Over the years Nigel and I have mastered the art of ‘being’.   It’s the opposite of ‘doing’.  Sometimes you just have to do nothing for long periods of time.  That’s what canal boating is. A week pretty much of ‘being’. If you are a get up early and get on the road so you can get to your destination type person then this isn’t really going to be your thing.

I have to admit, we were both pretty apprehensive about how we would get on especially with manoeuvring the boat (Nigel’s job) and managing the locks and swing bridges and all the other obstacles along the canal (my job).  When we arrived at the Wharf, Colin came to give us an overview of the boat and give us the basics of what we were doing.  He would then ride down the canal for a bit with us while Nigel got use to the steering.  Colin was our new best friend.  He took us through a methodical list of everything we needed to know and told us that any knot’s a good knot and to not get too hung up about it.  He said that the locks will be fine if you take your time and to go off and make great memories.  He said be kind and courteous to everyone and make sure you say hello to absolutely everyone.  He also said that if anything happens to give them a call and they will come and see you no matter where you are.  His advice for if anyone falls overboard is to kill the engine, throw the life ring out and tell them to stand up.  That’s because the water is realistically only waist deep and so after you get over the shock of the cold water you can pretty much wade through the mud to the side and get back on (thankfully we managed not to test this theory).  You go so slowly down the canals that even when we were four days into our trip and turned around to come back we were only a 30 minute drive from the wharf where we picked it up.

Going so slowly means that there is plenty of time for ‘being’ on the boat.  Even the driving was fairly straight forward 97% of the time and pretty laid back for Nigel (the other 3% involved large amounts of swearing and calling our boat a ‘goddamn son of a bitch’).  It’s also a very social activity as you must say hello to every single boat you pass.  I decided one day that I would adopt a different English accent for each boat and having gone through my best Cornwall farmers accent, Cockney Rhyming slang and my poshest Queens English I ended up settling on “How do?!”.  I was very confused with all the English who were asking “Are you alright?”  Is the correct answer to this “Yes I’m fine thanks” or am I supposed to also ask if they are also “Alright?”  Please advise if you know.

What we didn’t realise is that you get people coming along and asking you questions whenever you are tied up.  These people are called Gongoozlers, they love the canals and the boats but don’t actually canal boat.  They stop for a chat and usually ask some very simple questions about the boat and like to watch you going through the locks.  They take photos of you as you pass by and tend to get in the way a bit when you are actually trying to do something.  But they are generally just families with their kids wanting to take them for a fun free day out.  The kids love being asked to help push the lock open or help close them later and it’s a really nice vibe.  Because there is a walking path the whole way along the canal (left over from when the horses use to drag the barges) you get quite a few hikers, people walking dogs and cyclists as well.  Everyone says hello and offers to help if you need it so it’s a very pleasant group of people you end up sharing the waterways with.

On our first day we puttered down the canal for only a short while until we could moor and get use to the boat.  After beaching the boat on a very shallow piece of canal we decided to sleep on it and sort it out in the morning.  It was otherwise a fairly uneventful evening and we just enjoyed being in our own little space.

The next day was a completely different affair.   Our first obstacle came in the form of a swing bridge.  Nigel moored up and I got off to work out which key to put where and what to pull and push when.  I followed the instructions and swung the bridge around so Nigel could get through.  Then I did the whole operation backwards to close it again.  I made it… I was very proud of myself.

Next stop was the Foxton Locks and the reason we had chosen to do this arm of the canal system.  Because I was born in Foxton New Zealand I felt I had a duty to visit the place where our little town was named after and to see what the lock system was all about.  I was completely worried about doing the locks.  It’s a staircase lock system of 10 locks with each gate flooding the next gate and a two lock system to go through.  They have volunteers who help you and give advice on navigating and they were really lovely.  “Red before white and you’ll be right”… that was all I had to remember, which basically meant winding the red paddles open before the white paddles and then closing them again after the gates were open.  In the meanwhile Nigel was shitting himself on the boat.  The currents in the lock tend to bang you forwards and backwards and so you must constantly rev backwards and forwards to stay steady.  All the Gongoozlers kept saying to me “You got the hard job then” as I was winding the gates open and closed but they were so far from the truth.  The driving and manoeuvring of the boat is the really hard part and requires way more spatial awareness than I will ever have.

