Floating Tea Pot

We were cycling in Nantwich, Cheshire on a misty morning last week, about to get onto the towpath of the Shropshire Union Canal. It was busy - Easter holidays and boats were on the move. This one was about to pass below us as we watched from the Marsh Lane Bridge.

We were beginning to think of coffee, maybe stopping at the Basin End (renamed Nantwich Harbour or some such) where there's a small café, or going back along Welsh Row into town. But suddenly before us was a boat that made us pull up sharp and lay down our bikes on the grass beside the path.

My word, just the ticket! In we climbed, lifting the protective polythene over the entrance (this being an unreliable climate) and going down the steps into the long cabin of the narrow boat. It was warm and cosy, and someone was in the galley at the end.

That's the galley at the end - it's all dark in the photo, but Ray was in there starting the coffee.

Here's the boat in the other direction.

We had one of those conversations you usually have in Ireland where you find lots of people you know in common. Ray spent years coming to Ireland fishing with his mates, staying up around Lough Ree to fish the Inny, Dromod and Rooskey, or in Abbeyshrule on the Royal Canal where my friend grew up. Ray knew my friend's uncle (of course), and many of the places we've spent days on Winter Solstice.

You can see more about this boat and its restoration on the Tea Junction website. An interesting story.

After our coffee and conversation we cycled up to the next bridge.

Then the one after that and onto the road where the traffic was completely mad. Much nicer to be on a bike, or even better on a boat on the canal.

Somewhere for a cup of tea

You can judge the different quantities of traffic on the Irish canals compared to those in England by the size of the marinas - or at least the marinas on the Shropshire Union Canal in Cheshire. I was there with my parents last weekend, in search, as always, of a place for a little run out and a morning coffee. It has to be easily accessible as my mother has a dicky knee, and this place was just the business:

It even has a resident boating type with beard - a very nice fellow, whose companion had dodged out of the picture. In this building is a café, a reception area, noticeboard with boats for sale and so on, a small shop selling maps, guidebooks, the boating equivalent of bachelors' rations as found in country pubs in Clare.

The café was very good, even though it had a feel of the garden centre café about it. There is a phenomenon here that has spread around England, people visiting not to buy plants, or because they are on a boat, but for the restaurant experience. There's a huge garden centre near where my parents live that began as a tiny local nursery. It's just been taken over by Wyevale, and is in the process of getting not only bigger but less and less to do with gardens. The retail side has opened out to include Lakeland, Edinburgh Woollen Mill, shops selling clothes, shoes, cute things to put on your mantelpiece and so on. The plant bit just makes the coachfuls of visitors feel they're doing something outsidey.

I digress, as do the marinas. This one does have boats, lots of them, but many people, including us, come for the cup of tea and the view:

This one also has a water taxi - there it is in the photo with the blue frilled canopy. It takes anyone who wants to go the short distance to Audlem where it lets you out just below the lock to visit the pubs (very good, with excellent ale), or buy supplies other than bachelors' rations.

There is also a small caravan site - full, with two caravans and a camper. We know all about this diversification in Ireland, though not on the canals but beside the Shannon, and not in caravan sites but in the harbour carparks. We're all just travellers looking for somewhere to go.

One of these days Joe and I will take a narrowboat from somewhere like this and explore the English canals. Oh, I haven't said where this is. It's called OverWater Marina, and it's off Coole Lane near Nantwich. Coole Lane was a favourite when we went out hacking on our ponies as children, and it's been a favourite with Joe and I on bikes visiting the home place. Just off Coole Lane is the Secret Bunker, set up during the Cold War, but that's another story.

Ousing floods and Cheshire canals

Outside the Shroppie Fly in Audlem

The great thing about Cheshire if you have a bicycle is that there are very few hills. Undulations, yes, but not many 1 in 4s. Around Nantwich where we were staying last week there are networks of twisty lanes to ride along and, if you plan it right, a decent canalside pub selling good ale. We were drinking Landlord bitter in this one.

Aqueduct Marina

You can't go far in Cheshire without tripping over a canal. There are plenty of canal marinas too, many of them branching out to cater for the apparently insatiable appetite for cafés. I took my parents to the Aqueduct Marina which sits, handily, on a linking section between the Shropshire Union and the Trent and Mersey.

Narrow dogs for narrow boat

It's all narrowboats of course in this part of the world. Lots and lots of them. This one went past while we were strolling around looking at boats.












The other waterway of the trip was to be the River Ouse  in Yorkshire. We were visiting Joe's cousin and her family who keep a boat on a section of the river near to York. We were supposed to be going from their house in Leeds to the boat on the Friday night for a barbecue followed by a gentle cruise into York for a pint, but this was the day of The Big Rain. We'd arrived on Thursday evening in a thunderstorm, lightning crackling  overhead as we ran for the front door, and it rained pretty much incessantly from then on. We had a curry down the road instead.

On the River Ouse

But on Saturday the rain had cleared to a bit of sunshine, so we went to look at the boat at York Marine and have lunch on board.

View from the cockpit

The river was in spate. We passed a huge houseboat (static and for hire) on the way to the mooring which had a ladder up the perilously angled gang plank and a jeep attached by rope to the bow. Not sure what was going on there.

As we stepped onto the boat we were visiting I watched a father and young daughter pass downstream in a tiny rubber dinghy with a small outboard. I wondered would they be able to get back to wherever they came from.

High and brown

We walked along the river to a marina downstream where you could really see the extent of the flood.

You'd need your waders to get onto this boat. Most of the moorings along the bank here were cut off, some with what looked like extensive damage to the walkways.

There's a sculpture on the rather ugly bridge, all made of wire. It was around this part of the river that I noticed the tiny dinghy struggling upstream, occasionally getting twirled by strong river eddies. Walking back to the boat for lunch we overtook it. I hoped they wouldn't run out of petrol.










This lady was on the lawn the evening we got home.