All aboard

So we are back on the Rusty B after a 5 week break while he/she was in the marina having  some welding done. I know boats traditionally are known as ‘she’ but Rusty B is definitely of the slightly unwashed male variety , much loved and a bit scuffed around the edges. As T says ” a bit of a rat boat”. We were in a dingly  dell part of the Kennet and Avon canal last summer, all painted enamel jugs and brass potholes, with a chintzy tea room beside the locks so that people could sit and watch as the boats came through. There was a family taking photos as I waited for T and Rusty B at the other side of the bridge having opened the lock gates. When they emerged, the dad smirked and said” don’t bother with that one”.

This morning we are in Avoncliff which is near Bath. It’s very beautiful with a gorge,  and the rushing  weir on the river Avon that runs through the village lulled us to sleep last night. There is an aqueduct over the river and a tiny railway station. The pub down the lane reminds me of a pub we went to in Wales once, a favourite of climbers which was built from wood, a bit like a glorified garden shed, the walls adorned with summit photos and mountain ranges, piles of walking  sticks at the door. I am sitting in bed with the door open and a cup of tea, the stove roaring, looking out on the joggers and dog walkers, who are all out in force along the towpath despite the soft smudged drizzle. A pair of old ladies just waltzed past in matching lilac raincoats and white galoshes like characters out of a Monsieur Hulot film, their immaculate Dalmatian dancing on the end of a scarlet lead.

Because we are always on the move ( the licence we have means that we are continuos cruisers and cannot stay in the same place for more than fourteen days) it means that we get tiny snapshots of life, a brief glimpse into the villages ( and the pub) for a short time and then we leave. We rarely stay put for longer than two nights and indeed this whole process has brought out the nomad in T who gets twitchy and will no doubt start making “it’s time we got going” noises as soon as the Archers  omnibus has finished. We both realised pretty early on that boating and speed do not go hand in hand and there is no point attempting to get anywhere fast, better to just meander along and see where we end up. It reminds me of my birth dad, a seasoned traveller who drove all over the country in a series of trucks, horse boxes and boats who always said a journey was about the journey, not the destination. Apart from anything else the boat travels at the equivalent of a brisk walking pace so speed is not of the essence. The other day we happened to be chugging alongside a couple who were in the middle of what can be described as a lively discussion as they marched along the towpath hurling insults at each other. Unfortunately there was nothing for it other than to pretend we couldn’t hear,  because much as we wished they would break into a run and leave us, or that Rusty B could speed up, we were stuck with them. 

There is a  hierarchy in the boating  world, like in all walks of life. Top of the tree are the liveaboards , people who live on their boats all year round, identified by the piles of logs, wheelbarrows and bikes strapped to the roof, alongside windowboxes and solar panels. Second are the CC’s like us,  who have our boats as floating holiday homes and who come and go, some regularly and some hardly at all, some with all the latest gadgets and matching fleeces of the Captain and First mate variety with their blazers , and those hooks you hang bananas on in their immaculate compact folding up kitchens, complete with paper flowers and lace doilies woven like spider webs on the portholes. And third, the pariahs of the canals, the hire boat folk. They have always been given a very bad press, infamous for their lack of knowledge, for their inability to open and shut locks, their speeding , drinking and loud parties. As is always the case,  people  like to have someone else to blame and as we all know there are bad apples in every woodshed. 

It must be quite interesting living in a house along one of these canals with an ever changing scene at the end of your garden. Some of these houses are quite amazing, but the  little jewels in the crown are the renovated lock keepers cottages that keep guard over every lock, with roses over the front door with apple trees and fruit cages.

In big cities I imagine the relationship between boaters and landlubbers is not always harmonious, where moorings are scarce and boats have to double moor and live right on top of one another,  and the towpaths become virtual motorways with human traffic from pedestrian to cycling variety.  One of the boating FB pages I am on is  always posting reports of increasing amounts of muggings and thefts around London,  which is pretty depressing and must be very frightening. You do feel vulnerable on a boat and boats are extremely easy to break into. But the fact that there also seems to be a spate of boaters stealing from other boaters is really grim. Bags of coal, generators, bikes. So we stay clear of these places, we already live in a city so why have our boat in one? 

So we stick to the quiet waterways where people wave cheerily as we pass, where other boaters are  friendly and welcoming, the sort of places where you see herons and kingfishers before breakfast , and in the mornings the air is thick with the smell of woodsmoke and coffee, the sort of places where for a couple of days everything seems right with the world.