Settling to a new routine

29th & 30th September

There's been a sense of changing to a new routine over the last couple of days. Yesterday we went from the Deer Farm Bend mooring into Marple, where we were able to moor bow to bow with Priscilla who had managed a trip up to Bugsworth Basin with some friends since they left the Owners' Weekend.

We had a chat with them and then did the first of two shopping trips, bumping into Beryl off Priscilla as we did so. By the time we had finished shopping, it was lunch time .

Preparing to set off after lunch, I agreed to let New Horizons, the trip boat for the disabled, go first as we both needed to wind and she was on a timetable. This actually led to quite a delay for us as by the time they had done so other boats had appeared from both directions, including a BW workboat and tug.

The tug actually followed us in winding in the junction above the locks, so it must have been quite a sight for any gongoozlers on the junction bridge as the boats waltzed round each other.

What was also quite a sight appeared as we came back through the bridge and narrows. Whilst the tug winded, the other BW workers were using the HIAB arm on their wagon to load a wood chipper onto the workboat. They had a bit of trouble positioning it and at one stage one of them was standing on the workboat, underneath the dangling chipper, wearing neither hard hat nor life jacket.

According to Vince Moran, the BW Operations Director, a domestic lawn mower is too dangerous to be entrusted even to trained volunteers like wrgies, but his own staff can be seen breaking every rule in the safety handbook almost any time you like.

Despite the delay, I decided to return all the way to Poynton and moor on our allocated space in Marineville Moorings. It was a routine journey back, but the mooring presented some challenges as this space clearly hasn't been used for a while and is well silted up. We've managed to get Sanity to within about a foot and a half of the jetty. It does seem to be soft silt, so with luck a few departures and returns will let us get a bit closer still.

Today has been a day for catching up on various jobs. It's a good internet signal here so we've started ordering things like the new computer and the VHF antenna for Sanity Again. I'll do a blog post on the other blog tomorrow describing that process. We've also advertised Sanity on the Apollo Duck website.

This afternoon we did a circular walk using the towpath and the Middlewood Way and visited five geocaches in the process. This means we've now visited just over a hundred caches in our first year. This is by no means a rapid rate – some people have been known to do 125 in their first month – but we're still pretty pleased with it. Sheila has become very skilled at planning circular routes in this way.

We got back to Lord Vernon's Wharf just in time to see The Big Boat being manoeuvred under engine for the first time as Peter turned her round so that the bow is under cover in the paint dock. We bumped into Susan whilst watching and went and had a cup of tea with her and Sian, who is the Project Manager for The Big Boat. Then it was back to Sanity only to discover that I had lost one of my gloves somewhere along the line.

After a break, I went back out and retraced my steps, finding it on the path near the last cache we'd visited.

Depending on the weather, we may well pop down to Macclesfield tomorrow; we'll certainly have to pull across to the water point, so it will be interesting to see how easy it will be to get Sanity back out of her cosy bed of mud.

An excellent weekend

25th to 28th September

It's been a very good weekend, with a lot of good news and just two less welcome items. We spent Friday cleaning Sanity mainly, both inside and out. Considering that we've been living on her and boating about in her for five and a half years, she really scrubs up very well.

Saturday we were up bright and early, putting the finishing touches to the boats and the yard, and then we hung about anxiously waiting to see if anyone would appear. We needn't have worried; at ten o'clock people started showing up and things got busier and busier as the day went on. We had a good selection of boats to show:

• Sanity
• Felonious Mongoose
• Priscilla
• Farne
• Autumn Years
• Cala
• New Dawn
• Braidbar 100

In addition we had The Big Boat to show through, a Community Boat with disabled access and a large open area where the saloon and dinette would normally be. She is very nearly finished and will be on her way sometime in the next couple of weeks. We also had the lined shell which is to become Braidbar's new hire boat.

The eating arrangements worked particularly well this year. On Friday evening we had a pot luck supper to which everyone brought a dish of their choice. Since each couple tended to bring enough for four there was an amazing amount of food to go with the baked potatoes which Susan Mason had produced. It really set the tone for the weekend; we had a merry evening which just stopped at the right time for once, so that there were no sore heads the next day.

During Saturday, Lizzie Birks of Shim Shams (the Birks had come by road and stayed in a local hotel) cut a steady supply of sandwiches. These were very good indeed and meant there was no need to go hungry even though we were all kept busy showing off the boats.

Saturday evening saw us barbecuing a good variety of meat; mostly people ate what they had brought, but again there was plenty left over to provide seconds. After that we went indoors for the quiz. A close fought competition was finally won by Des and Gill of Farne and Graham and Beryl of Priscilla.

On top of all this, Peter took two firm orders for new Braidbars and there are prospects for a third.

