Ashton Boatman

We planned to take "Forget me Not" up the 7 locks to Stalybridge yesterday, but Storm Arwen put paid to that idea. This morning dawned clear and still and sunny. I met Aaron and Danny at Portland basin and we set off at about 10.15. The sky had already clouded over.

Arnold and Beth Allen have been great supporters of the "Hazel" project for many years. Beth made a huge difference to the chances of getting "Hazel" restored when she was president of the Tangent Club for a year. If I remember rightly she raised £5,800, which was enough to move the project from forlorn hope to something that might actually happen.

At the time of their ruby wedding anniversary in 2012 their daughters gave them the two kitchen windows for "Hazel", which was under restoration at the time. Eventually I made a plaque acknowledging the gift, but it was a bit flimsy. Recently I went to see Alf the keycutter on Ashton market and ordered a proper plaque made from slate, so here it is.

Thanks Beth and Arnold.

Today, we ran one of our thank you trips for NHS workers and family. We also took Heidi the Canal Pirate who filmed the trip for her regular Vlog. This comes out on You Tube at 6pm every Thursday. https://business.facebook.com/ThePirateboatUK/?__xts__[0]=68.ARAuCwy...&fref=nf She says it will be about 3 weeks until this episode appears, but it's well worth watching her channel anyway. The crew were Aaron (what would I do without him) and Julie and our guests said they really enjoyed it.

Here's the swans. They produced 2 cygnets this year, still bearing a few brown feathers. They'll be off to establish their own territories in the spring.

"Queen" is the oldest surviving wooden motor narrow boat (as far as we know) built in 1917 for Hildick & Hildick of Walsall she was originally "Walsall Queen" and apparently worked between Walsall and Brentford carrying coal with her butty "Queen of the Ocean". She's become known as the boat with nine lives as she's been sunk and abandoned 3 times so far. She finished her carrying career in 1947 with Harvey Taylor of Aylesbury and was left to sink. She was rescued in 1949 and became a pleasure boat until sunk again in 1987. Rescued again, she was patched up but sank at Denham on the Grand Union and was due to be smashed up by BW until rescued by the WCBS in 1994.

Yesterday morning Nessie checked her pumps and everything was OK, but, a couple of hours later we realised she was quickly going down. The pumps were still running, so she must have sprung a really big leak. Another task to keep us busy, raising Queen and fixing the leak.

We're going to have to start fundraising for her restoration before too long. Any offers of help?

"Lilith" was my first wooden narrow boat. I bought her for £100 in 1974, then replaced all but one of her planks over the next 9 years. Some research be Dave McDougal at the Black Country Museum showed that she was gauged on 2nd December 1901.

After we set up the Wooden Canal Craft Trust (as it was then called) I donated her. Since 1996 she's worked on recycling trips, as well as doing useful jobs like carrying timber for "Hazel"s restoration. Now, after more than 40 years, she needs her stern end rebuilding again.

Sadly, she's unemployed at the moment, except for storing firewood and scrap iron. The recycling trips are suspended until the covid infection rate drops considerably.

Here's a photo of "Lilith" tied alongside Boatmans Walk.

We ran a 'Thank You' trip yesterday for some NHS workers. A new volunteer, Cheryl, came along and steered "Hazel" under Aaron's tutelage. She said she was a photographer. Well, I thought, everyone's a photographer nowadays. Then she sent me the excellent photos she took from "Hazel"s hatches.

I was on the motor boat which Mick Owen was steering.

A few pictures of a thank you trip returning through Dukinfield on 3rd November. "Forget me Not" steered by the wonderful Aaron Booth, "Hazel" steered by new volunteer Patricia under the tutelage of Geraldine Buckley.

When we were buying trailers to tow with the land rover, prices had gone stratospheric. I managed to locate a suitably sized box trailer at a reasonable price all the way down in Kent. It does the job but the chassis turned out to be both flimsily built and badly corroded. For the last few days Nessie has been busy reconstructing it. He's planning to finish it tomorrow morning ready for shop deliveries to commence at 10AM.

Over the weekend we were busy running "Hazel" trips for NHS workers and their families. It's the start of a pretty busy time, especially at weekends.

Emuna has just remarked that young people find it hard to credit that when we started school some of the older teachers had been born in the nineteenth century. It's true. When I was at Southam Junior Boys School the headmaster was Mr Dencer (yes, there were jokes about his name but not when he could hear). He retired in, I think, 1963, so, assuming he retired at 65, he'd have been born in 1899. I don't recall any members of Pink Floyd having attended the school but their "Wall" LP certainly resonated with me regarding schooldays.

I digress. I'm supposed to be writing about our need for a WCBS wood monitor. Firewood monitor would be better really. I call it that because in junior school they used to give a trusted boy (not me) the job of going round each day topping up the ink wells in all the desks. He was the ink monitor.

Through the winter our boat stoves get through a lot of firewood. This comes from various sources, but a major one is the firm of Cargo Packing Services, located near to Portland basin.

https://www.cargopack.co.uk/

They make packing cases and produce handy sized offcuts all year round and are delighted to have people take them away.

The trouble is, too many people know about them. Perhaps I shouldn't be telling you! Anyway, in the winter, when firewood is needed, when you go there there's always somebody's just taken it all. In the summer, nobody wants it. The thing to do is to collect it in the summer and store it up. We have a bay in "Lilith"s hold reserved for this purpose.

For some reason, very few people seem to see the logic in this. Why fetch firewood when you've got plenty? They ask. It's an easy job that really helps the charity, but we struggle to find a volunteer who will reliably turn up a couple of days a week, take a wheelie bin over to CPS, fill it up, trundle it back, then bag up the wood, sorted into different sizes, and put it in "Lilith".

Following the tradition that if no-one else wants to do a job, I end up doing it, it's become one one of my regular tasks. I don't mind, it's just that there's lots of other jobs that I could be doing that somebody else probably wouldn't know how to do.

So, if you feel like volunteering, get in touch.