Click to see Flickr Gallery

The Victory is a 32ft narrowboat, built in 2005. It’s a day hire boat which will take 10 people. It cost us £120 for the day (0900-1730), plus a deposit of £80, which remarkably we got back. (You can get it for £100 for a weekday, but we paid for an extra hour on the grounds that we really had no idea what we were doing, and were therefore probably going to be late back)

Upon this epic voyage went myself, Steve, Big Debbie, Little Debbie, Trudy, Alan, Big Dave, Mel Black Sheep, Handleman Jeff and Kev the Cowboy. The sum total of our previous experience can be summed up like this: I’d been on a boat about 25 years ago, and Jeff fell into the canal when he was a kid… about sixty years ago.

After the 10 minute explanation of what to do (to go right, push left, and let others pass on your left/port side) and what not to do (no going to fast, no mooring on the non-towpath side, no acts of piracy without a Privateer’s License issued by The Queen), we set off in the direction of Gnosall, accompanied by a man who made sure I didn’t ram any of the expensive boats nearby.

Soon he jumped overboard (on to the path) and let us get on with it.

Click for Flickr group

The plan was to head south to Gnosall, grab some food from The Navigation, then continue out to the Hartley Arms at Wheaton Aston. However our plans were scuppered by The Navigation not being open, despite a sign on a previous bridge advertising breakfasts from half past seven. (We later learned that the sign had been put up by a previous landlord, and that nobody had bothered to remove it. Debbie offered to do it and was told she could have the sign. In the end, we couldn’t be bothered either.) So, after the comedy act that was our attempt at mooring (we really should have videoed this), we had to set off again. Nobody fell in at this point, so we’ll count it as a success.

Now on to bridges…. Well, the bridges on this stretch of the Shropshire Union Canal are narrow, with only about nine inches of clearance on each side (it might seem a huge gap to some, but remember: I have no idea what I’m doing), and the front of the boat has a whopping blind spot (where all the people sit) at the front. My plan to avoid a massive collision was to get a lookout to tell me how much space I had on each side. It was a plan so simple that the only way it could possibly fail would be if someone shouted, “Lets touch the bridge wall!” causing everyone to leap to one side, the boat to lean over and shift in the water. So…. clonk.

Click for more

It was a bloody miserable day, but as much of the route is either heavily wooded, or in a cutting, or both, the wind didn’t bother us that much. In places it can be very gloomy, with the trees hanging overhead. This is an excellent opportunity to try to hit someone with a tree. I know its irresponsible and childish, but so am I.

Steve commented that we really needed some music, either something that Martin Sheen would be listening to whilst heading up river to see Colonel Kurtz, or “Dueling Banjos”. Five minutes later we saw a local with a shotgun sitting on a bench by Rye Hill Cutting Bridge. He seemed cheerful, and we didn’t get bum-raped, which was nice.

I had been given the impression that canal boaters could be a miserable lot, always shouting at hire boat people and considering them the scum of the earth, but pretty much everyone we saw was friendly enough. An example of this is the nice couple on the light blue boat Almeida (possibly Almeira – I was a bit busy to note the correct name) who didn’t get annoyed even when we nearly rammed them whilst avoiding another boat. They were very helpful, even though they described day boats as “mobile chicanes”, a term I reserve for old people in Rover 75s, possibly wearing hats, with tartan blankets on the back shelves, on Sundays.

The only people who did get arsey with us were a couple in a ramshackle boat that look like a half collapsed garden shed. They seemed to think that the top speed we could do (as limited by a whacking great bolt blocking the accelerator), and my slowing down to avoid hitting bridges (see above) were impeding their progress. After I let them pass, they shot off at about twice our speed shouting something about their engine cutting out if they went too slow. Great.

Anyway… Wheaton Aston is a nice little village, and the Hartley Arms is a nice pub, but this isn’t about pubs.

Turning the boat round was a piece of cake, and the return run was much like the first leg, apart from one incident. Little Debbie had a go at steering, and within a minute forgot about the tiller going to the left to steer right. Making matters worse, she’d somehow managed to be standing behind the tiller arm, so as I tried to avoid crunching into the bank she very nearly went into the water (and the whirly blades of death). Luckily she didn’t and we bounced lightly off the bank (sort of).

Other minor irritating incidents: Debbie arsing about on the roof and nearly dropping the lifebelt in the water, Debbie nearly losing the wooden pole pretending to punt, Debbie using the boathook to try and snag trees (nearly decapitating Mel), people trying to see how far over the boat would tip (quite a way).

This post is getting too long, so here’s the end…

We got back to Norbury at about 5pm, gave the boat back and set of for the pub. Perfect timing. The heavens opened, and the Junction Inn’s carpark flooded in about fifteen minutes.

If theres one problem with this trip, its this: I now have an expensive hobby. At £100 a time this is going to cost me a fortune.