Storm dodging

The waterlogged towpath at Braunston

We have spent the last few days in a largely successful game of dodge-the-storms, moving up from just south of Bugbrooke to Braunston where we are now moored.
We set off on Thursday from our back of beyond mooring and stopped at Bugbrooke for lunch and - I hoped - a foray to the village shop for this rural stretch of the Grand Union is bereft of anything resembling a town.
Bugbrooke is quite a sizeable village of pretty honey coloured stone cottages but the village shop is more dead than alive and we came out with our shopping list largely unticked.
Soon it was raining and our lunch stop became an all-day stop. With provisions running low what better excuse then than to nip across the canal for dinner at The Wharf - a modern-ish pub (or 'bar-restaurant' as it calls itself).
It's a big boozer but cosier than you'd expect inside. The menu wasn't overly encouraging though with a worryingly pretentious sprinkling of 'jus' and 'bed of' as well as some courses that sounded decidedly the weird side of innovative - like a steak and ale pie with the ingredients in tortilla wraps rather than good old pastry.
And when the main courses arrived on square plates – gawd how our hearts sank! Especially with Vicky's rib of beef and mash served in a Lego tower of ingredients and my pork belly sitting amid stripes of yellow and red.
BUT, but they actually tasted bloody good. We swallowed the food and with it our preconceptions. It was damned decent fare.
Unlike last night's meal at The Plough in Braunston which, sadly, was desperate. A sorry, dried up looking piece of lasagne and a burger - big and wholesome but desperately overcooked. The chips were chunky and good though. And the beer was fine. After the rugby watching crowd left we found ourselves alone in the bar until an hour or more later the place started to come to life again. But this is a village pub which is clearly struggling. Sad to see.
In between the two dinners we went up the seven Buckby locks - still as heavy and awkwardly spaced for the lockwheeler (me!) then through the Braunston Tunnel, completely dry inside in contrast to Blisworth, and down the six Braunston locks. The towpath most of the way varying from simply muddy to utterly waterlogged and flooded. Brian the dog point blank refused to walk on it a couple of times. I think he fears for his undercarriage in the mud and water.
Tomorrow, weather permitting, it's a gentle jaunt up to Rugby.

Whatever the weather

We get cabin fever when we've hung around too long in one place so a couple of days ago we decided that, damn the weather, we'd head off north from Milton Keynes.
We had a new plan - I like a plan - and that was to get through Buckby Locks before they shut for maintenance, then Braunston and up the North Oxford to Rugby. The only thing against us was the weather.
Yesterday, despite the forecasters tales of woe, was delightful - bitingly cold in the wind but bright, sunny. A perfect winter's day. We looped round the edge of Milton Keynes then through Wolverton where the old railway sheds that were cloaked in scaffolding when we were last here have re-appeared all redeveloped while retaining their original structures in an award winning £65m scheme, with blocks of modern flats built opposite.
Apparently Wolverton was the world's first railway town and the works were there because it was mid-distance between London and Birmingham. A rather sorry for itself looking and vegetation shrouded cast iron canal bridge was the original line into the works and built by Robert Stephenson. It's Grade II* listed - and deserves to be better kept than it is.

At Cosgrove the canal travels on an aqueduct over the River Great Ouse and the extent of the river flooding in all directions made us gasp.

Last night we moored at the foot of the seven Stoke Bruerne locks and listened to dire warnings of storm force winds and heavy rain. Well the winds were about this morning but where was the rain? Eventually we decided to chance it and went up the locks teamed with another madcap boater. They really were on a mission – aiming to reach Chester by the 17th. Of February.
Stoke Bruerne was shut (museum and cafe that is) so we pressed on through the Blisworth Tunnel. And still the rain hadn't fallen. In the end I got wetter in the tunnel than outside - huge quantities of water were cascading down from the tunnel ventilation shafts as well as pouring in through drainage holes in the walls.
Tonight the rain has finally reached us and the winds are fiercer still, rattling the doors and windows. But we are safely moored up somewhere in the countryside just short of Bugbrooke.
It's been quite a couple of days!

