Cosgrove to Stoke Bruerne, 5 miles, 7 locks
Today I'm mainly going to be having a moan about things. Partially because my uvula--that dangly bit at the back of your mouth that sailors always use as a punchbag when they're swallowed by whales in cartoons--has been swollen since yesterday and it's bothering me; but also because lots has happened today that I'm unhappy about and I need to get it off my chest.
The weather was overcast and dry, so once I felt able, I got on my way to Stoke Bruerne. It wasn't sunny so I didn't wear my sun hat, but we all know that it gets you even when it's not actually sunny, so I've caught the sun.
All went well on the way to the bottom of the seven Stoke Bruerne locks, with a couple of boaters being very considerate and letting me through bridges first, or pulling over because their engine was 'chugging' and they were taking it slowly. Once I got here, I was pleased to find that another boat was going through and that the captain seemed friendly and experienced. It all went okay on the first lock, with him even waiting an extra couple of minutes for me while I emptied the loo. The second lock was full, but it had a deep channel in front of it, clearly designed to hold two boats side by side. Whereas I'd expected an experienced boater to stick to one side so we'd be adjacent, he went right up to the lock gates and positioned himself in the middle of them, leaving me nowhere to put Oothoon. As you'd only have been in that channel if there were two of you and two boats wouldn't need to tie up, there were no bollards, so I stood on the bank desparately trying hold my boat as the strong currents from the emptying lock had both of us flailing about. Once we were in the lock, I pointed out to the other captain that it would have gone a lot better if he'd given me some room in which to put my boat and that she's been difficult to control; but the other chap's selective hearing only heard the "couldn't control my boat" bit and he decided that I needed help and his solution was to lash the boats together. I've come across this several times now in the last few weeks, where people assume that because I'm by myself, I'll need help. More often than not, their 'help' involves making things more complicated than they need to be and doing the locks in a sub-optimal manner. It is such a joy to meet a boater who assumes that, if you've got this far by yourself, then you must have a clue, and who gets on with their own business and leaves you to yours, except to position their boat in a way that is mutually advantageous. A joy, but a rare one.
Now that the boats were breasted up and I wasn't needed to steer or control Oothoon, I ran ahead to the next lock, where the previous occupants had left both of the top gates open. I closed them and started to empty the lock, but to my horror the other captain drove both boats right up to the lock gates, as he had at the previous lock. Now his front deck was securely covered and the foaming water didn't bother his boat at all, but it started to come in though Oothoon's large front deck drain holes and soon the front deck was under a couple of inches of water. Then he hit the lock gates. I've no idea how hard it was, but my boat's front doors, which were locked and bolted, burst open under the force. Standing by the lock gate, I could only look down with dismay as the front doors flopped about and the water level rose until it almost went into the front cabin.
We got through the next locks without incident and when we reached the pound between locks 16 and 15 I ran ahead again to set the lock. Another boat was coming through and as is often the way on the waterways, where there is a man and a woman on a boat, it was the man doing the 'steering' and the woman doing the lock. Now I've no idea why it should work this way. Back in the days of horse-drawn working boats, it was usual to have the man lead the horse and do the lock, simply because the man's extra strength was useful for hauling the boat about or dealing with difficult lock gates. (The woman, in addition to steering, was also busy looking after the children and cooking.) For some reason the Stoke Bruerne paddles are all very stiff and the woman on the boat accompanying me had already given up on one of them; and so it was at lock 15, were the frail-looking woman off the boat in the lock was having a real struggle to open the paddles. I offered to help, but she declined, saying that she could manage. Well, yes she could, but while she did the fella on the boat was not controlling it or doing much of anything. Even when the lock was empty, he refused to pick her up, claiming that they were going to moor soon and she could run along the bank. At least the two women got to exchange horror stories while they waited for the lock to empty.
After this lock, we needed to untie the boats because the entrance to the top lock is right over to one side and under a narrow-loooking bridge. Matey went first and positioned himself on the right side of the lock. But then he started fiddling around and started drifting over to the left side and soon his boat was aligned neatly with the left edge of the lock. Thinking he might stay there, I started to enter the lock on the right, but no, he'd decided that he was supposed to be on the other side and started pushing his boat over. I had to quickly stop and reverse so that I didn't hit him, and then had the difficulty of having to enter the lock on the left, under the low bridge, without hitting the chimney. Don't ask me why he didn't just stay put, but the thing that annoys me the most about real life, and boating in particular, is that people simply can't see cause and effect, or consequences. Like, if you've drifted over to the left of the lock and a boat is now coming in on your right, don't decide to change sides!
