On
Board
Chapter
28 - Wintering on the Llangollen Canal November 2005 to March 2006
Having put FRILFORD
into Blackwater Meadow Marina at Ellesmere on a couple of occasions
so I could drive south, for unexpected funerals as it happens, two
of them, I realised it was a pretty good place to be. Another plan was to moor in the branch at Ellesmere. I talked to British Waterways about doing that and they said I could, if I paid them about £420 for the right to stay there. Several boaters were doing that and several more were tying up along the length of the canal and moving about a bit to charge batteries, get water and all that sort of thing. I liked the idea of doing that but realised that if I wanted to leave FRILFORD for a bit, there’d be no specific security. Moving ever further back from original water gypsy idea I went to speak, again, to Neil, the manager of Blackwater Meadow Marina. Blackwater Meadow
Marina was full, it is always full, but Neil, bless him, can ‘work
things’! He had a berth that belonged to someone else who would
not need it until the end of March ’06. Did I want it for the
winter? “Yes,” I said, and we did a little deal. “Ah,” said an old boater I’d got to know a bit, one who was to spend the winter in Ellesmere Branch, “that’s letting the side down…!” “Is it?” I replied, a little embarrassed. “I think so,” he came back. As far as he was concerned I had committed the cardinal sin of paying more for something than I needed to. Money is a big issue for most people on The Cut and whilst it should have been for me too, considering I was spending the bank’s money not mine (that’s right isn’t it? It is their money – I don’t have to worry about it…!) I have always been prepared to pay for something that rendered a quantifiable service, and I reckoned I’d be alright in Blackwater Meadow Marina. I was. Winter
there passed in a series of not-unattractive incidents! Early on a
man brought a brand new highly-painted and polished 60 foot boat and
mooring in the berth next to FRILFORD and me. Not long afterwards,
returning from a cross-marina movement to pump out my slurry tank
and get some fuel, I managed to put a light six foot long ‘scuff’
along his highly-glossed top panel of his hull. Blackwater Meadow Marina is a bit of a ‘closed society’. As an ex-boarding school type I know a bit about such places. The relationships people have with each other are a little more involved than they might otherwise be, and incidents and happenings take on a greater importance than they might otherwise do. Take John and the gate, for instance. John is a lovely chap; an ex-accountant. Lives on his boat alone in Blackwater Meadow Marina. He has no other family and no property ‘ashore’. Perhaps due to his accountancy training he is very precise in the way he lives. He is the unofficial/official ‘warden’ of Blackwater Meadow Marina. Every such establishment
needs a chap like John. He walks around the place checking that everything
is how it is supposed to be and if it isn’t, he tells someone
about it, frets a little, and makes some sort of amends. He closes
and locks the main gate each evening. Whilst I was there John’s life was very much taken up with the fact that someone (“…and we know who it is – we’ve even spoken to him about it…!”) had taken to opening the gate late at night, usually en route back from a local hostelry, and locking it again in a non-John way! It was the chain and padlock, you see. Not fed through the barrel bolt but wrapped round the gate itself… Many were the mornings when a simple “Morning John…” greeting from me became several minutes of intense talk about the mis-locking of the gate again last night. John doesn’t
buy coal at the marina because he can get it cheaper at the coal merchants
‘down the road’. Cheaper because you take your own bags,
fill them yourself, hump them into the back of your car yourself and
hump them out again yourself back at the marina. Cheaper the coal
might be, but all that humping and getting the car filthy, not to
mention the fact (well, I just am of course) that ‘down the
road’ is about six miles away in the middle of a wood, and with
petrol the price it is…, means that I buy coal at Blackwater
Meadow Marina. I gave John a bag of coal once. I can’t remember
why I did, but I did. Bruce and Eve I met very early on. A charming couple and real characters, both of them. They live on their boat in Blackwater Meadow Marina and Bruce also ‘keeps an eye on things’ round the place. Bruce is a real gentleman and introduced himself to me almost as soon as I first arrived. He is always ready to help with anything, and always ready to offer advice. Eve is as warm and friendly as the day is long, and they are both as warm and friendly as the evenings are long, and I should know – many are the evenings that they have asked me onto their boat for supper. Eve doesn’t drink. She’d like to but she has to cope with something which does not allow her to drink. Bruce, on the other hand, enjoys a drink. “Come for supper later,” Eve would say to me during the day, “Bruce is out doing a few jobs for a friend and he’ll want a couple of glasses of something when he gets back. He’d love it if you kept him company.” We are neighbours
on the marina and not needing to be asked twice I’d present
myself on board Edelweiss, their boat, bottle or two in hand (“You
didn’t need to bring those….!” was always the response!)
