Footloose and furlough-free
As the lockdown eased in June, but before the canals reopened to full leisure boating, it once again became possible to use narrowboats for non-leisure purposes – like moving them to be put on sale. For this, going through locks and staying aboard was permitted. Seizing the opportunity to go boating again, Tim Coghlan collected a brokerage narrowboat in Oxford and brought it to Braunston Marina. He recalls an eerie experience: the canal was almost empty of boats and boaters, villages and towns were seemingly deserted, and his beloved canalside pubs closed...
THEY say things come to those who wait, but sometimes you have to wait a long time. I was contacted in early October last year by Nick, the owner of narrowboat Melodeon – which was lying at Abingdon – with a view to selling it for him.
The boat was a 40-footer trad built by Colecraft in 1983 and fitted out by its team of true craftsmen, headed up by Lennie Beauchamp, who had learnt his trade from the legendary Charles Nurser in the dying days of canal carrying.
Despite the boat’s relative age – now more than 35 years old – Nick assured me that Melodeon had been well maintained in an A1 condition since new – as proven by a recent survey. He was only the second owner, and it had been his for more than 30 years.
Now in their 80s, he and his wife could no longer cope with canal locks, which were getting tougher by the year, as their maintenance seemed to slip in the priorities of the CRT.
Nick paid me the compliment of saying he had read several of my articles, including one in which I had talked about my own boat – a 1991 45ft Colecraft, also fitted out by Lennie Beauchamp and which likewise had had only two owners since new.
We had never met before, but he told me that if there was any broker to sell his boat, it was me! With a compliment like that, I had to go and see it.
All that Nick had told me was true. It was like inspecting a much-loved vintage car. No cost had been spared in the fit-out. The floor was solid American oak planking with black seams to resemble a deck. The sides were of tongue and groove mahogany, and the ceilings likewise of Douglas fir.
A new Isuzu 35hp engine had been installed in 2010, so that was up to date. The boat’s only failings were a primitive shower arrangement and a very basic small chemical toilet. Despite them, we agreed to an asking price of £34,950 – way above the £30,000 ceiling I would normally place on a boat of that age in good condition.
Nick wanted a final two-week swansong cruise on the Thames, where the locks were still manned, and then for us to bring the boat to Braunston. But in that time things dramatically changed. Heavy rains put the Thames on red alert, then there was an emergency lock closure on the Oxford, and then another on the Thames, then flooding on the South Oxford and by the time all this had been sorted out by mid-March, the coronavirus had forced a total lockdown, which was not partially lifted till June.
We half-kept in touch, and then suddenly in June I received a call from Nick saying he and his wife were ready to bring the boat up to Oxford – a finalfinal halfway cruise. They could now get through, and the canals were open for us to bring it the rest of the way. We could meet above Osney Lock on the Thames.
I rang my friend Hugh Anscombe, who immediately said he was game for it. He had crewed for me on and off since 1982 – firstly on my Contessa 32 cruiser-racing yacht, including the 1987 Fastnet – and since I came to canals the following year, many hundreds of miles of cruising.
Like me, he enjoyed working the canals like the old working boatmen, going non-stop from five in the morning till nine at night. For long-day cruising in midsummer, with the canals in lockdown the conditions were perfect – though Hugh pointed out he had recently had his 75th birthday, and maybe we should take things a bit easier….
Empty roads and river
Our rendezvous with Nick was set for 4.30pm, but with the roads empty from Braunston to Oxford, our taxi driver was to have us nearly there by 3pm. I rang Nick and found that the Thames had been likewise empty, and he was already moored above Osney Lock. We agreed to meet up the moment we got there. It was something of a pit-stop, baggage on board, a quick walk through with Nick, and we were off waving goodbye at 3.30pm exactly – with, I noted, something of a tearful smile from Nick and his wife as their boating days slipped northwards away from them.
