winter – Narrowboat Firecrest

Emerging from Hibernation

At the end of November we, packed up and waved goodbye to Firecrest. Headed home to the security of firm foundations that bricks and mortar provide. We relished spending time visiting friends and family, pavements that weren’t muddy, cupboards that didnt need checking for mildew, and a dishwasher, yet every time the sun shone, (which admittedly hasn’t been very often) a sense of restlessness and the muttered refrain, “its a good day to cruise” could be heard. Being home is indeed a mixed blessing, I value the space and security more than Eric. I have more friends that I like to meet up with for girly giggles, cake and coffee. Eric enjoys being able to pick up his DIY tools from their convenient shelf in the garage without having to unpack storage boxes to find the right one on the boat. But we miss the peaceful simplicity of life afloat. Admittedly Eric is still running his own design business, so during the winter months he has plenty to keep him occupied, whereas I miss the opportunities to be outside exploring, and simply soaking up the ambience of the canals. We have just under 2 weeks left of marina life. Eric is now back on board making Firecrest shipshape and I am taking final advantage of being able to use our car to travel further afield visiting family. 3 months, a whole quarter of a year, doesn’t half fly past quickly these days. I’m not going to promise how often I’ll post our progress but hopefully this year won’t be as fraught with closures as 2025. We are looking forward to moving again in just a few weeks.

Just some of the people and places we have enjoyed over winter

Meandering through Milton Keynes

For many people Milton Keynes means concrete cows and roundabouts. But we’ve seen them before in 2018-when we got frozen in during the beast from the east, now for us, it’s about 15 miles of cruising around 2 sides of a square from Fenny Stratford through to Cosgrove. Ironically, its where we thought we would be for Christmas but getting frozen in at Leighton Buzzard put paid to that plan. And we were still struggling with ice at the beginning of February. Milton Keynes means ice to us.

But at least we had reached Campbell Park, closest to MK central. Milton Keynes was a Roman settlement, which in the 1967 became the biggest and last of the New Towns planned specifically to house the London overflow. Sadly for the older people of Buckinghamshire continued development has seen the surrounding villages swallowed up and when MK was granted city status in 2022, it covered more than 120 square miles. There are many who don’t like Milton Keynes but we suspect that a lot of those people have never actually visited the area and believe its urban sprawl focused on cars. We would disagree, there are 215 miles of dedicated footpaths. no one lives more than half a mile from access to the 5000 acres of parkland.

Admittedly some of the housing estates are the worst 1960s construction imaginable and there’s a general atmosphere of squalor and neglect, but there are just as many very attractive areas. Although we’re not sure how this property got planning permission in the middle of the shopping centre.

Its a lovely walk from the canal up to the centre, through Campbell park, theres a lot of impressive art work

the Light Pyramid, Chain Reaction and Onwards and Upwards

But we liked the lawn mowers the most

and no park is complete without flowers

Although the Milton Keynes Rose is a commemorative art installation, not a floral display, marking the serious and not so

We can never resist trying to see a place from the highest elevation so we took the lift up to the 14th floor of the Hotel la Tour to look down over Campbell park. Eric said it was too early in the day for cocktails….

Looking forward to some warmer days and being able to cruise a bit more now.

Welcome to 2023

We said goodbye to 2022 quietly just above Leighton Lock, still feeling a bit washed out after our brush with covid. It would have been a nice place to stay, except we couldn’t get any tv reception. But when the New Year dawns with crisp clear blue sky, we couldn’t resist the desire to cruise.

But it was still cold, so we only clocked 2 miles and moored up just beyond the Soulbury 3 Locks.

We’ve enjoyed nice meals there in the past but we try to avoid eating out on a bank holiday so gave it a miss this time, and found us a rural beauty spot instead.

We mooched on slowly until we got to civilization at Fenny Stratford. We’d planned to spend a few days with family in Suffolk and this was a good place to arrange car hire. I went ahead first by train so I could see some friends as well, the train took me through Ely…. now theres a thought for another summers cruise….We’ve been aboard Firecrest since January 2017, thats 6 years, and still plenty of water left to explore.

