Walking at Welford

Monday 11 June

Waking to a misty but pleasant morning, we made an early start and were at Husbands Bosworth Tunnel by nine. By 9.15 we were out the other side and boating gently round to the junction with the Welford Arm. The arm is just a mile and three-quarters long, and ends with a small lock with a rise of three feet or so.

When you get to the end, there’s a choice of moorings and winding holes, and indeed marinas, not that either of these latter are very big. The first marina is in a lagoon with an entry under a steep ladder bridge, but has the best winding hole outside it, and there are 14 day moorings just before it. The other marina is a wide part at the end of the arm, followed by a tricky triangular winding hole outside a dry dock, with 48 hour moorings along the towpath past it. There are services available at the end, but as we didn’t need any of them, we chose the early option. This just means a slightly longer walk to the village, which is up the road off the end of the arm, but as we’ve come here to walk anyway, that’s hardly an issue.

I had forgotten just how limited the shop is here in Welford. It’s a Post Office which also sells milk, bread and newspapers, together with some tinned goods, but they have no fresh stuff at all.

After lunch, we decided on a short walk to fill the afternoon. One of the good things about this village is that it has a set of well waymarked routes of varying lengths (two to eight miles), all of which are shown on a set of notice boards at the end of the arm. There’s also a nice pub, call the Wharf Inn. We chose to do part of the reservoir walk, which takes you to two of the three reservoirs, Welford and Sulby, which feed the canal. The third, Naseby (as in the Civil War battle) is about three miles away.

We just went as far as the reservoirs, not doing the rest of the long walk to Sulby village. I got some shots of some impressively horned cattle, and of some greylag geese, but there wasn’t much in the way of less common birdlife around.

Arriving back at the wharf, we found that the Floating Bookshop had arrived, and as we were browsing the stock, Mehalahland turned up. We bought a total of six books, and had a good natter with Dave and Anna before going back to Sanity for a cup of tea. Also at the wharf, in fact filling most of the visitor moorings, were five hire boats containing one Canadian family, from a 91 year old great granny in a wheelchair to two toddlers in life jackets.

Tuesday 12 June

After yesterday’s exercise, we positively slept in by our standards, not coming to until 7.45. I went to the shop and bought a paper and some pork pies, and then we set off for a longer walk, about six miles or so, back along the canal to the junction, then along the mainline to a choice of bridges leading to footpaths going up a ridge and so back to the village. We opted for an intermediate path, but had to accept an alternate route along a road to avoid a heavily overgrown bit. As we were in shorts, the sight of waist high nettles was not encouraging.

There is supposed to be a leaflet showing all these walks, but the shop had run out of them. In the end, I used the camera on the phone to take shots of the two routes we were considering, and uploaded them to the laptop and then printed them out. Pleasingly, this produced perfectly useable maps. We’d taken lunch with us, but in fact got back to the boat just on twelve, so we ate on board, then ran the engine. I was somewhat perplexed about dinner tonight – we were out of veg, and had just a little salad stuff left. In the end, I decided to open a tin of corned beef, and with the remains of the salad stuff and bread we had an adequate meal.

Running the engine and the washing machine in the afternoon showed that the charging system is still not quite as it should be. The inverter/charger is inclined to stop charging prematurely. Either the new brushes haven’t fully bedded in yet (seems unlikely) or there’s some incompatibility building up between the TravelPower and the Victron. This will need pondering, and perhaps some mods to the system to get more stable charging. Consultation with those of an electrical bent on the canals list is indicated, methinks.

Incidentally, Sheila commented the other day that my cryptic remarks about rogue boat builders could perhaps have been more helpful. There’s website about the particular case we were discussing here. Publications from both Waterways World and Canal Boat give a lot of helpful advice to those contemplating buying a boat, as does reading those two magazines, of course.

On the basis of our own experience, all I’ll say is that the BMF contract or its equivalent is vital, as is visiting the yard regularly to check on progress. All decent builders will welcome your visits (we turned up about every fortnight). If for whatever reason you can’t visit regularly, then you should think hard about briefing a surveyor to monitor progress for you.

Whatever happens, remember that by and large you get what you pay for, and if the deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. If a builder asks you for a stage payment early, or to buy materials, cut your losses and get out; don’t give him a second chance, take the boat as it is and run for it. People have lost 40, 50, 60 thousand pounds (I kid you not) because they kept going with a builder who was clearly on the skids. Apart from the actual hull, engine and whatever fitting out has been done, which should belong to you beyond doubt under the BMF contract, you are just an unsecured creditor, and after the Revenue and the banks have had their cut, there’ll be precious little left for the rest.

Do not be too alarmed by this! Most builders are honest and in good shape, and do a very good job within whatever budget they work, but it makes sense to show caution and common sense in making what’s probably the second biggest purchase of your life.