Less good was the fact that Klaus and Helga of Sebeq could not be with us as Klaus has just had a major operation for cancer. Our thoughts during the weekend were with them both and on Sunday morning we decided to donate the proceeds of the charity auction to Macmillan Nurses. This raised a substantial sum which, with the addition of some gift aid, will enable us to send a cheque for £500.

The other fly in the ointment was the news that the shell for Sanity Again is going to be late. We had approved the plans before the end of August, and Peter had sent them to Tim Tyler straight away, having booked the shell for delivery by the end of September. It now transpires that her base plate will be laid tomorrow, Tuesday, and so we can expect to see the shell in about three weeks time. Tim was expected to come to the Open Day, but didn't show up.

This is a bit disappointing, but is not Braidbar's fault. Fortunately, moving the whole build programme back two weeks doesn't make a lot of difference to us this time. Sanity Again should now be ready for her shake down cruise by mid February, and we have said that Sanity will be available for her new owner by the end of that month. We've had some good interest in her, but no firm offers as yet.

After a leisurely Sunday lunch, we went down to the Anson Engine Museum. It was just as good as I remembered from last year, as once more they had a number of the engines running including one of the very early ones. Sunday night those of us who were still around shared a Chinese takeaway in the bungalow.

We've had a leisurely start to today, not getting up until eight and pottering about putting various bits and pieces back on Sanity which we had tucked away to make a less cluttered boat for showing through. Sheila took advantage of shoreline power to run a washload and to tumble dry some of it.

After lunch, just as we were planning to leave, I spotted Iain Bryceland on the other side of the canal and nipped over there so that he could show me our mooring for the winter. Then it was a case of saying some goodbyes and Sheila skilfully extracted the boat from the yard and steered us down to Deer Farm Bend for the night.

Tomorrow we'll go on to Marple for resupply and probably come back towards Poynton. The canal continues to be very low on water, so I don't think we'll try to get up to Bugsworth or Whaley Bridge until we've had some rain.

Final piece of good news: Elanor tells us that a bottle of Famous Grouse has duly arrived from Canal Boat.

Busy busy at Poynton

23rd & 24th September

We've made it to Poynton, and are now in the throes of getting both Sanity and the yard ready for the Open Day on Saturday. Lots of other Braidbar Owners are arriving to join us, so it looks like being a good weekend.

Yesterday's trip was pretty uneventful, though the Macc is well down up here, around four inches off, which is a lot for a canal that's pretty shallow at the best of times.

We'll be run off our feet, or else socializing, for the next few days, so I won't try to post anything until Monday. After that, there'll be more activity on the Building Sanity Again blog, I expect, but I'll keep folks posted about that next week.

Meanwhile, Nick Wilde calls me to account on the subject of the equinox (he's a master mariner, and knows about these things).

Here's what he said:

In the latest [blog] you put, "...since it is the equinox and the sun rises at six o' clock GMT, that is seven o' clock BST, it could be said to have been a crack of dawn ..."
Oops! Sorry Bruce, two mistakes there.

First: We are all supposed to have stopped using GMT when we changed to UT in 1972 (yes, really, that long ago!) - then the PC brigade changed British Summer Time to Daylight Saving Time, so 06:00 UT = 07:00 DST.

Second: The equinox doesn't mean that the sun rises at 06:00 - today it rose at 05:49 (05:46 in Macclesfield). I'm afraid that is common misconception. Equinox is a term used to describe the moment when the earth's tilt with respect to the sun is zero. In theory, at the equinox, a person at the equator should be able to observe the sun vertically overhead at noon. But that very rarely occurs. So, for somewhere up the Macclesfield Canal (or anywhere else for that matter) there are two (major) buggerance factors preventing sunrise from occurring 'bang on' 06:00. The first is latitude, the further north you are the earlier the sun rises - in summer that is. The other major factor is that we haven't quite got our earth to rotate in its annual orbit at a uniform yet. New Labour have promised that by the next election it will, however, I don't believe their hype. I prefer to continue to believe that which navigators have long believed, that we must also take account of the equation of time.

I replied:

I dunno, everyone's a critic ;-}}}

Thank you for reminding me about these matters so lucidly. I did actually realise that sunrise wouldn't be smack on 0600, but for the purposes of the argument I don't think the odd 10 or 15 minutes matters, this is canal boating, not circumnavigating the globe!

Similarly, whilst you are absolutely correct about the whole GMT/UT(C)/BST/DST thing, I'm not sure many of my readers would have understood modern usage, but you may well be right. I'll pop your observations into my next post, I think, and we'll see what response we get.

See you next week!

Early to boat and early to rise...

21st & 22nd September

Our short week of serious boating continued with another early start yesterday. In fact, since it is the equinox and the sun rises at six o' clock GMT, that is seven o' clock BST, it could be said to have been a crack of dawn start since we were boating by that hour.