But for now we were back in Suffolk, where the Vikings arrived in their Long boats,

And the fishermen still go out in little wooden boats

And we take the family out for breakfast at the farm cafe

this is almost as far East in the country that you can get

And looking north you can see where all the icy winds come whistling down to freeze the country… and the canals

Oh no, another 10 days frozen in, we eventually managed to break free and move on.

But if the rest of the year is like January, we arent going to get very far. Its taken us a whole month to move 9 miles.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Dreaming of a White Christmas
Moving closer to town was a good move because as the temperatures dropped , the ice got thicker and we became well and truly stuck fast. Ironically when the ice is thinner it feels worse, because as it moves we hear the cracking, creaking and groaning as it moves against the hull. We try to smash the ice that’s close around the boat to give us a bit of wriggle room to float freely in but we were fighting a loosing battle.

We could tell it was getting colder because the hoar frost was looking so pretty.

And then we woke up to snow.

Of course I wanted to go out to play instantly, but it was barely a few inches deep, if that.

the rough ground made it difficult to build a snowman so I gave up and walked into town instead

Leighton Buzzard is a pretty town, with a good market on Tuesdays and Saturdays and at this time of year the salvation army band are playing carols as well.

But of course its always nice to come back to a snug warm boat

Amanda came for a visit as she lives reasonably close

An ideal opportunity to go for a pub lunch at The Grove and a catch up

The forecast is set to warm up drastically, so its unlikely that we’ll get our white Christmas, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s still too much ice in the canal for us to break free

But its been lovely place to stay.

The Midlands March, Nice Ice

We’ve woken up to frost and ice most days this week

And whilst Eric is sensible and stays inside, I can’t resist being outside enjoying the diamond encrusted scenery

I wasn’t the only one out walking, male swans are known as cobs, so quite appropriate that Mr Bumble the resident male, is posing in front of Cobb’s Engine House. (Female swans are known as pens)

We’ve been incredibly lucky, to have had sunshine every day.

although we’ve also had a bit of misty fog, the blue sky was just behind

But what can I say, we probably picked the best week possible to stay here

The scenery speaks for itself

All within 10 minutes of our warm snug boat

The Midlands March, 16 locks

There wasn’t a lot, but we definitely saw a dusting of snow on the towpath this morning.

And with a flight of 16 locks to work through I was a bit worried about slipping on ice. But the sun was shining as we entered the first lock on the stourbridge flight at 10am

We passed some lovely old buildings, that probably thrived on canal trade

I wanted to stop at the Red House glass works Museum,

but word was starting to filter down that there was a problem ahead….. “The canals been dredged” “the canals empty” “there’s a swan stuck in the mud” ….. I think the walkers thought we were mad to keep going on up the flight, but what else where we to do until we’d seen the problem for ourselves.

Mmm Firecrest won’t be going through that quagmire

And sure enough we got to Swan Bridge winding hole to find it impassible. Did we call CRT or walk up and check the paddles first? We opted to check the paddles hadn’t been left open and then draw some water down to refill the pound. There didn’t seem to be much amiss in the section above, and despite it seeming a large area, the levels had risen sufficiently in just over half an hour to be navigable.

And typically just as we were breathing a huge sigh of relief a well armed CRT man turned up with his rake. I didn’t pick up if he’d been told about the problem by someone else, but he agreed we had done the right thing. And he also identified the cause of the problem. Something was stopping the ground paddle being fully wound down. And he knew that the last boat on the flight before us was the day before, so there had had been plenty of time to drain the pond. He set too with his rake and after quite some effort, he hauled a child’s scooter and some plastic out thus allowing the paddle to close properly.

We all surmised that the scooter looked new, so we think it must have fallen in rather than been discarded thrown in. The current then sucked it into the paddle channel. So not a deliberate act of vandalism, just a consequence of an unfortunate accident. Sadly though, we are now in an urban area, where there are enough morons who think it acceptable to use the canal as a dumping ground or for sport throwing in shopping trolleys and traffic cones. And for some make their “artistic” presence known.

Thankfully those people are in the minority and plenty more enjoy the benefits of the canal. It’s not always rubbish that gets pulled out as we saw this enormous Pike being landed

We made it through the top lock 4 hours after we set off. And with CRTs permission we moored on the bollards.

With a clear sky and a crescent moon it’s quite beautiful

Less than 2 miles and 16+ locks