Nick had recommended we cut through Isis Lock and on to the Oxford Canal, only a few hundred yards away, as he did not know the condition of the two unmanned Thames Locks before reaching the Duke’s Cut – he had heard the electrification was not working and it was a case of ‘gates to manual,’ and big stiff gates they were.
But I had my own reasons for doing so. As Inspector Morse said to Lewis in The Wench is Dead – an episode set on the Oxford Canal in past and present times – ‘It always pays to revisit the crime scene,’ and the crime scene I intended to revisit was where I thought Mr Toad had stolen the barge woman’s horse in The Wind In The Willows. Just whereabouts along the Thames the scenes in that wonderful book are set is the subject of much discussion, starting with Toad Hall – but there is only one canal that joins it in open country, and that must be the Duke’s Cut.
The first lock, Godstow Lock, proved every bit as difficult as Nick had said it would be. I made no progress in opening it, and had to ring him for any tips he could give. I could not believe the winding wheel – so many turns it to achieve so little. We were saved when a passing runner, who was also a boater, came and sorted things out – twice the turns and twice as hard.
At the next lock, a boat was already coming down – a 1972 27ft GRP Nauticus cruiser. It was the only boat we saw moving that day. It was part of the procession of old boats with young crews, heading for a new liveaboard life in London. I wished the two alternative-lifestyled young men all the very best. Having been put right by the young men, this lock transpired to be quite easy, and we were soon on our way.
The entrance to the Duke’s Cut was very overgrown, with the indicating signage hardly visible. It very much resembled the one on the map in the book. Once clear of the Duke’s Lock we entered a long pound, which resembled the one where Mr Toad
may well have stolen the horse. The boat was heading for the lock where the barge woman had planned to meet up with her husband, who was out poaching rabbits.
We progressed northwards and I was hit by the closeness of the road to the canal below Thrupp – like the place described in the book, where Mr Toad-on-the-road first met the barge woman. It was all making sense. The author Kenneth Grahame knew this part of the world very well from his school days in North Oxford, when he was allowed to wander freely into the countryside he loved.
Passing the two closed canalside pubs at Thrupp was very painful, but it meant we were free of temptation, and able to continue into the late evening with the canal entirely to ourselves. At 9.15pm, with light fast disappearing, we finally tied up above Pigeon Lock. In those six hours, we had travelled some 12 miles and passed through 11 locks. It would have taken twice as long in normal times.
Locks against us
A check of the weather forecast showed it would be raining by eight the following evening. We therefore decided to get up at five, in order to be going by 5.30am. Again the canal was empty and we were able to keep a good steady wash-free pace, hardly touching the throttle.
However our self-isolated bliss was to change when rounding the bend beyond Somerton Bridge. We saw in the near distance a boat setting off from its mooring. It was bad news as the boat would now be in front of us, setting the locks against us.
However the next lock was Somerton Deep, which at 12ft was the deepest lock on the Oxford Canal. There would be time to have a good look at this splendidly isolated lock and the lock keeper’s cottage, which had been restored from dereliction since my last visit more than 20 years before. And once the boat in front had gone, and we had cleared the lock, our pace would much as before – our morning’s run so far had found all the locks set against us.
I went on the bank to help with the lock, while Hugh took the helm. I learnt that the boaters in front were moving their mooring from a lower Thames marina to Cropredy. He worked in the airline business and now saw himself furloughed for many months – so why not go canal cruising further north? I was intrigued by the boat name The Boat. The answer was that they’d had the boat built at Nantwich a few years before, and while it was under construction they could not agree on a name, and used the code name The Boat and it stuck.
Once I saw them on their way, and began emptying the lock, I thought I had seen the last of them. But an hour or more later, we caught up with them at Aynho Weir Lock, where the Cherwell River crosses the canal, making it a difficult lock at the best of times. A boat coming down had got stuck, mainly due to the lock winding gear failing to work. We all helped out – as boaters do – and both boats ahead of us were able to get on their way.
