We had steered our narrowboat into the lock at Swineford on the navigable section of the Bristol Avon before 8 a.m., heading upstream, back towards Bath. Two and a half hours later, we were still there. We were stuck.
Having worked the lock’s paddles, our boat had climbed the requisite 10 feet to be level with the stretch of river ahead. We were poised to open the lock gate and press on towards the Kennet and Avon canal. This, however, meant having to push against the swirling waters of a tidal river. There were only two of us, one still recovering from hip surgery, and pushing the gates of this particular lock open was a job that would need a strong team of helpers. A pack of rugby forwards would be ideal, a recently hospitalised wife less so.
But never mind a rugby team, we hadn’t seen a single other person all morning. No other barge, not even a dog walker had passed us. We were utterly alone, like Doldrums-becalmed mid-ocean sailors but with less fine weather.
After seven days of this we were exhausted, filthy and fed-up of living in a confined space
We had set out four days earlier from Hilperton in Wiltshire on a voyage of discovery. What we were trying to discover was whether we would enjoy more of the same, a lot more.
Robin Ashenden wrote here recently about finally succumbing to trying a canal holiday – after realising how much he enjoyed messing about on boats. But I’m a bit deeper into all this than Robin – and have lately got to a point where I find myself regularly thinking about actually buying one.
After a trio of boating holidays – two on the canal network, one on the Norfolk Broads – punctuated by dozens of walks along towpaths from Hackney to Huddersfield, my wife and I had become increasingly fascinated by the narrowboat life.
We’d fuelled this interest by watching every canal-themed TV show going, starting with the sublime outings of Prunella Scales and Timothy West which for a time became an obsession. And when we’d seen every episode of that more than once we moved on to less artful but still compelling fan alternatives like the BBC’s Canal Boat Diaries and Channel 4’s Narrow Escapes. Then we started scoping boats that were coming up for sale.
The attractions of life afloat are twofold: firstly, a boat is both considerably cheaper than bricks-and-mortar and there is no ground rent if you move pitches every couple of weeks; secondly, it assures you daily contact with nature – ducks swimming past your galley kitchen window and so on.
For us there is the additional attraction of so many canalside pubs. On this trip, at Bradford-on-Avon alone there were three boozers within 100 yards of our mooring: The Canal Tavern, The Barge Inn and the Lock Inn. And what pub enthusiast doesn’t like a lock-in?
But could we handle it? Were we hardy enough? Was I handy enough? So here we were trying to decide if this might be the future for us.
But, as I said, we found ourselves stuck.
In desperation I struck on an idea: if I couldn’t harness any manpower, why not try boatpower? I took one of the boat’s guide ropes and tied it, using a fishermen’s blood knot, to one of the two lock gates. And then reversed hard. The rope strained and strained… and then the lock began to open. The water equalised. We were free.
It was a triumph of improvisation. My triumph… perhaps I was resourceful enough to negotiate the unforeseen obstacles thrown up by a peripatetic life afloat after all.
We faced the same predicament at the next lock – it was just as stiff. This one wasn’t peopleless however – it was next to the beer garden of The Jolly Sailor pub which, it being sunny, was full of drinkers. But I didn’t need them, I thought. I had my rope trick now.
Except this time it didn’t work. The lock refused to be pulled open. All I succeeded in doing was pulling the knot on our rope so tight that it then took me 15 minutes picking at it with a knife and a screwdriver to get the thing untied – before I was forced to ask for volunteers from the drinkers who had been watching and wondering what this idiot was up to. Thank goodness they agreed, it opened and we could continue again.
At this point we decided to take a break. The signs on this particularly pretty stretch said ‘Strictly no mooring – The Duchy of Cornwall’. The idea of squatting on the King’s land was appealing however and we could see others had ignored the rule – so we improvised a landing berth among reeds and spent 36 glorious hours reading, swimming, birdwatching, sunbathing on deck or strolling to the nearby Boathouse pub before continuing to the six-lock flight at Bath and finally back to base.
But after seven days of this we were exhausted, filthy and fed-up of living in a confined space. Having handed our boat back and returned to dry land, we felt so scuzzy that it suddenly felt the only remedy was to repair to the most refined establishment within a 50 mile radius – The Newt in Castle Cary – to restore oneself with a fine dining lunch. This worked a treat. But it very much was a treat and not something we could afford as part of any new routine.
In his classic Britain-by-boat travelogue, Coasting (1983), Jonathan Raban describes a recurring type: a divorced man who has ploughed the entirety of his share of the house sale into living his long-cherished boat dream, only to become semi-feral and borderline destitute. When trying to buy a boat himself, Raban finds that seemingly every vendor fits this profile – a warning that buying himself may not be the best idea.
Similarly, in her Booker-winning 1979 novel Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald portrays a bohemian life on a barge which gradually unravels – as does the ramshackle boat itself.
Both these books were giving me pause.
That Channel 4 show had appropriated one of the most popular names for boats you see on the canals: Narrow Escape. The phrase is intended to indicate that one has left the rat race behind for a more sedate life on the water. But for me it offered an alternative reading: evoking someone who has flirted seriously with the idea of buying a boat to live in but then thought better of it.
Which of these were we? I’m still not sure. After being wiped out as we stepped off the boat, I’m already looking back at it fondly. We had such good fun. The bug has not gone away.
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