We made steady time to Stoke, and reached the bottom lock not long after eight. There was in fact very little traffic about until we reached the final two locks. After that there was an occasional boat coming the other way, but nothing at all unusual for the time of year.

We had twenty minutes to wait at Harecastle, and then went in as the third boat in a convoy of four, the last being a BW push tow who went very slowly. We were out of the northern portal after around forty minutes, by no means our fastest time through the tunnel, but perfectly reasonable under the circumstances. These included very low water levels, the summit pound being about six inches down.

This seemed to be deliberate, as the pounds below the summit had all been full and there was evidence of plenty of water coming down off the Caldon at Etruria. Although the low level meant little anxiety about the air draught in the tunnel it did make steering more problematic. I say this to excuse my erratic course at the start of the tunnel. Having thought that I had Sanity settled in her groove, I took my hand off the tiller to pull the slide over and reduce the dazzle from the engine room lights. Sanity immediately dived to starboard, and before I could recover her, her bow had cracked the tunnel wall a ringing blow. In course of straightening up, I then clipped the wall with the starboard quarter as well.

It's the biggest mess of steering through a tunnel I've made for quite some time.

Confirming my view that the low level of the T & M summit was deliberate, we locked up a good foot and a half at Hall Green, the largest drop I've seen on this stop lock in all the time we've been coming through it. There's been no lack of water on the Macclesfield on either the sump or summit pounds.

We found ourselves following an Anglo Welsh boat who was struggling with his steering even more than I was, so we stopped for lunch just by the Red Bull Aqueduct, and again for water above Hall Green.

Finally we took on diesel at Heritage, where they have a very efficient system for dealing with your declared diesel split; the pump shows the price per litre for every ten percent declared for propulsion, so that you are in no doubt how much you are paying.

We stopped finally on the visitor moorings beyond Ramsdell Hall. No sooner were we settled down than a knock on the roof announced the presence of Graham from Autumn Years, accompanied by his friend Robert who has hired Skye for three weeks. We had a good old natter with them before spending the rest of the afternoon quietly.

Today we had another crack of dawn start in much milder weather. Sheila steered through the succession of bridges which are such a feature of this canal. Indeed, they have three striking characteristics:

• They are extremely elegant being built of the local stone;
• They are quite narrow;
• There is an awful lot of them.

We made good time to the foot of Bosley, again with few boats around, although we saw more traffic once we'd started up the flight. We'd allowed two hours for the locks and planned to have lunch in the long pound just one lock down from the top. However, it was not long after eleven when we got there and so we carried on up and reversed onto the pump out wharf by the service block at the top.

As I've done before, I lifted the manhole cover outside the Elsan sluice so as to reduce the lift for the pump. Partly because of this and partly as a result of my servicing of the pump the other day, it pumped away as quickly as I've ever seen it. This was just as well, as the tank was very full.

Furthermore, just as we were pumping the last of the rinse water out, a BW official arrived and announced without preamble "You can't do that here, stop it." He told us that if we wanted a pump out we should buy a £10 pump out card and use BW's machine.

I've commented before on the irrationality of BW's attitude to self pump out, but I didn't engage this gentleman in debate. His brusque and abrasive manner indicated that lack of self confidence which is the hallmark of the bully, and there was no point in humiliating him by an exercise of intellectual debate to which he would not have been equal.

I confined myself to asking him for his name just as he began to strut back to his car. He told me that it was Terry Gale and that he was the Maintenance Supervisor for the canal. I took him at his word, though he made no attempt to produce identification, nor was he wearing name badge or uniform. He did note the details of the boat in his diary and said that Customer Services would be writing to me to confirm what he had told us.

Meantime and without demur we packed away the kit and in due course boated off.

We went just round the corner and stopped for lunch and then chugged on through the Royal Oak Swing Bridge and the little manual swing bridge, no 47, which for the first time ever was actually closed against us.

We've tied on the field mooring near Lyme Green, just a couple of bridges short of Gurnett Aqueduct. It's very pleasant here and the mooring is on Armco piling rather than the rather problematically spaced rings and wide concrete edge at Gurnett.

Early boating at a busy time

19th & 20th September

We've settled into serious boating mode until we get to Braidbar: this involves early rising and boating until about mid morning. Yesterday we were on the way by seven and as a result had a steady run to Stone. At each of the locks we might have to wait for the boat ahead to clear the lock and for one coming the other way to come down, but no worse queuing than that.

On arrival, we found that the Boaters Christian Fellowship had taken over all the visitor moorings below Star Lock. Apparently, they are on a Mission to the people of Stone until next Wednesday. Fortunately we had already planned to go up the lock flight and tie on the moorings opposite Roger Fuller's boatyard. At half nine, we found just one space on those moorings, although they are more often deserted in our experience.