Inside Milton Keynes

Peace Pagoda at Willen Lakes park

Back when I was a young hack I remember negotiating a multiplicity of roundabouts in the fledgling Milton Keynes to get from the M1 to our typesetters. (Back in the days when there were such people as typesetters in magazine production!)
And roundabouts are all most of us know of the place. Even the canal circles around the edge of it and never gets close to the centre. So this past week it's been a first chance to take a wander around what is by far the most successful of the sixties 'new towns'.

Great views from Campbell Park. Shame about the MacD litter!

Odd as it seems, the roundabouts that enable you to get across the town without ever finding the centre are at the heart of its design. For it is actually pretty much a town without a centre or a heart - that's the whole point. The architectural theory behind it was that a town of the future didn't need to radiate from a centre but instead should be a metropolis of smaller business or residential areas linked together by a web of roads for easy access. And it works.

Clever sculpture of memorial day columns at Campbell Park

'The Face' - Campbell Park again

The clever thing is that, unlike many traditional towns, where pedestrians and cyclists battle for survival among cars and trucks on ring roads and one way streets carved among the older streets, MK successfully separates traffic from people. You can walk or cycle from place to place without ever encountering a car.

Open air theatre

There is a centre - a shopping centre anyway - and we are moored on the edge of Campbell Park which is the closest the canal gets to that. It's a ten minute walk away but though the walk is great, the shopping centre isn't. Unless you like shopping, of course, in which case it's probably okay though the low-rise shops look rather old-fashioned to anyone brought up on trips to Bluewater and the like.
No, the parks and walks are the best part of the town - a delight and a surprise. Immaculately tended, even now in mid-winter, with little litter, tarmac pathways and lots to see from urban art to a Buddhist Peace Pagoda, they are superb. Brian the Dog is particularly impressed!
As well as Campbell Park, with its fine views, open air theatre, cricket ground and artworks, there is Willen Lakes, for bird watching and the 'tree cathedral' - yes, a plantation of various tree species in the layout and scale of a cathedral.
The only thing that's wrong at the moment is the weather – a good soaking yesterday and another rain and hailstorm today which has driven us back inside just as we were about to go for another park walk. Sorry about that, Brian.

The past is another country

Spectacular rainbow near Ivinghoe

And one that is rapidly disappearing in the mists of time. This entry, then, is one intended to try and clear those mists in my own head before a complete and irreversible fog descends. (Since I haven't posted since early November I doubt anyone out there will be still following our snail-like progress through winter so this is a just a brief memo to brain on where we are now and how we got here.)
Let's work backwards - it's easier to try and fill in the mental gaps that way. We're are now in Milton Keynes and have been for virtually a week. Getting here was a slow dawdle up the Grand Union, with various breaks for family visits, after we finally left London where we had been pottering between Paddington Basin, Kensal Green and Greenford becoming steadily disenchanted with the squalor and mess along large parts of the Paddington Arm of the canal.

Modelling my smart 'onesy'

In Uxbridge I tried with only partial success to cure a persistent fuel leak from the JP's fuel filter before we finally left the cityscape for the countryside, wandering past Denham, spending a couple of days in Watford, then the edge of Hemel
Hempstead - a sprawling old new-town looking very scruffy around parts by the canal - before reaching Berkhamsted, which is exactly the opposite: a compact and extremely affluent commuter belt town, full of boutique shops and up-market restaurants. All the same, the canal which was once a big part of the place's prosperity is still embraced with some decent pubs and tidy towpaths.

