Little More...

In Trevor

Not just in Trevor, relaxing in Trevor. S'ok though; Trevor is not a specific person, Trevor is an arm. So I am in fact relaxing in the arm of Trevor. And before you ask about his other arm let me clarify: I refer not to the arm of a man, a man called Trevor, but of a canal, the Llangollen canal (best pronounced with a modicum of catarrh, or failing that soothing whiskey, in the back of the throat.). Trevor is a little touristy. Trevor brought us summer sun (at last). Trevor inspired me to weild the Brasso and get me brasses done. (The brasses are a chore any self respecting water gypo relishes on a sunny day..oh how they sparkle). As I write Alan is trying to turn round in Trevor (steady now) so that we can get out. Not that we are desperate to go because Trevor is also a very cute, sunny little marina that glows like newly Brasso'd brass when the long-awaited sun hits it. Add to this the fact that my sunglasses turn everything the burnished orange colour of a faded 1970s photograph and you've got a recipe for lounging happily around listening to Neil Young and being all nostalgic. Which is what we did after crossing the splendiferous Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, the biggest one in Britain - tonnes of steel hurled arching improbably into the sky above a giant valley, towering above the river Dee which spurts and swishes belligerently a head spinning 126 feet below. There is no barrier between you and the sheer vertiginous drop off the side of your boat and the temptation to chuck yourself freely into the wide open arms of the valley, though only momentary, is delicious and huge. The sunlight scrubbed everything clean as bleached bone as we passed over this mammoth thing into the soft, leafy Vale of Llangollen. It was all a bit much really. So we stopped in Trevor to make a sandwich.

Sorry not to've written in a while, but I have been away. We spent 10 days in south Wales going to two music festivals; Tapestry – a medieval themed rock festival (think Spinal Tap in wimples and you've got the idea) and Green Man Folk Festival. Tapestry was held in a beautiful wooded park within view of the sea near Port Talbot. Unfortunately it was also in view of a huge steel works on the beach, though that was merely one of a litany of incongruous sights thoughtfully provided by the festival which included a busty Man-Wench dancing with a Beardy Apothecary, a man who spent the entire weekend with a cardboard box on his head and Ant dressed as a monk, but with a long 70s 'tache and aviator shades. When he put his brown Hutch-from-Starsky-and-Hutch leather jacket on, he had the complete “Medieval Monksploitation” look pinned down. Rob deserves the prize for best costume – especially fo his fantastic medieval-louche purple hat-thing. He also had a leather drinking bladder filled with cider. As Roy Castle used to sing, Dedication's What You Need. Green Man was a lovely way to catch up with a festival cocktail of lovely friends but I could have done without the biblical plague of rain and mud. I got so excited during Robert Plant's set that I dropped my waterproof into the brown gloop and had jumped joyously up and down on it several times with a fiercely air-guitaring Irishman before I realised. I had, effectively, soiled myself.

We were supposed to walk between the two festivals; me, Al, Jess and Matthew; a jaunty 50 miles we thought. We did not however think at all about the big fuck off hills you get in Wales. Hmm. And how much heavier a pack is when you've got a tent and four days food in it. The first day we did 14 miles. A distance, I will humbly state, that we have covered many times before without a problem – even over a few big hills. The pack, though, with its extra weight made us all want it to be over by about two hours after we started, so when we got to our camp-site 9 hours later to be greeted by two young valley lads “Wha yew wana walk fer – are ye mental or summet?” and a cloud of hyperactive hunger-crazed midges, the thought of getting up and doing it all over again, and again and again for five more days was enough to make me want to stick my head in a pig. So we did the smart thing and got a taxi to Crickhowell only to be royally pissed on from above for five consecutive days. Walkers Karma.

It is much later now as I fnish off and after passing lots of nonplussed sheep, running aground, navigating through a myriad of tunnels and bridges – some of them Tim Burtonish in their vaguely threatening cartoon misshapenness - and seeing some of the most wonderful scenery falling away from the ridge line like slices of knobbly green Stilton, we arrived in my oldest and dearest friend Dawn's home – Llangollen - a few hours ago. And I have just come back from a folk night in a pub that belongs firmly in a David Lynch film. But it is late and I am too agreeably full of wine and whiskey to do it justice now, so I will have to tell you about it tomorrow.

Gerrnight.