At the end of the locks I thanked my lockkeeper who had helped me the whole way and got back on the boat and Nigel and I high fived.  We made it!  We were then off to go through our first tunnel which was the 1066 metre long Husband Bosworth tunnel.  As you approach you can see a very small speck in the distance of the tunnel which we assumed was the light at the end of the tunnel.  It was about halfway through that we realised it was another boat and that we would have to cross paths in the middle of the diesel smoke filled tunnel.  There is exactly enough room for two narrow boats to pass in this tunnel.  Literally centimetres apart.  It was pretty nerve wracking.  It really didn’t help that the person driving the other boat was a mad woman who sang “la de da de da” the whole way along the tunnel and thought that passing us was a great game.  We finally got through to the other end and again Nigel and I high fived.  We made that too.

Our next adventure on a very big day was an unmanned lock leading into the Welford arm of the canal.  This one wasn’t painted red and white and so I had to really think about what I was doing to get in and out again.  Nigel aced the driving and I finally thought I had the hang of it.  I then decided to take the tiller for a bit and give the driving a go.  Well that was a complete debacle that ended with the boat almost crashing into the bank and getting lodged sideways on the canal while Nigel loudly shouted “Jen what the hell are you doing?”  We’re still best friends though.

Then we continued on for the next six nights.  Stopping where we wanted to.  Shopping where we could.  Saying hello to every single boat we passed and generally just being.  It has to be a good day when the biggest news of the day was that the three swans from the night before had found us again the next night and wanted more crackers.  Big news!  We also managed to feed the fish, see the deer, spot a couple of squirrels, baa at the sheep and generally do bugger all.  You shouldn’t run your engines between 8pm and 8am and so the whole canal stops for the night.  Most nights we were nowhere near anyone else and had the whole place to ourselves.  It was really really lovely.

We did the Foxton locks again on the way back and it was so much easier than the first time.  By now we were locals.  We could answer the Gongoozlers questions about where the water went and Nigel got a clean 7.5 out of 10 for his mid lake entry passing another temporarily moored boat from the lockkeeper.  The lockkeeper also said that it’s a contact sport and to not worry too much about the dings.  We spent the day studying and meandering about at the locks, bought an icecream and a mug that said “We did the Foxton Locks”.  Having gone back to see other people negotiate the middle lock which has a constant current pushing you around Nigel felt a lot better about his effort.  There were some incredible bangs coming from some of the other boats.

So on the final night we headed back to within a short cruise of the Wharf and enjoyed another night in the middle of nowhere.  We ate tinned English pies and mushy peas and baked beans and generally had a good time.  We fed the ducks and washed the dishes and that was pretty much it.  Perfect.  The next morning Nigel aced the boat reverse turn into the wharf and once again we were genuinely sad to say good bye to our little home.  She had certainly convinced us that canal boating was definitely our ‘thing’.

We have decided that we also need to add a disclaimer to this story.  We were in England for the longest warmest dry spell since 1976.  Every day we had was warm around 27 degrees, sunny and dry.  We got our jerseys out once for about an hour the whole week and the rest of the time we were coating ourselves in sunscreen.  The Gongoozlers all remarked as they went past “hot innit?.  At one point we had two English women simultaneously complaining about the heat of the summer and how much they hate winter.  It was classic.  If you were here in a more normal English summer month on a canal boat you may well have a completely different story.  We were incredibly lucky with the weather we got as I can’t imagine it would be nearly as much fun in the teeming rain and cold.  We’d be happy to find out one day though.

So off on our next leg of the journey… Farnborough Air Show!  We love a good airshow!