Canalside Christmas lights in Berkhamsted

There are a lot of locks on the climb out of London but by Cowroast we had gone through 45 and were at the summit of the canal. And not once did we find ourselves sharing one of the locks with another boat - so few boats seem to travel at all in the winter months.
We found  wide locks on our own a trial in our little boat, Star, but in the 55ft Harry we were untroubled - a bit more boat length and a lot more experience in working paddles to keep the boat pinned to the side in the filling locks made the difference.
Slightly nervously we left the boat moored over Christmas and New Year at the end of the summit level, at the top of the Marsworth locks. Fortunately all was well on our return - except it was bloody cold inside and took a good day or two to warm up properly.

Winter cruising on an empty Grand Union

In bright winter sunshine we spent a couple of days walking round the Marsworth reservoirs that feed the canal before moving on - downhill now - and turning into the narrowbeam Aylesbury Arm. The Arm was shut for most of last year because of a lock collapse. It's a lock right alongside the gigantic £150m new Arla milk processing plant. Seemingly the earthworks for the building of the plant and the collapse of the lock are unconnected. Hmmm.
Last time we did this 17-locks each way trip it was to moor at the Aylesbury Canal Society's moorings at the terminus of the Arm. Since then their site has been sold for redevelopment and the Society now has a very smart new home on the edge of town - and still welcomes visitors. It's a state of the art place with a clubhouse and dry docks being built and impressive moorings. We liked the place (and the super-friendly members) so much we joined the Society.

The giant Arla dairy plant by the Aylesbury Arm

Back on the main line the next port of call was Leighton Buzzard, after a one-day stop near Ivinghoe. A curious place is LB: there's a useful canalside Tesco and even more useful Aldi if you don't like Tesco prices but the general sprawl is unappealing. Walk into the small town centre and you discover a completely different LB - a bourgeois little High Street of niche shops like ice cream makers, chocolatiers, specialist bakers and boutiques. No recession here, then.
Finally, via overnights at  Soulbury and Stoke Hammond we did the long drag into Milton Keynes where we are now, on the edge of Campbell Park and just beyond the start of the proposed Bedford-Milton Keynes Waterway.

The pace has slowed

Not quite this slow perhaps but in the two weeks since my last post we've moved little more than two miles. It's been strange - even by canal standards - slowing down to four miles a month!
We haven't been on the boat the whole time; we used the security and convenience of being in Paddington Basin to disappear off visiting children and grand children.
I have to admit I quite like the Basin. I know a lot of boaters find it characterless and it certainly is wind-blown but I enjoy the modern architecture and watching the hustle and bustle of workers coming and going. And, of course, it's a comfortable walk or a short bus ride to Oxford Street, Hyde Park and all the delights of central London.
It can be entertaining, too. We watched the famous roll-up bridge being demonstrated and witnessed the huge Marks & Spencer offices being evacuated after a fire alarm.
But all good things come to an end and after our alloted week we had to cast off and cruise back out west. As far as Kensal Green, two miles away. The 14 day moorings here have always been popular: there's a canalside Sainsburys and being at the junction of Ladbroke Road and Harrow Road, west London is still a short bus or tube trip away.
When we came into London the moorings were overflowing with boats - many of them the classic 'hippy hutches' with their flapping tarpaulin covers and piles of scrap, on the boat and on the surrounding grass. But some seem to have been shoo-ed away by the CaRT patrols or shuffled off to winter moorings so there's more space.

We've passed the vast Victorian Kensal Green cemetery a few times by boat but now with time to kill (excuse the pun) we decided to visit. It's an amazing place, in a state of Gothic semi-dereliction, though still in use. Isambard Kingdom Brunel is buried here in a family plot, so too Charles Babbage, Blondin, Wilkie Collins and many more.
By way of contrast, yesterday we were among the crowds of the living in Portobello Road Market, heaving with visitors - mostly foreign - to the point at which progress slowed to a shuffle.

 

Today we found a quiet little park off Ladbroke Grove then wandered back towards the canal past the monstrous Trellick Tower, the 'seventies brutalism' tower block designed by Erno Goldfinger (yes, Ian Fleming did pinch his name for the Bond villain). From a seventies crime-ridden slum it has now been revamped and revitalised as well as getting a Grade 2* listing.