In the past, I've been reluctant to tie up there, assuming that it would be a much longer walk to the town centre. Checking it with the Garmin, however, showed that it was just half a mile and ten minutes walk to the top of the high street and another five minutes to the Morrison's supermarket.

Stone was very busy with a book-fair; it's a most enterprising town in that way, and one in which we wouldn't mind spending our declining years. The only concerns I would have would be the recent poor reputation of Stafford General Hospital, and the fact that Staffordshire County Council doesn't seem to do well in terms of its delivery of social care.

We did a general shop before lunch and then afterwards walked down to check out the chandlery at Stone Boat Building. There we found a couple of basic fender hangers for hooking onto the cabin rails and a hammock type net that we're going to experiment with as a device for stopping small children falling out of their bunks.

It was a very fast internet connection, which was handy for catching up on various bits and bobs. I found a report of a classic exchange between BW and one of the participants of the recent Waterways World web chat on the Granny Buttons blog:

[Comment From David Roberts]
On the issue of using volunteeers to help look after the sites, I suggested some time ago that if BW provided a mower, we would keep the cut grass, instead of the contractor doing it with a styrimmer at the run every six weeks or so (and costing BW a fortune). Of course the answer was no - had to be on approved supplier list, H&S etyc. Just to cut the grass!

Vince Moran [BW Operations Director]:
David - although we are keen to increase volunteer involvement we cannot ignore safety risks and mowers and strimmers do fall into the higher risk end of things and we can't just give someone a mower and say get on with it.

I really despair of BW sometimes. WRG runs up against the same problem when discussing volunteer input to the maintenance of the existing system. Despite the fact that next year will see the fortieth birthday of the Waterway Recovery Group and that during that time we have developed very substantial experience in training volunteers to undertake serious engineering safely, BW cannot be persuaded that we are fit to do much more than litter pick and haul rubbish out of the waterway.

Anything like reconstruction of a lock wall, the sort of thing that wrg camps do several times every summer, has to be expensively contracted out to commercial engineers.

Today we didn't get going until seven thirty, since the Meaford locks were only just round the corner and were the only ones scheduled for today's run. By half nine we had arrived at Barlaston where we found a lot of boats not yet on the move, but nonetheless had no difficulty in finding a space.

On the way up the flight we were hailed by Pip who was lockwheeling Windsong whilst Roger steered. I see from their blog that we are just one of various canal bloggers they've spotted in the last few days.

Having tied, I walked back to the village to get a paper at the handy Londis, together with a loaf of bread to keep us going for the next couple of days. There was still a lot of the morning left, so we put it to good use by going off in the opposite direction and finding a cache in Hem Heath Wood.

This was another good example of the way in which geocaching encourages you to find walks that would otherwise be overlooked. The weather has been glorious, classic Indian Summer stuff, and we've spent the afternoon on the boat or sitting in the bow.

Sheila continues to experiment with a variety of new crochet patterns culled from the web, and I have at last finished compiling the quiz for next weekend.

Tomorrow sees the big push to get up through Stoke and through Harecastle Tunnel.

Steadily North

17th & 18th September

We are obviously winding down and relaxing after the excitements of the summer; we've both had a decent night's sleep for the last two nights, which has added to the pleasure of some steady but undemanding boating.

Yesterday we chugged through Handsacre and Armitage, past the delicious Spode Priory, to Rugeley. There was a moderate amount of traffic, but nothing like that reported further north in some other blogs. We did two shopping trips, either side of a cup of coffee.

The first took in W H Smith (ream of copier paper, newspaper), Wilkinson's (rubber doormat to form core of new side fender) and Morrison's (food shopping). The second concentrated on Morrison's. Where our first trip had focussed on healthy eating with items such as houmous and their gorgeous multigrain bread, the second redressed the balance with bottles of wine and similar.

By the time we were back on the boat for the second time, it was half an hour short of lunch time. We therefore pottered about putting stuff away until it was nearly time to eat, and then we ate.

Then it was off again. We'd postponed a decision about exactly how far to go each day when planning this final cruise of the year, but since the going was good we kept going as far as Wolseley Bridge. I'm glad we did so, as in the early evening we had a knock on the roof and there were Andy and Lyra of Lyra's Adventures.

We had a nice chat, only disturbed by odd noises from the towpath. Andy had insisted on leaving Lyra outside, saying that she was muddy, though she looked remarkably clean to me. Lyra had got a bit bored with waiting and was conducting an investigation of the construction of the rammed gravel of the towpath by digging a hole in it.

Fortunately, being a softish material, it went back quite easily and it was soon hard to tell where she had been working.