Again I thought I had seen the last of The Boat, but at the next lock we found that they had managed somehow to get stuck on the mud by the towpath bank below it. Could we give them a tow? asked Mrs ‘Towed,’ as I nicknamed her. This we did, with me commenting: “Does this now put us ahead?” “No problem,” she replied, “we’d already decided to stop here for lunch.”
The Boat was the last boat we saw on the move for several hours until we reached the Claydon Flight north of Cropredy, where we met one coming down the flight. It was the last we met for the rest of that day in high-summer – on what is the most popular canal on the waterways.
Rural isolation
Now ahead and on our own again, we reached King’s Sutton Lock. The lock is a true marvel of survival, seemingly standing in splendid rural isolation, with its historic wharf buildings and lock keeper’s cottage all well maintained – a movie set in the making. Yet it is only a few hundred yards from the main railway to the east and twice that to the M40 to the west. But with the wind in the right direction you would never know.
The lock was in total contrast to the next one, Grant’s Lock, where the lock keeper’s cottage was in a shocking state of abandoned dereliction, as was the one at Little Bourton Lock the other side of Banbury. The CRT had sold the cottages respectively in 2004 and 2008, and therefore now had no control over them.
But as has been shown at Somerton Deep, these cottages can be saved and made into homes, and unlike Somerton Deep in its remote location, they were within an easy cycle-ride of Banbury on the towpath – an ideal project for a young energetic couple to take on. The cottages both form part of the Banbury Canal Conservation Area and the council could do better in enforcing their repair and preservation. But then Banbury Council’s care or otherwise for its canal is legendary, as we would shortly see.
Indeed not long after Grant’s Lock, we passed under the M40, and not long after that, we entered Banbury’s latest canalside horror, a sprawl of modern housing the design for which, no architect need apply. The object seemed to build over-bloated Georgian lookalikes and as close to the canal as possible. No attempt had been made to protect the canal from this monstrous intrusion in terms of keeping it away from the canal with thick tree screening.
Further on we encountered the council’s great Monument to Mammon – the shopping centre around Banbury Lock and with it the incarceration of Tooley’s Wharf – a piece of hallowed canal ground if ever there was one, for here it all began with Tom Rolt in 1939. As a token to the great man, a brutal inner relief road bridge a few hundred yards to the north had been named Tom Rolt Bridge. The phrase ‘turning in his grave’ came to mind.
I was glad to be clear of the place and heading back into open country. We pressed on through the afternoon, clearing Claydon Top Lock at about six. We had now passed through 23 locks and travelled more than 24 miles with 10 lock-free miles to go to the top of the Napton Flight, where we had decided to call it a day. It was time to get out the beers.
The only thing of new-interest on that summit pound was the machinations of HS2 as it tore its way through the eastern end of the Cotswold Escarpment, with huge mounds of earth. There was at least 10 years of this disruption and mess still to come, compared with the two years or so it took Brindley to build his Oxford Canal on the summit. And HS2 is being billed as the state-of-the-art progress.
At about 8.30pm the predicted rain arrived on time. We pushed on for another half hour and called it a day a short distance from the Napton Top Lock at Marston Doles.
It was still raining, though down to a drizzle, when we looked out the following morning. After an indoor breakfast we set off again at 6am, each working four of the eight Napton Flight locks. Someone had gone down the day before, and every lock was set against us and had to be refilled. But we were on our own, with no boats waiting to go up or down.
We finally cleared the Bottom Lock at about nine, for the final run-in to Braunston, which amazingly we did in two hours, with still nothing moving on the canal. It was only 11am, and we had been planning to have lunch on board in the marina. Instead we pulled up on the 14-day moorings opposite the Boathouse Inn – normally packed in mid-June, but now having plenty of space for us.
Here we enjoyed another celebratory beer with our lunch. We had travelled from Oxford to Braunston in well under two days – against the usual four. We knew we had set a no-wash record for ourselves that we would never repeat. A wise man once said that ‘adversity creates opportunity, if you only look for it.’ How true!