DKNZ do the Grand Union
part 1
No idea where the idea for this little family adventure came from, but not from me. So you’ll understand that maybe I wasn’t 100% onboard, as it were, from the start. But, once booked and paid for I was as keen as the next man (not to be confused with the Next man, who I’m pretty sure, would not be up for a bit of canal boating). Oh no.
So, Friday morning and we’re trying to kill time.
It really is that tragic. We’re so good at packing and getting ready
for hols now that, even with my refusal to even consider what I need to take
until ten minutes before cast off we are always ready too soon. With this
trip its more of a problem than usual, there’s no airport or railway
terminal to hang around in if we get there early. We suspect (rightly) that
there will be little to amuse us, let alone the girls, if we arrive at Gayton
Junction too early. Nevertheless, we leave the house just before noon with
a journey of a mere 80 miles by M11, M25 and M1. We are not expected until
2:30pm. The motorways are busy, we stop longer than we need to for lunch and
I slow down to 60mph for the last ten miles. We still get there over half
an hour early.
Before they let us loose with their 45-foot behemoth we have to watch a short
video (is it the same for juggernaut drivers?). Once viewed, we return to
our narrow boat (7ft externally) to be joined by an engineer. He spends two
minutes going over the theory and then joins me to take the ship out of the
marina and onto the Grand Union Canal. And then he jumps off. They have let
me out on the world’s most famous canal with nothing more than fully
comp insurance!
Now, the theory of maneuvering this beast is simple. I understand the physics
and, given a few seconds, can work out what to do to make the boat go where
I want it to (within two dimensions). But, as I’m sure you’re
all aware, canal water is a chaotic system. The laws of physics I learnt at
school do not apply here. And this boat weighs about 15 tonnes (according
to my rough Archimedean calculation), so if you don’t get it right you
might break something. And we’ve only got three days to learn and have
time for some pleasure as well! (BP 130/85).
Now, I don’t know about you but I thought canals would
be straight. Like the beauty we saw in EnZee at Christmas. But no, the canals
were not constructed by the Romans. They were, as the great Shane MacGowan
so eloquently put it, dug by people who “never drank water, but whisky
by pints”. Which, presumably, explains why they weave around the place
so much.
As in, hairpin bends.
Who, but a drunken navigator, would put a hairpin bend on a canal?
When some of the boats are seventy feet long?
Hairpin bends on a thirty-foot wide canal do not mix well with seventy-foot
boats. Particularly when, to spice it up a bit presumably, someone builds
a bridge at the apex of the hairpin. So it’s a blind bend and then,
for bad measure, they narrow the canal at this point to 14 foot.
How’s it reading vibewise so far?
Are you getting the feeling that the first hour or so didn’t go so well?
That I was feeling just a touch stressed (BP 150/100)?
Well, we actually got to the stage of discussing whether we should just cut
our losses and turn around and head homewards.
Except it’s not that straight forward.
Turning round I mean. You need a turning point, (which is usually nothing
more than a little “V” shape cut into the bank, to give you the
extra width to turn your boat. If you’re skilled enough to hit the “V”
that is. Otherwise you’d just end up wedged across the canal. So, with
these thoughts, and my stoic refusal to give up on anything before blood has
been spilt, we persevered.
The stress levels climbed as we narrowly missed bank, bridge and boats that passed in the slowly dimming light. We needed somewhere to stop for the night. We had a few try-outs at stopping and calculated that we needed a 60 meter straight expanse of canal. We eventually found one but the first attempt ended with Zee losing her grip on the rope. She then had to pretend that all along she had intended to leave the boat and walk along the bank for a couple of hundred yards, before re-boarding (I think we pulled it off).
Once successfully moored and with supper eaten it was a relatively simple job to turn the table into a bed. Yes, turn the table into a bed. Just like in the little camper vans we used to ride around EnZee before the girls came. After all, what is a narrow boat but a caravan on the water? Yet, and please correct me if I’m wrong here, is the general opinion of narrow boats not higher than that of caravans? Folk who choose to spend their lives on a narrow boat are not denigrated are they? Why not? Or rather, why do we so look down on caravanners but view those on a narrow boat fondly through Rosie-and-Jim-coloured spectacles?