Andy had reassured us about levels of traffic, so we postponed our departure this morning until seven o'clock. Nonetheless, even at that time we soon found boats coming towards us. There were no delays at either Colwich or Haywood, though, and by half eight we were on the Great Haywood water point topping up the tank.

This did allow some boats to pass us and there was a queue of three at Hoo Mill when we got there. The spacing of locks on this section from Great Haywood to Barlaston means that once you've queued for one lock the boats tend to stay spaced out, so that as long as you don't thrash along too quickly you seldom have to wait very long below each of the subsequent locks.

That's how it worked out today; there would often be one or two boats waiting above each lock but we were delayed very little. We'd planned to stop at Salt, between Weston and Sandon, but since it was such good boating weather, calm and mild, we kept going and found a mooring new to us about half way between Sandon and Aston.

We've had a very pleasant afternoon here, with the weather improving all the time. I checked that the sludge pump was still working, since it's been out of use for a few months and we may well get a chance to use it shortly.

Apart from that, I've advertised Sanity for sale on the web site and to the canals list. By coincidence, there will be three secondhand Braidbars for sale at the Open Day a week on Saturday. The hire boat Skye, the show boat the year after Sanity, is on the market as Peter Mason is building a replacement for her this winter. And we've just heard that Essence, the show boat the year after Skye, is also up for sale.

So anyone coming to the Open Day can see the show boats from 2004, 2005, and 2006 and buy whichever of them takes their fancy.

Tomorrow we'll do another early start and hopefully get up the Stone locks before it gets too busy. We plan to moor above Newcastle Road, on the rings with their individual solar powered cat's-eyes, just to make a change from our usual mooring below the winding hole at the bottom of the flight.

Finishing off in Alrewas and then away for the North

15th & 16th September

I'd been expecting a call from the GP on Monday afternoon but it hadn't come, so at ten past eight yesterday I was waiting on the surgery doorstep to get an early appointment. This ploy worked as it usually does and by nine I had been seen and was on my way back to the boat. It turned out the receptionist had taken the number down with one digit wrong.

Doctor Mager-Jones was her usual helpful self and gave me a sheaf of post dated prescriptions to last almost until I'm due to see her again.

We joined the village walk later in the morning; unfortunately neither Will nor Jane could be there, but it was still very pleasant exercise. Five and a half miles later we were back in the pub for lunch. The George and Dragon continues, in my view, to be the best of the Alrewas pubs at the moment and we had a jolly time.

It was a quiet afternoon. Elanor called on her way home from work to collect her Aerobed. I think that I've been successful in patching the leak, but time will tell.

This morning we set off again on our trip north to Higher Poynton – after nearly a week it was good to be on the move. Regular readers will recall that, because of pressure on the moorings when we arrived, we had not been able to top up the water tank during the week and so a stop at Fradley was indicated. I think I've said before that the best answer to the poor water pressure at the tap on the Trent and Mersey at Fradley is to get there early before other demands on the supply reduce the pressure still further.

We managed to get away just after seven and were above Keepers Lock by ten past eight. A boat which had spent the night on the visitor moorings at Fradley was already using the water point. We tied just beyond him and were shortly able to pull back and connect our hose. In the meantime, we'd started the washing machine; after a week of being cautious with water there are a couple of washloads waiting to go.

By the time we set off again, things were getting busy and we had to queue for each lock. It never got out of hand, however, and everyone remained remarkably good tempered. We've come on to the mooring just short of Handsacre that we used last time we were coming this way and it's been a quietly pleasant afternoon.

Sheila e-mailed the Braidbar list with the suggested programme for the Owners' Weekend which is now only ten days away. We also did some internet research in connection with my private pension arrangements.

Gosh, don't they make these things complicated? We are both reasonably intelligent folk, educated to graduate and postgraduate level and with a good working knowledge of the basics of financial markets. Nonetheless, it takes a deal of careful thinking and a lot of reading to have even half a chance of making the right decisions.

Presumably, those with less knowledge or inclination just have to trust the judgement of a financial adviser and hope they are not being ripped off.

Tomorrow, we shall carry on through Rugeley on the familiar route north.

Getting stuff done at Alrewas, and elsewhere

12th, 13th & 14th September

This is going to be a rather bitty post as I catch up. On Thursday as we boated to Alrewas we had an alarming encounter above Barton Lock. I'd just got clear of all the moored boats and opened the throttle to bring Sanity up to cruising speed, when I saw a bow emerging from the marina entrance. I dropped back to tick over and sounded the horn, but the boat just kept coming.

In fact, Anturio IV proceeded to come straight out of the marina in front of me, and it was only by going hard astern that I avoided T-boning her. She ended right across the cut and then with difficulty turned and stopped on the temporary moorings just outside the marina. She has one of those silly looking quasi Dutch Barge wheelhouses, and I suspect that her steerer could neither see nor hear me.