and whilst Bruce and I laughed away the evening, for we were always
laughing it seems, Eve would produce plates of good food from the
well-stocked galley. Bruce and Eve know a lot about life on The Cut. They sold up several years ago and their boat and what goes on in and around it, is their life. They are not in the least bit sedentary and make long trips during the summer months, only returning to Blackwater Meadow Marina to winter and be ‘at home’. In the winter, wood is their great thing. Bruce doesn’t reckon to spend much on fuel but he likes to have a decent amount of it and, like others, but never in company with others, with whom he is in not friendly but amiable competition, he’s out and about to see what wood might be found along the banks of the canal. There are rules about what one can take and not take. British Waterways are okay boaters doing some modest wooding but they are not happy if the boaters get too bold. Bruce is very respectful of the rules and, bold fellow though he is, does not get too emboldened whilst wooding. ‘Chain Saw’ – those are the bogey words of The Cut wooding fraternity. People have them but they are not to be flaunted. I don’t have one! Bruce and Eve
went wooding up near Chirk one day – in the bit I call Lord
of the Rings. Invited me to go up and join them. I made it a two half-day
trip to find them up there. I had not been out for some time and it
was nice to get out of the marina and be by myself for a night. Another time I met Bruce and Eve up there, their wooding had come to a halt. British Waterways appeared from around the corner with a work barge. They’d come to clear a fallen tree out of the canal, ironically. Been there for ages, but it was increasingly getting in the way of boaters. Bruce had been perhaps a little bold in his wooding that day and the British Waterways Line Manager had hailed him in a friendly but rather determined way. Bruce got the point immediately and stopped what he was doing. He knows all the BW people and they know him. No-one did anything to embarrass the others but Bruce did not get his wood, either! This irked him and he talked about little else as we made our two day trip back to Ellesmere, picking up bits and pieces of wood as we went. There is an order
to things on The Cut, however. The winter months were punctuated with enjoyable trips up the canal towards Llangollen with various friends at various times. My cousin Christopher from Liverpool took to bringing members of his family down for trips on the boat. We established a bit of a routine. They’d drive from Liverpool to Chirk Marina and I’d meet them there in my car. I’d drive all of us back to Ellesmere where we would board FRILFORD and spend the rest of the day meandering up the canal back to Chirk. Christopher is a great one for creating meals on board so we’d stop somewhere for a tasty something which I’d leave him to create in the galley. All of his family have now been on FRILFORD, that’s three boys and his daughter, and his wife Angela, although not all at the same time. He clearly enjoys being on the boat and I suspect we will do more of this in the future. Another time I took FRILFORD to Llangollen then came back with the Bunning sisters, Christine and Annette, and Christine’s son Matthew. Having crossed the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct we then walked under it and over it. Boating it is one thing, walking on it is another! Anyway the weekend was good and when we got back to Ellesmere on the Sunday and I drove them back to Llangollen to pick up their cars, the day was still quite young, so we entertained ourselves by walking up the steep hill to Llangollen Castle. From there one can see the Llangollen Canal snaking its way back down the side of the valley, with the River Dee meandering its turbulent way along the valley floor. One gets a good view of the castle from the canal so it was good to turn the scene round and see it from the other way. This was not the
first time I’d walked across the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. I think we did
the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct justice on its birthday. During the day,
as the weather required coats to be fetched, worn and then returned
to FRILFORD, I walked across the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct about eight
times. The last time was after it had got dark as I was returning
to FRILFORD after a couple or three bracing drinks. Another time a
friend of mine, Gwen, and I set off from Ellesmere, had a few St.
Patrick’s Day drinks in Lion Quays, ate the dinner which Gwen
cooked on board (with a little help from the kitchen at Lion Quays
– “Have you got any……? What about …….?
No? I’ll pop into the pub: I’m sure the kitchen won’t
mind!” Gwen’s lovely so of course they didn’t mind.
Would have been different if I’d been doing the asking.”),
then planned our assault on the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct the next day.