Nearby is a delightful canalside community garden project which has turned a scrap of land into a cheerful and imaginative place to spend some time. The contrast to the concrete monster that overshadows it could not be more great.

Reflections on the K&A

Among the high spots: visiting elegant Bath

We started off loving the Kennet & Avon; by the end we were thoroughly fed up with it. Sadly, I don't think we'll be rushing back.
What are the plus points? It certainly runs through some delightful and varied countryside - the lush, green woods and pastures of Berkshire, then the open Wiltshire downs, the more rugged terrain as you near Bath and the lovely River Avon to Bristol. Some decent towns too: affable little country places like Hungerford and Devizes, historic Bath and - our favourite - the live-wire Bristol.
The Caen Hill flight is something to be remembered, too.
So what's wrong with it? The fact that there are so few moorings is the chief one. I don't mind nudging the bank, dropping down a plank and banging in pins, but I could certainly do with a few more places where I could tie up up to some rings or Armco and feel safe in leaving the boat for a day or three without worrying that some passing speedster wouldn't rip its pins out. (And it happens, we passed six or seven boats adrift or on the brink of it.)
It's a special pain if you have a deep drafted boat like ours - there are many stretches where you simply get bored of trying to get near enough to the side even to put a plank down, only to find you can't, you're grounded and you have to wrestle back into midstream.

And among the lows: the lines of moored boats

Much of the canal seems to be in a poor-ish state too; needing dredging, stretches overgrown with reeds, with badly leaking locks, missing paddle gear and so on. (Not to mention the often awful over-geared mechanisms.)
And as I've said before, I found the lines of 'continuous moorers' from Bradford on Avon through to Bath utterly depressing.
The point about the K&A is that visiting it is a serious commitment. A tiny minority will want to risk their boats coming back to the network on the estuary crossing to Sharpness; the rest will go down and canal and then back again. That should be an enjoyable summer's worth of cruising with the chance to vary the route each way - to moor in different spots, leave the boat and visit other towns, take country walks and so on. It's very far from that at the moment

Rain and shine

We are safely tucked up now in Paddington Basin after an entertaining weekend coming down off the river and then making our way across London.
We left Teddington yesterday afternoon for the short, five mile trip running with the ebbing tide down to Brentford. It was a full moon the night before so the tides were high - but just how high and how fast we didn't realise until we saw the river lapping right across the towpath and riverside streets in many areas. Then when we did the awkward cut-back turn into the cut to Brentford we felt the full force of the flow as it tried to swing us round past the entrance.

Riverside high tide flooding at Kingston

What a contrast the canal made to the sweet, clean river. The water looked poisonously black - blacker than a rugby team's communal bath after a muddy match and plastic bottles and rubbish floated everywhere. Very depressing. With the Brentford moorings full of hutches already tucked up, nose to tail, for winter we headed on through the first couple of locks towards London, mooring for the night shortly before the main Hanwell flight.
The weather forecast was not good and, sure enough, we woke to pouring rain. On went the wet weather gear ... and the sun came out. Came out and stayed out so I was soon stripped down to tee-shirt for lock wheeling.
Last time through I found the Hanwell locks hard work but after a summer on the Kennet & Avon they were light relief: the paddles all worked, and with none of those silly low geared mechanisms either, the gates, opened easily and leaked only moderately – and we never got stuck. We were through in a couple of hours and the sun still shone.

It rained and rained and rained

But not for much longer. Soon after the Bulls Bridge junction the skies turned nearly as black as the canal water and the rain started falling heavily - and then even more heavily. And kept falling for the three hours it took to reach Paddington. Whereupon it stopped just as we came to moor up in pretty much the last free slot.
Back in the summer the Basin was full of tidy looking narrowboats, going and coming. Today it's crowded with a motley bunch of decrepit plastic cruisers and shabby boats in varying stages of decay. I guess they've all migrated here for the winter.