, and then re-harnessed on the other side. “So how did the boat get through the tunnel without the horse?” you should all be shouting in unison. Ah, that’s when you’d have to “leg it”.
It has not escaped our attention that no-one on the Motley Crew volunteered for this position.
While it was most convenient to have the towpath stay on one side of the canal, there were some instances in which it had to change sides, and this was principally due to the opposition from landowners, who did not want the boatmen, who were often viewed as "water gypsies", passing too close to their residences. The solution to moving the horse to the other side of the canal was to build turnover or crossover bridges. The horse would ascend the ramp on one side, cross the bridge to the other side and then descend a circular ramp on the same side as the bridge. They would then pass through the bridge hole and continue on their way, all without having to be unharnessed.
Click on the link to see how it worked.
One of the best things about being out on the canals again is the opportunity it affords us to go for long walks along the public footpaths. This morning we strolled through paddocks chock-a-block with pheasants and then wandered with impunity along the side paddock of the local Big House - again, the novelty of public footpaths
Perhaps it's the socialist in me that loves being able to wander through people's backyards with impunity
During our jaunt, we met up with a number – a rather large number actually – of the locals. Here we have Growl, Endeavour, Armour, Freckle and Speckle to name a few.
Endeavour appeared particularly keen to get to know us better.
Tomorrow, we make our way, rather languidly it has to be said, towards the Trent and Mersey Canal and then the Anderton Lift that will take us down to the River Weaver. This is one of the "must-do's" of narrowboating and one we're really looking forward to.
The Captain, The Commodore and Mrs Chippy (who is feeling much "chipp-ier")
留言