Which we did (crossings 15 and 16 for me) before settling down in
the basin at Frontcysyllte to watch some quality TV: qualifying for
the Malaysian Grand Prix and the Commonwealth Games. One time a freighter, the ‘Hudson Firth’ turned up in the marina. Sailed right past FRILFORD! She used to carry freight round the coast of Britain and Europe and here she was, in Blackwater Meadow Marina. It might be that she was a model, built by Gordon, another of the berth holders at Blackwater Meadow Marina. It might be – but it might be that the world suffered a Douglas Adams-esque crisis of scale for a few minutes. Another time I woke to find my little world under nine inches of snow (okay – 5 inches of snow, but…). People often ask me how I keep warm on board. The stove I have in FRILFORD is too big for the boat and when burning nicely kicks out enough heat to warm a boat twice the size. A nice problem to have – I have never been cold on FRILFORD, and I doubt I ever will be whilst Bruce is close by! ‘On shore’
perhaps the most enjoyable experience of the winter was establishing
a friendly relationship with Andy and Elaine, publicans at The White
Hart pub in Ellesmere. Reputed to be the oldest pub in Shropshire
it has a wonderful atmosphere and a most enjoyable clientele. Andy
is the perfect host, knowing everyone’s name and greeting them
using it, always having a word or two to say, and keeping a Cask Marque
cellar of top quality. Elaine, too, is a genial and welcoming hostess.
It was actually 13th April before I finally got away from Blackwater Meadow Marina. ‘Got away’ sounds like I was keen to break out. No, although when I got east of Wrenbury and into a bit of the Llangollen Canal which I had last seen when entering it with cousin Christopher back in the previous September, my pulse did quicken a bit, and quickened some more when I got through the locks at Hurlston and out onto the ‘Shroppie’. But that’s for another day. I had not planned
to spend a whole six months on the Llangollen Canal, but I am not
at all sorry that I did. Mind you, one can get drawn in. Take my friend
Bill, for instance. Something of a Renaissance Man he had arrived
at the Blackwater Meadow Marina some time the previous year, bound
for Chirk, some 12 miles or so further up the canal. I didn’t get sucked in to that extent. Mind you, as I write this in Abingdon on the River Thames I am about to set off on FRILFORD to go non-stop back north to Ellesmere. Reckon it’ll take me about three weeks if I am not delayed. Need to get there before the British Waterways Stoppages Programme for 2006 kicks in, and it starts on 6th November. There is some symmetry here and I fancy a little more of what Blackwater Meadow Marina, Ellesmere, The White Hart, the Llangollen Canal and the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct have to offer. “The usual, Andy, please… Hi Elaine..! Yes, fine thanks, and you…?”
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Several
old canal hands sucked teeth and tutted when I mentioned leaving the
Llangollen Canal and taking my chances around The Cut that winter
and as British Waterways were about to shut a lock for maintenance
to the east of Ellesmere, thus locking us boaters into the Llangollen
Canal until the end of March, my winter plans were looking unlikely.
More
expensive than doing a deal with British Waterways but the difference
was that FRILFORD would be behind locked gates and had access to shore
power, a laundry, showers, toilets and a chandlery. Also I could bring
my car up from the south and have it with me, and I would run FRILFORD
like a country cottage for a few months.
He
was furious and sent me a bill for repainting the entire panel, about
£350 plus VAT. Later, I returned from a weekend in Liverpool
to find he had spent the weekend on his boat and had unplugged the
shore power from my boat to plug in his. I had a word with Neil; Neil
had a word with him. I moved to another berth. Eventually I had a
word with him (let’s call him Derek) and slowly, oh so slowly,
we established a more friendly relationship. He polished out most
of the scuff on his hull, which, anyway, was nothing compared with
the lumps of paint the crane had taken off the boat when they put
her in the water.
There
is a barrel bolt, a top bracket, a chain and a padlock. John likes
it all put together in a certain way. This is not perversity; it is
reckoned that put together the way John puts it all together means
it all can be taken off quite quickly. Once upon a time long ago someone
had been taken ill at Blackwater Meadow Marina and an ambulance had
been called. It arrived after lock up and several minutes were spent
unlocking the gate, hence the ‘quick’ system now employed.
He
smiled but looked a bit perplexed. “Is that a problem?”
I asked. “I suppose not,” replied John amiably, “but
how am I going to account for it in my records?”
Next
day the exchange would be something like “Cor, mornin’
Adrian; got a slight head on me today. What time you leave last night?