I confined myself to the observation "It's a good job I can stop quickly" as I passed her seemingly oblivious crew, but I was still shaking my head when we reached the queue for Wychnor lock.

As I've said in the last post, there was a lot of traffic about, really quite a surprising amount, and it took us three and a half hours rather than the usual two and a bit to get to Alrewas, where we found a scarce space on the fourteen day moorings.

Fortunately, it was a great day for boating and apart from anxiety about finding a mooring it was a very pleasant trip. Others seemed less relaxed. Sheila had stayed on the towpath after Alrewas Lock, and when she'd found the space by the gate into Mill End Lane, she signalled to me that it was there and also that there was a boat coming the other way.

The steerer of that boat however complained to her that she hadn't told him I was coming. It's not clear what else he thought a woman standing on the towpath with a windlass in her belt and waving her arms around might imply, but after we'd passed and I'd pulled Sanity into the mooring space he disappeared off round the corner still shouting his head off.

Friday was a quiet, doing-bits-and-bobs day and on Saturday I abandoned Sheila for the weekend to join in a stag do for a fellow wrgie who, at the age of 64, is marrying for the first time.

It just goes to show you shouldn't drop your guard no matter how late in the game it is.

Actually, it was a great weekend, and I can strongly recommend the Claydon Museum of Bygones, the Wychwood Brewery Tour and The Case is Altered at Lapworth.

Back on the boat, it was a quiet evening on Sunday.

Today, we've been to the dentist for routine check ups, and I had my diabetic review. All of these were reassuringly normal and we can now look forward to the village walk tomorrow before heading north on Wednesday.

The only outstanding problem concerns Elanor's Aerobed. I had borrowed it from her for Saturday night and found out the hard way that it had a slow leak. I've identified the very small split responsible and made one attempt to patch it. I'm waiting to see if this has been successful, but a discussion forum I've found suggests that it may be a bit tricky to repair.

If the patch using the supplied repair kit doesn't work, apparently some wetsuit glue called Aquaseal offers the best hope of success.

STOP PRESS: I've had a phone call from Nick Wall, Editor of Canal Boat, to say that a bottle of whisky is in the post.

Back in Alrewas

10th & 11th September

Just a quickie today: we were all set to start writing the blog when Elanor turned up on her way home from work, and we sat around nattering so long there's no time left to write at length.

We had a slow trip from Branston to here yesterday, including 45 minutes to get through Wychnor Lock, purely as a result of a lot of traffic, but we made it in the end, and now will stay here until we've finished the doctors and dentists bit and can set off for the North.

I had an interesting comment exchange with Roger Millin about the role and purpose of the National after the last post. He had reported a mate making the usual criticism that it's not what it was, and not so good for the boaters. Here's what I said in response:

As I said last year, I'm a bit puzzled by all this "nostalgia's not what it used to be" bit. IWA has missed its chance to push Crick out of the way, so for those looking for a new boat, that's still the place to go.

Nonetheless, I got a set of filters from Beta, 10 litres of API CC for £25, and a pair of fleece lined trousers for winter cruising. I could also have bought rope and fenders from either of two stalls, JM Goods was there again with their huge display of cheap tools and boys toys, including a whole new range of LED lighting, and the main marquee seemed to have all the usual suspects like LeeSan and Kuranda.

There were another two battery suppliers outside, as well as the Miracle Leisure brass cleaner stand.

There was one fudge stall, and a handful of home made gew gaws, sorry crafts.

Meantime the Presentations suite was busy with RBOA and restoration society talks, and BW's very own Aunt Sally Ash was there to have stuff metaphorically chucked at her.

The beer tent had a wide range of real ale, and entertainment in the form of tribute bands and folk singers. You could get a huge variety of food, and BBQs were once more allowed.

Do please tell me, because I'm obviously missing something - what else do boaters need to have a good time?

I'm more than happy to pass on all suggestions to Ian West. Or, of course, those who reckon they could do better could always volunteer to help...

I don't deny that there are ways in which it could be improved; the arena was a bit dull this year, I thought, apart from the gymnasts, and I'll come back to these issues yet again, I'm sure.

I'm off on a jaunt tomorrow, whilst Sheila stays behind on anchor watch. Hopefully tell you about it on Sunday.

Some sense of closure

8th & 9th September

It's been a busy couple of days, but things are gradually getting sorted out. Yesterday we walked from Branston Water Park to Morrison's again, and bought fresh supplies such as bread. Then we made the short cruise down to Shobnall Marina. The cut continues quite busy but at mid morning there was no difficulty in finding a mooring.

