How narrowboat Cut Diamond became a longboat Into the Norwegian blue
NORWEGIAN boater Hege Abrahamsen has something of the spirit of adventure that goes with her Viking ancestry, and this she has coupled with her great love of the English canals and their narrowboats.
Because of this, aged 57, she was probably the first person to navigate the length of the Oslo Fjord in a narrowboat – her newly acquired Cut Diamond, which she had just imported into Norway – and to raise the derring-do stakes, by making that voyage in mid-January2011.
After 11 years cruising the Oslo Fjord and its adjacent canals, Cut Diamond has just returned to the UK to be based at Braunston Marina, where it was originally fitted out by Colecraft in 1987. Now retired, Hege wants to continue inland waterways cruising just so long as she and her partner Tone remain fit and well. This is their story.
Hege was born into post-war Oslo in 1953, then still recovering from the trauma of five years of German occupation and not the prosperous city that oil revenues have made it today. Higher education was not freely available, so after school she took employment in a bookshop for nine years.
Then seeking something more adventurous, she became a tram driver for 10 years. Looking for something more intellectually challenging, she took time out to study to become a landscape gardener, eventually working for her last seven years with the national road authority overseeing the planting alongside Norway’s main roads. “And that was it,” she said. “I’m now pensioned off.”
But there was a bit in the middle: this was during her bookshop years, when she took her first year’s sabbatical to England, to work as second-incharge of the Girl Guides Hostel in London’s EarlsCourt. Here she met up with a trio of Australians who became friends. They had hired a 60ft narrowboat for a week from Rose Narrowboats on the North Oxford Canal, but then oneof them couldn’t go – so would Hege like to replace him?
The hire charge was a real bargain–something Australians seem to find irresistible – and the reason was this: it was in late-February1978, immediately after the lock closures had been lifted on the canals between the North Oxford and Northampton. Northampton was the challenge – to get there and back in a week in the short days, with some 60 locks and two tunnels, when none of the crew had ever narrow boated before.
The briefing the crew had received from Rose Narrowboats had obviously not sunk in, as when they came to the Bottom Lock on the Hillmorton Flight, none of them knew what to do next. A small group of young girls, aged about seven, were playing near the lock, but the crew ignored them, until one of the children, seeing they had a problem, came over and explained to them how to work a lock. It was humiliating but it did the trick, and they were on their way. He ge commented :“We were very lucky to meet those children. Otherwise therewas no one about and we saw no other boats that day.”
Despite the time of year, nothing further untoward happened, and they made the round trip in good time. More importantly for this story, Hege was hooked. Thereafter for almost every year, she was back hiring narrowboats for two-week holidays with Norwegian friends, some of whom she introduced to narrow boating .“We loved coming at Easter – your spring is somuch earlier than in Norway.” They hired around the system, but resisted the temptation to fly the Norwegian national flag on the sterns, which a number of Norwegian hirers like to do: “That’s a misuse of our national flag.”
Passion for adventure
Romance was to enter Hege’s life in 1995, when she met Tone at a mutual friend’s party. Tone was five years younger than her and worked as a laboratory technician in a hospital blood bank, where, given the importance of the salmon industry, she also analysed their blood samples.
What brought Hege and Tone together was their mutual passion for adventurous holidays in the mountains of Norway – in winter and summer. Hege also introduced Tone to the English canals, with a two-week-hire-boat holiday on the Four Counties Ring the following year, which Tone took to like the proverbial duck towater.
The couple decided theyhey would each take a year’s ar’s sabbatical the following year and buy a narrowboat to live on. The plan was to do as much of the canal network as possible andd try to go only in one direction. This time Hege wanted to be properlyerly prepared for things to come, and she bought as many books and magazines as she could on the waterways and how to operateate a boat. Her bible became Andyndy Burnet’s Inland Boat Owners’rs’ Book, which years later shehe still has ready at hand whenen going boating.
The pair now came to Englandnd tomake their search for a suitableble narrowboat. They found one,ne, beingsold throughabroker, whichch they liked. It seemed in soundnd working order and they made an offer which was accepted. Theyey appointed the surveyor Paulul Smith, recommended to them by the broker. During the survey inn dry dock, major structural faultsts emergedand Paul condemned it.t. Time was of the essence and the broker hadnothing alternative to offer, so Paul recommended they tried Braunston Marina. “They always have a good selection of quality narrowboats on their books, and I have successfully surveyed many of them in the past,” he told them.
So they came to us, and we showed them Clarissa, which they immediately took to. It was a45fttr ad-style narrow boat with a classic well-built hull by Ray Denton’s R&D, and with it came a reasonable, but plain, owner fit-out. We had sold the boat two years or so before to someone else, for whom we had sorted out any issues, so we knew the boat well andcould recommend it. Paul Smith surveyed it and it passed with flying colours.
Hege remembers:
“You sold us dreams.
Not everyone has that ability!” But the interior was not comfortable to live in. Hege recalled: “There was a bedroom and a bathroom and kitchen, and these were okay, but there was nothing in the saloon except for two folding plastic chairs.” Importantly there was no solid fuel stove, which was essential for their planned winter cruising. They set us an Anneka Rice challenge to get it all sorted soonest, as they had planned to move straight on to the boat and be off as soonas this was done.
We had to do something quickly. We set to work on the tasks assigned to us, which our team could undertake. In those days Dave Bassett’s excellent DB Boatswas based at themarina and he said he and his team could fit out the saloon in a week, if the boat was left with him. Wealso had Shana Curtains & Upholstery on site andShana dropped everything to help. The couple moved up the hill into a B&B in the village of Braunston and popped down to watch progress. Thenaweek later, on September 1, 1997, with all now done, Hege and Tone took delivery of Clarissa and were ready tobeoff on their great adventure.
Before departing, Hege attached a large Lockmaster map of the whole canal system to the saloon wall, on which she had already annotated the dates of all lock closures for winter maintenance. “We had a plan, and we knew where we could go, and keep going the whole time – sometimes going north, sometimes going south. We never stopped, except twice when forced to by floods in Leicester and York. The centre of Birmingham we loved, and stayed several days with visits to the theatre, opera and Symphony Hall, fine museums and wonderful restaurants. We always felt safe there.
“We went to Coventry Basin, where we were the only boat