I fell into bed and was out like a light. Must have got up for a pee
at some stage but don’t remember doing so…!” “About
midnight.” “About midnight – what? That’s
when you left? Blimey! How are you this morning?” “Fine,
thanks…” “Well, course, you’re a lot younger
than me…”
When
I met Bruce and Eve at Lord of the Rings they were already chopping
rings into blocks, a lot of which they insisted I have. Suddenly my
previously-clear foredeck was piled with wood and I looked like a
‘real’ live-aboard. “If anyone asks, you were given
it…” smiled Bruce, conspiratorially. Apparently in the
wooding scheme of things provenance is everything and my having wood
with no provenance was easier than my having to explain. “Fine,”
I said; “you have just given it to me!” “Yes, but
don’t mention me…!” “Right.”
A
day or so later a British Waterways crane lorry pulled into Blackwater
Meadow Marina. It was carrying a large tree trunk. “Bruce,”
they cried out, “this is what we hauled out at Chirk. We’ve
nowhere to put it. Can you use it?” Bruce could, of course.
Before two days had passed that tree truck was neatly chopped blocks
of wood for burning, and a goodly amount of it was on my foredeck!
And in my stove.
On
26th November 2005, some time previous to the Bunning visit, I had
taken FRILFORD up the canal to attend the celebrations to mark the
bicentenary of the opening of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in 1805. I
had a good run up there and was able to moor very close to where I
needed to be. Later other boats came and had to moor further away.
I’d done rather well, it seems. The day was cold, grey and wet
but cleared up later. Military men in historical uniforms provided
an honour guard and Thomas Telford himself (at least a chap dressed
just like him) made a rousing speech. A musket-fired salute rang out
and the large crowd busied themselves with enjoying the exhibitions,
the musical shows and the military mock battles which took place in
the field close by. The adjacent Telford pub did very well and all
in all it was a very good day. Steve Phillips, his wife Wendy and
their son Lloyd joined me in the evening to watch the fireworks. They
were magnificent and fitted perfectly to the rousing music to which
they were set.
I called a friend of mine who also has a healthy regard for the aqueduct.
“Where are you now?” he asked. “Walking rather carefully
across the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in the dark. I’m right in the
middle as I speak,” was my reply. “Get off the bloody
‘phone and concentrate man!” was his to me. Next day,
rather than winding FRILFORD on the other side as I could have done,
I went across the aqueduct, winded on the Trevor side, and crossed
over again. Crossings 9 and 10 for me, according to my logbook.
The
next morning we watched the Malaysian Grand Prix live then set off
back to Ellesmere. Watching 200 mph cars in Malaysia one minute; conning
a 3 mph boat on a canal in Wales the next. Life is full of contrasts!
She
works full time in Oswestry so how she finds the strength to work
behind the bar in the evenings I don’t know. Except that I do,
actually. Andy and Elaine are not in the first flush of youth but
are not long married. Second time around for both of them and, as
they are pleased to tell whoever will listen, they are very happy
together. She supports him and he supports her. No wonder there is
such a welcome at The White Hart. Sunday music sessions, Folk Night,
the Quiz Nights, I have been lucky enough to get involved in all these
things. Even made the Inner Circle. Once a month or so Andy and Elaine
go out to dinner somewhere. They grab a few friends to make up a table
and took to grabbing me. A privilege for an itinerant, soft-handed
southern Englishman. The Welsh border is a mile up the road from Ellesmere,
less maybe, and Andy is a keen Welshman!
For
reasons I don’t think I have ever discovered, not that I’ve
asked, he tarried a while. He’s known as Steamboat Bill as he
has a lovely steam open day boat which he has used to take admiring
guests (I suspect they admire both him and the steamboat but I am
not going to tell him that) up and down the canal on trips. I met
him when I first went into the Blackwater Meadow Marina for all the
usual services and he did the necessary for me. We got talking and
he happened to mention that boaters enjoy a pint in The White Hart.
Many is the time he and I have enjoyed a few in there, for he is a
musician and plays harmonica at the drop of a hat, especially if it
is dropped in The White Hart. Added to which he now actually works
at Blackwater Meadow Marina. Started off a bit ‘casual’
but recently he seems to be ‘on the strength’. There’s
more – his, apparently, quite complicated love life appears
to be concentrated on the town of Ellesmere these days, at one address
in particular. If that is not enough he had bought a small place along
the canal next to Colemere. It needs work so he’s not going
anywhere in a hurry. So he got thoroughly ‘sucked in’
by Blackwater Meadow Marina, Ellesmere and all that therein is. And
do you know…. he has yet to get to Chirk!