The Psychlotherapist

Days 9 and 10, Saturday/Sunday Oct 1-2, Rugby to Braunston, (eight hours, 19 miles, three locks) and Braunston to Stockton marina (five hours, 12 mile, three locks)

(I should explain to new readers that what follows, backwards, is an account of a 10-day autumnal cruise around the Warwick Ring canal system in central England in late September 2011. Best, probably, to scroll down and read from Day One through to here. Or, be surprised and do it backwards…)

Hottest October day in Britain since records began, and, while of course utterly delightful as we potter gently, surely more than a touch alarming as evidence gathers of irreversible, and for us humans, sooner or later disastrous climate change.

Our selfish hope today as we potter gently south from Rugby to our absolutely favourite canal village of Braunston, is that the collapse that’s coming holds off long enough for the canals to stay filled up with water and for boats to have space, diesel and leisure to enjoy this magnificent network for a few years yet. Read the rest of this entry →

Day eight. Atherstone to Rugby, 22 miles, one lock, 8¼ hours = 23 lock miles.

Another full-on day. Doing the Warwick Ring in one week is doable – indeed, I know it is having done the Ring on my very first canal boat holiday with a friend and our shared four daughters in 2000. But, slogging our way round the Ring this time, I’m reminded that I must have been somewhat younger and more vigorous then, as this has been an equal measure of fun and hard work.

Moral of this story – pack in the distances and the long locking flights in a first few long days, and enjoy a more leisurely back end of the week confident that you’ll make the boatyard in time for your handover.

That said, my own day has been rather relaxing, having left to Sue most of the steering along the long, pretty but fairly uneventful rolling landscape of the Oxford Canal. Read the rest of this entry →

Day Seven, Kingsbury Water Park to Atherstone, 8½ hours, 15 miles, 14 locks = 29 lock miles.

We didn’t realise on setting off at just after eight this morning just how important it was to get moving and then maintain that momentum.

All became clear at Atherstone locks just after one o’clock, when we learned that because of the current desperate water shortages, this critical flight opens only at 0830 in the morning – and closes, more crucially for us, at 1600, to preserve water in this driest canal year since the legendary English summer of 1976 (when we read, in a local newspaper, that at Foxton Locks not far to the East one could walk across the dry canal bed.)

As it happens, the angels are smiling again, and we contrive to begin the Atherstone locks at pretty much the precisely perfect time to reach the top on the dot of four. In fact, with literally 60 seconds to spare, although the charming couple who occupy the Lock Cottage at lock one tell us that British Waterways do do a last-minute sweep of the locks before the top gates are padlocked for the night, to make sure that no-one is just tackling the final five locks above number six. Read the rest of this entry →

Day Six Wednesday Sept 28, Birmingham to Kingsbury Water Park, 46 lock miles (11 miles, 35 locks), 9 hours.

From Birmingham along the Brum and Fazely canal, dropping away from the town centre along the Farmers’ Locks under Birmingham’s distinctive BT tower, we now have the canal system virtually to ourselves.

It’s a hard, delightfully but also disturbingly warm early autumn locking day, one of our busiest yet in 10 years of canal boating, and it also reminds me how dangerous it is to lower one’s guard even for a moment on matters of safety.

I’m aware as we set off from Birmingham how slippery my plastic Croc shoes are on the wet brickwork of the lockside, so I quickly nip into the cabin to don my much sturdier walking shoes. Lulled into a sense of greater safety, at the next lock I decide to take a short cut across the front of one of the gates, and I lose my grip. Thankfully, my responses are quick enough to catch my fall, and it’s only my legs that get a soaking up to the knees before I manage to catch myself and pull myself back onto the lock gate. Read the rest of this entry →

Day Five,  Tuesday September 27, Waring’s Green to Birmingham Gas Street Basin. 14 miles, no locks, 5 hours.

Quite how I thought we might be able to make it all the way to Gas Street in Birmingham yesterday, I’m not sure, as today we found ourselves moving surprisingly slowly through the southern suburbs of Birmingham past Cadbury’s Bournville  headquarters (how sad that the company is no longer British-owned) with its uplifting odours of chocolate.

Before reaching Birmingham, the character of the canal changes quite sharply, and moored boats suddenly have solid window protection against vandalism. There are shopping trolleys abandoned in the water, and nylon cables that wrap themselves around our prop shaft, reminding me that it is indeed important EVERY morning to check the prop for debris.

I do sometimes despair of human beings, ready to chuck anything into the canals and anywhere else without a thought for other users. Read the rest of this entry →

Day Four,  Monday Sept 26, Rowington Hill Bridge to Waring’s Green, 26 lock miles (seven miles and 19 locks) in six hours

The ducks may stay slim, but that’s not very true of homo sapiens on the canals.

Have you noticed just how many of our fellow canallers are becoming obese? (OK – the photo here is from last year – see below – but I just love it…) Perhaps it’s the evening beers and sausages and chips. Perhaps it’s all that sitting at the back of the boat while the girls do the hard work on the locks. Perhaps it’s just a symptom of our modern civilisation – obsessed with consumption and unable to say no to that extra-large glass of wine and extra plate of chips.

But, that’s not the point of this blog, which is to enthuse about yet another magnificent day cruising gently towards Birmingham.

If last night’s mooring point was one of our favourites on the Grand Union, the Lapworth flight is certainly our favourite locking experience on the Warwick Ring, or indeed (perhaps with the exception of the Tardebigge between Birmingham and Worcester) anywhere on the canal system. Read the rest of this entry →