Stoke Bruerne is widely regarded as a jewel of the canal system. The whole place seems to revolve around the canal, with the National Waterways Museum and lots of interesting boating paraphernalia, including boat scales (think kitchen scales, but HUGE!) There are pubs of course, two of them, both with very good views over the locks and the proceedings. There's a restaurant attached to one of them and across the water there's the museum's café and another restaurant (which was closed). I plumped for The Boat, which is the pub above the top lock. They're quite organised in there and have a good range of ales, but it wasn't until I'd been poured a pint of Marsden's Pedigree that it was pointed out that the wait for the Ploughman's Lunch that I wanted, was about an hour. Buying crisps in compensation and sitting outside, I decided that what I really wanted was lunch, so I quickly drank my pint and set off for the Museum Café. As I approached, I realised that I was feeling more than a little intoxicated. I'd noticed this the night before, where I've drunk so little alcohol lately that one pint was enough to send me into outer space, but this was a pint on an empty stomach and after I'd caught the sun. Not good.
The Museum Café is quite nice, with actual boat engines over to one side as a weird kind of objet d'art, and the coffee is good. But it fails miserably in the food stakes. It offers a range of biscuits and some cakes, but otherwise it was pre-packed sandwiches. Thinking that I needed something to soak up the booze, I plumped for coffee and a chicken sandwich and both were pleasant, but still not what I needed. The café is attached to the Waterways Museum's gift shop so I walked out that way and browsed. Now I'm sure that the range of actual inland waterway giftage is relatively small--the small but focussed collection at the gift shop at the London Canal Museum is evidence of that--but I couldn't quite make the connection between inland waterways and, say, Doctor Who. Or inland waterways and Barbie, wearing clothes designed by the Sugababes. I guess it's the usual problem of needing to have a gift shop, which mainly means having stuff kids want, while staying true to the theme. I think London gets this right, but here they've got it sadly wrong.
I was too drunk to have a look around the museum--disappointing, as this was one of the main reasons for coming here--so I tried the other pub: The Navigation. It was total chaos, with queues lining up at the bar and people generally looking frustrated. After waiting patiently to order food, the first question was "Where are you sitting?" Of course I didn't know, since I'd been queueing, not looking for a table; and besides, I was by myself--I could have decided on table 121, but there was no guarantee that by the time I'd queued, a family wouldn't have colonised it. The barman seemed reluctant to take an order without a table number and I really didn't appreciate the 'why are you wasting my time' look on his face, so I left and headed back to The Boat. The kitchen there had caught up with the backlog and food orders were being processed quickly, so I ordered the Ploughmans I'd originally wanted. I was given an order number, asked whether I'd be sitting inside or out, and that was that.
Now I've got very definite ideas about what a Ploughman's Lunch is. These were pretty much set in stone by The Milkmaid, a little eatery that was in Newcastle when I was growing up and which specialised in all things diary, such as milk shakes, ice cream, cream cakes, coffee with cream and--you've guessed it--the Ploughman's Lunch. To me it needs to have crusty bread, butter, cucumber, lettuce and tomato, pickle, pickled onions and a big hod of nice cheese (and a choice of something other than Cheddar for preference--the Milkmaid offered the 12 cheeses that the Milk Marketing Board used to publicise). The Boat almost get this right--the bread was clearly freshly baked, but wasn't terribly crusty; the pickle was in a little 'Branston' tub, the salad was okay but there were two portion-controlled pickled onions, and only a very small amount of cheese. Making up for it were two whopping slabs of thickly cut ham. I checked the menu and sure enough it's a ham and cheese Ploughmans, so no quibbling there, but to me it's just wrong. It shouldn't have ham; and if it's going to, it should at least have some decent English mustard to go with it!
I chomped my way though the Ploughmans and popped my head into the 'Canal Shop'. This might as well have been called Ye Olde Canal Shoppe and was full of decorative stuff like lacy things you put in portholes, or stripey-handled mops, but nothing of use to me. In a thoroughly miserable mood, I went home and went to bed.
Miscellaneous moans
I'm fed up of accidently leaving one of the fridges turned on. I need to do this because the water heater, which insists on being mains powered even though it uses a step-down transformer internally to derive the 5v and 32v it needs for operation, doesn't draw enough power to wake the inverter out of its power saving mode, meaning that the only way I can get the water heater to work is to have a big electrical load at the same time, and the most obvious one of those is the fridge. Unfortunately, it's water I'm actually wanting, not refrigeration, and I quite often forget to turn the fridge off once I'm done. The net effect is that I actually use far more power leaving the fridge on by mistake, than I would by not having the inverter in power saving mode, which annoys me, but I can't quite seem to bring myself to just have the inverter eating power for no reason. The answer to this is a water heater that runs on 12v, which is what you'd expect to have on a boat, and I really can't see why one was fitted that works any other way. It's not like it was cheap--the heater unit was £500, which seems expensive for something that is basically wrong.
I'm also fed up with my water pump running continuously. It doesn't do it all the time, but it's clearly having a problem with the water pressure and satisfying itself that all is well. It could be that I just need a new pressure sensor, although that surely must mean a new pump in today's thowaway world, but whatever it is I'm not happy about it.
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