Leaving Sheila guarding the boat, I wandered into the chandlery and swapped a wrong sized fuel filter for a bottle of FuelSet. Early afternoon was spent pottering, then at three I walked across to the Eye Clinic in the grounds of Burton Hospital. As these clinics go, it's quite efficient, but it was still an hour and a half before I got the all clear and could walk back to the boat.

It was a busy evening; Sheila gave me a haircut, I had a shower and then cooked chilli con carne for tea.

This morning we went into Burton, calling at the council tip on the way to unload our recycling. My sixtieth birthday is in the middle of next month, and we tried going into the Council Offices to see if I could apply for my bus pass. Unfortunately, we were a week too soon, so I'm going to have to wait for six months before I can get one.

The trip was not wasted, as we went into Julian Graves to get some more dried fruit and stuff, and did some more general shopping before going back to the boat. It was still only mid morning, so we winded and set off to go back to Branston. Sheila seems to be doing all the winding at the moment and on this occasion disproved the variant of Sod's Law that says you only do a good job of manoeuvring the boat when there's no-one watching.

The Saltire was waiting to leave the marina and hovered with her bow sticking out from under the towpath bridge whilst Sheila spun Sanity in her own length. Who needs a bow thruster?

We've had a very pleasant sunny afternoon on the visitor moorings just to the east of the bridge at Branston. We've sorted out the ilst of all Braidbar boats, and uploaded the current version to the relevant area of the Yahoo! Braidbar Owners' Group webpage.

We've had an emollient e-mail from Clive Henderson about our blue shirt hassles; it feels perhaps a touch complacent, but in the interests of good relationships there's no point in going on any further.

I'd also sent a stroppy e-mail to Nick Wall, the editor of Canal Boat, about the continuing non-delivery of the bottle of whisky the magazine owes us after winning last year's Christmas Quiz. I had a phone call from him today, apologising and undertaking to get things sorted out within the week. Watch this space.

All in all, there's a developing sense of getting some of these vexatious issues closed off.

IWA continues to struggle with the issues around the National Festival. As I've said, it's operated under the aegis of Inland Waterways Enterprises, the charity's trading arm, and I am told that this means it must make a profit so that the charity is not subsidising the trading arm. This doesn't actually feel quite right to me, based on my experience as a senior official of a very much larger charity, the British Psychological Society.

Since I wasn't chosen to serve on the IWA Finance Committee, I'm not privy to the detailed arguments, so I can't comment further.

It seems to me, though, that the National serves far more important purposes than just making money. (This is just as well; we're told that it's made a net profit of £120,000 on an outlay of £1.5m over the last six years, which is not particularly good in commercial terms.) The National is a campaigning event and a massive PR exercise, which has a huge reputational effect. It also brings together something of the order of at least 1200 IWA members, which could not be achieved in any other way.

I'm told that the Festivals Committee has had to argue strongly to ensure that the Festival continues at all; in my view it would be an act of monumental stupidity to abandon such an iconic event.

Back to Branston, and a bit more about the National

7th September

After a peaceful night in Alrewas, we had a relaxed not to say a lazy start this morning since my appointment at the surgery for a blood test was not until twenty to twelve. So we had a morning of pottering about in the boat, which is gradually returning to some sort of order after the distractions of the National.

At eleven o' clock I ambled into the village via the Post Office, so as to despatch a parcel containing t-shirts for the grandkids. Outside the Post Office, I bumped into Jane Howarth and had a quick natter with her before calling at the newsagent and Co-op on the way to the surgery.

Meanwhile, Sheila had run a load of washing and refilled the water tank. On my return we had a quick lunch and then set off back to Branston. Sheila showed her usual expertise in winding Sanity and we then had a fairly slow run since there was a lot of traffic coming the other way. This included some of the blue shirts on their way back from Redhill, and that prompts me to continue with my tales of the Festival.

I'm sorry to say that our time there was rather blighted by an example of the problems of delivering such a substantial event with a volunteer workforce. As first drafted, this sentence was followed by a full account of Sheila's distress resulting from a misunderstanding about her role as a blue shirt.

After reading it through, I've decided that it's better not published as, after a discussion with Sandy Jones the Festival Administrator just before we left Redhill, I hope we have cleared the air. She was effusive in her apologies for the distress caused to Sheila and it is to be hoped we can put all this behind us. Next year, Sheila does not wish to continue working in Finance, but Sandy has suggested an alternative role for her which she is seriously considering.

All this hassle was one reason why I didn't blog at all whilst the Festival was going on. There was far too much risk of me expressing my anger in such intemperate terms that reconciliation would be difficult if not impossible, and I am a great believer in the importance of reconciliation in our dealings with each other.

