How Long Does it Take To Turn A Narrowboat Around?

Ian Hutson

With a light but disconveniencingly-vectored breeze, about three minutes.

However, to get somewhere on the canal wide enough to even try around here made the turn a round-trip of one and a half hours. One and three-quarter miles to the winding hole and – surprisingly – the same for the return trip. Odd that. Whodathunkit, at sub-relativistic velocities?

On my way to the winding hole (winding = turning a boat around in narrowboatyspeak) I went past Overwater Marina, which had a swan on guard at the entrance to prevent pesky boaters trying to turn there.

I had to laugh at the huge new marquee – meeting for food and drink in the bricks & mortar cafe with all of the doors and windows open is apparently lethal, while meeting for food and drink “outside” in the new polyvinylchloride marquee with all door and window flaps laced up is fine. Same everywhere these interesting days. Nuts. Utterly nuts.

Buttwaddooayeknow eh?

Basic logic was defenestrated years ago.

Great news for tent sales though, and doubly so if you are a doublet & hose-sporting marquis who owns a marquee manufactory. What though of those who make marquees to peddle to other marquises, marquisesses, marquéses and generally noble gases with similar marquee-based needs?

Bletheration.

There’s one distinct oddity about the winding hole at the bottom of the Audlem flight, and that is the permanent mooring slapped right on it. What a wholly peculiar place to bung a boat. Discombobulating since the aforementioned light breeze was blowing right along the canal towards the locks, and discouraging my bow from turning. I had to take four bites at the manoeuvre because I wanted to avoid being drifted into that ill-moored vessel.

As I mentioned earlier, logic was deportholed long ago.

Yonder lock visible there is the bottom lock of a flight of fifteen, and I have no desire at the moment to spend some happy hours working the Cardinal up through them, so about-face it was and is. 🙂

I am caught here rather as a rat in a trap (a spring-loaded device, not a pony-trap). I forget to pay heed to such things but this weekend is, apparently, a ‘Bank Holiday’ which meaneth that more folk than usual are likely to be at large, ‘avin’ it large, and there is to be a floating market by the towpath moorings of that very stretch of canal shown above.

[Assumes posture and voice of Penelope Pitstop and mutters ‘Eek!’]

I shall have to save myself with a(nother) dawn fleeing which, you will agree, is much better to contemplate than some dawn flaying.

In the meantime I shall think peaceful and contemplative thoughts.

This image (and many others) available to purchase globally and in all manner of formats from prints to mugs to shower curtains and greetings cards and even jigsaw puzzles at My Wee Shop

Contemplative thoughts of the Canals of Mars…

…and of how to get the Cardinal there.

For this evening though I shall merely aspire to a couple of esipodes of Dad’s Army, a mug of Chai Latté and a Rich Chai biscuit or seven to dunk. Tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow’s tomorrow is best tackled – well, you may guess. Then and not before, basically.

This has been a post apropos of not much really, except another minor but enjoyable cruise-ette to turn us around (turn us around physically that is, not morally, spiritually or inty-letchewally).

Chin-chin, chaps.

Chapuis? Chapuises, Chapuisesses, Chapuéses? I don’t know; you Hoomans speak funny.

Ian H., & Cardinal W., Perpetual Grumps of The High Seas.

p.s. If chapuis is a rude word in some other non-english language please don’t tell me, I really don’t want to know.

I feel the sudden need to #HUGATREE before bedtime. Any tree will do.

11 Comments

  2. Who puts a fixed mooring in a winding hole?
    Reminds me of student sailing weeks on the Norfolk Broads when there always seemed to be some whopping motor cruiser plonked in the narrowest parts of the channel. Unfortunately, they never suffered the classic fate of motor versus sail…the bowsprit through the loo porthole with someone trapped inside. I only saw it once…..and people weren’t obsessively filming in those days – developing pictures of your own thumb was too expensive – so memory is the only record.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Magnificent idea isn’t it? Akin methinks to the local habit of putting pedestrian crossings on all entrances and exits to busy roundabouts! Perhaps the same “consultancy firm” for both ideas?

      I remember the days when our first thought was to live (and to live through) experiences rather than to film them for You-Toob or The FaceBook or Tweeter. How ever did we manage? 😉 Heck, in “my” day we rationed the photographs that we took because film was expensive – and it had to be sent away inn the company of a cheque before Kodak sent you someone else’s prints…

      That said, I wish you had a phototograph of the bowsprit through someone’s morning machinations!

      Liked by 2 people

      1. How right you are about living an experience rather than filming it.
        We ran gites in France for some years and one family in particular filmed non stop. Leo was going to collect eggs and the little girl of the family wanted to go with him, so, obviously, asked dad if that was all right…of course it was…but rather than enjoy going with his little girl to find eggs himself, he preferred to film it. Making memories, he called it. I called it something else, but sotto voce.
        I remember the shrieks of the victim of the bowsprit…….a quick cure for constipation, I imagine.

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    1. I know very little about Moggs – I’m a dog man myself.

      Not part-man part-dog (sadly), it’s just that dogs generally like me and cats want to kill me.

      Liked by 1 person

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