Rather than publish it here, I'm going to send the full account to Clive Henderson as National Chairman and to Ian West as Chairman of the Festivals Committee, so that at least they are aware of the communication problem which nearly lost them our services permanently.

Having got all that off my chest, I hope I can get back to regular blogging again. See you in a couple of day's time.

Some of the good stuff about the National

6th September

OK, I'm back. Today we moved the boat from a very peaceful mooring at Branston up to Alrewas, getting here after ten o'clock. There was plenty of room on the moorings, a sign that the summer frenzy is beginning to subside.

BW has finally sorted out the mooring signage here, so that there is one length of fourteen day mooring from Kent's Bridge to the Gallows Footbridge, and all the rest is forty-eight hour with the exception of the water point, the lock landings and the winding hole.

Now back to the National: the start of the main wrg camp meant that the focus of our activity shifted to the wrg compound, so that we were only getting back to the boat after nine o'clock at night having left it before seven that morning. Some days, one or other of us would manage to return to the boat during the afternoon or early evening to take a shower, but that was still not conducive to blogging.

In addition, there was some stuff going on in connection with Sheila's role in the Admin Village which made me reluctant to say anything at all on this blog before we had had time to take a calmer view. I'll deal with that in a later post; in the meantime it's appropriate to look at the positives first.

The show site was much easier to work on than some previous ones, being of a regular shape and with a usable roadway, some metalled, some dirt track, around three sides of it. Clearing the camping field of the hay crop was the most physically onerous job that we had to do; in addition the show site itself was very uneven, but I think it's fair to say that the ground in general was the best we've worked on since Beale Park in 2006.

A certain amount of woodchip was deployed, but only to cover the soil which we had used to fill in holes and ruts. The weather remained largely kind and although we had some episodes of heavy rain it soon dried off in the gusty wind which was also a feature of the site.

The wrg camp also ran very smoothly, largely thanks to the excellent leadership of Neil Collings. It's invidious to make comparisons between volunteer leaders, but I must say that Neil showed great skill and judgement in the demands he made on his available workforce. It was a real pleasure to be a team leader for him.

Neil's partner Al Moore did her usual splendid job as cook, producing a variety of meals from the wrg Portakabin kitchen. I should perhaps explain that this facility is not as basic as it sounds; it's a modified "hospitality" cabin which contains two six burner professional gas ranges, two electric griddles and several fridges and freezers. Washing up is done in the Brew Hut next door which is a more basic cabin, fitted with two sinks and a good length of stainless steel worktop. It contains two electric Burcos to provide hot water within the cabin, whilst two gas fired Burcos are constantly on the go immediately outside, thus enabling a continuous supply of tea and coffee.

The show itself went very smoothly with no major alarums. For the second year running we didn't need the missing child procedure, which is probably more a testament to the ubiquity of the mobile phone than to improving standards of parental care. The total footfall has been quoted at twenty thousand, which is at the lower end for this event, but several of us who talked to traders in the course of the show found that they were generally satisfied with the levels of interest they were experiencing.

Things will be much busier next year, when we return to Beale Park. It hadn't in fact been the intention to go back quite so soon, but the arrangements for the planned site in the North West broke down at the last minute, and Beale Park was the only venue which could commit at such short notice in time to enable the announcements to be made at this year's festival.

Finding usable venues continues to be a major challenge. The show is now so big that in addition to the obvious requirements for substantial mooring space (two hundred and seventy boats this year and up to five hundred at Thames locations) we need a total of about seventy five acres for the show itself, the camp site and the car parks.

There's a continuing debate about the purpose of the festival, which I'll come back to next time. In the meantime, we have more or less caught up with our sleep and recharged our personal batteries. I was surprised at how tired I had got, since I had thought I was pacing myself much better this year; I'd obviously been feeling the effects of the stress of supporting Sheila much more than I realised.

More of this anon.

Still in recovery

4 September

We're at Willington on the T&M, on our leisurely way to the Braidbar Owners' Weekend. I'm trying to find the energy to restart the blog properly, but the National must have taken more out of me than I thought. Maybe tomorrow, when we should have reached at least Branston and a slightly better connection than the dead slow one here. What is it about Burton on Trent and mobile internet?

Many thanks to those who've welcomed me back!

Back soon!

I know, I know, it's been over a week since I blogged. Two reasons, one straightforward fatigue, the other a problem about what to say about a difficulty we ran into at the National.

Hopefully from tomorrow I'll start the catch up process with a series of blogs about the National, its joys and problems, as well as the usual updates of our travels.

We've also signed the contract for Sanity Again (yay!), and I'll do a blog over there about that.

Meanwhile, we're above Shardlow, having made a rapid exit from the Soar/Trent to get above Derwent Mouth before yesterday's rain found its way down and closed the rivers.

See you tomorrow.