Fortuitous Morning Wee

Five to five this morning I woke up on my little boat, moored at a lovely spot near the tiny market town of Ellesmere needing a wee. Alan and I have been here for two days now, after a busy week travelling down through Cheshire into Shropshire, hosting a Hinton family party on the way. Bob and Jen, a friends/family hybrid of a couple – lets say two of our best fremily – came to stay for the weekend. After catching the train to Crewe they were deposited by Ma and Pa Hinton's taxi service on a small country lane and faced with the prospect of crossing a disused bridge via two overgrown stiles to get to the canal towpath in the thickening twilight. Having faced the prospect they promptly footed it and arrived at the boat in time for a cuppa and a nice sleep. On Saturday we rocked up - literally, as Bob had very quickly taken up position on the side rails of the boat where he spent much of the travelling time of the weekend (when he wasn't doing locks, that is) alternately perched, hanging or just Bobbing – at a lock just outside Wrenbury. Alan and Jen's entire family then arrived with enough food and drink to kit us out as a small floating grocer's shop. We'd make shite grocers though, because we ate all the food. Amidst all the hustle and bustle of a busy stretch of canal on a Saturday there we were, scoffing our heads off and taking up the towpath with our camping chairs and our tiny table quaking under the weight of tons of snap and booze. We must have made a quaint little picture, and we attracted a lot of looks and cheery – and slightly hungry - waves from walkers and boaters. Despite the clouds it was an ace afternoon of eating, drinking and watching loads of poor buggers having a go at their first ever lock, there being several boat hire places nearby. As veterans of over 100 locks, Alan and myself would've been on hand to help had there not been the considerable distraction of some nice cake for lunch-pudding. Having said that, I did go up and teach a very tipsy man and his equally squiffy friend how a lock works before he clattered his way merrily through his first one in a 70ft long hire boat. Had I not been well on my way to being fairly pissed myself I would have offered to drive it in for him since I have become quite proud of my steering prowess over the last month. Instead I wobbled back to continue my familial eating duties with a slightly anxious backward glance and a little whispered prayer of “Good luck, don't sink yourselves” towards my shitfaced protegees. I saw them today on their way back and they are all alive. I think the booze must have run out though because neither of them slurred when they said hello. After going through 6 more locks, including a staircase of three, with the jolly help of Ma and Pa H and Bob and Jen on a blisteringly summery Sunday, we arrived in Ellesmere and found ourselves a spot on an overgrown and overlooked bit of deserted towpath away from town. It is here that we did our laundry, drying our towels, sheets, knickers and shorts on an improvised series of string clotheslines strung right down the length of the boat. (To get a picture of how this looked in a tiny dwelling only 38 feet long and less than 7 feet wide, imagine a giant's white bunting hung up in a Hobbit's house). It was from here also that we cycled the 20 miles to Chirk and back today, of which more some other time. And it was here also that I awoke before dawn this morning needing an early morning wee. Why was the wee fortuitous? Well it meant that I was awake to hear the absurd twittering of a bird outside my bedroom cabin window. It was a strange call in two parts; the bird would twitter and then answer itself with a trill; sort of a birdy-no-mates-talks-to-itself call . But the bird is not the point. It was very very cold. This is also not the point, but as I snuggled back under the bedwarmed sheets I had the faintly annoying sense that I was going to have to get up and go outside to see what ridiculous creature would get up at five in the morning to make such a daft noise outside my window. I tried to ignore the faintly annoying sense on the grounds that it was cold as the bloody grave on the other side of the duvet but the faintly annoying sense then decided to hell with faintly annoying, lets go for all out niggly. So I sat up and began to perform the weird dance of the-person-who-is-trying-to-get-dressed-while-keeping-their-entire-body-under-a-duvet as I wriggled into a bizarre collection of woollen items and went outside to find this ruddy bird. I could not find it. But as I said before, the bird is not the point. As I sat watching on the stern, I began to become lulled and transfixed by how beautiful and gentle everything looks in the pink light before dawn. Mist curled off the surface of the canal, making it look like potion in a cauldron and one by one birds glided over my head either setting out on or returning from their hunt. The sky wore its baby pinks and blues shyly, throwing the odd raggedy scarf of grey around itself and then, all of a sudden, after about 45 minutes of drinking all this gentle stillness in, I saw an otter. The otter is the point. Otters nearly became extinct in the middle of the twentieth century and although they have a fairly healthy population now, it is incredibly rare to see one in the wild. This one plopped into the water, sleek and heavy, on the opposite bank to me and executed a couple of its mermaidy-undulations in the water to get a bit of momentum going. Then its head appeared above the water, all eyes and friendly nose and whiskers. It paddled happily towards me and fixed me with a look of such open curiosity that after a short time I could not help but reach – silently I thought – for my binoculars. My mistake. I should have returned her gaze for longer because once I broke eye contact, she darted of underwater, quick as a fish. She was probably startled by my movement, but I had a vague fancy that she was a little bit affronted that I didn't look back at her for longer. I stayed out for another half an hour waiting for her but she never came. Instead I was treated to a gorgeous sunrise and the medley of smells that came with each stage of the sun's return to the world, from the bite of the cold fresh pre-dawn air in the nose to the soft, sweet smell of rising dew to the damp grassy smell of drying leaves and stems. But nothing quite matched my encounter with the otter. I knew how privileged I had been. Meantime Alan and I have taken to sitting on our roof at night to watch the bats and listen to the whole family of otters we are convinced we have as neighbours pad through the reeds on the opposite bank. I would love to see one of them again. I'm also desperate to spy an owl.

Hairy Shower (and Post Tunnel Stress Disorder)

Alan is busy cleaning the hairs out of our shower pump.  Apparently it is a “Man's Job” (his words, not mine), so I thought I would use the time to tell you all about our brush with Post Tunnel Stress Disorder. This is where we went all clumsy and giddy after having a near miss in a one mile long tunnel and I ended up in the minor injuries unit of Northwich Hospital.

I'd better let you know in advance that we are both alright. Not even a bruise to the upper arm sustained between us.

We have 'done' three tunnels; the Preston Brook Tunnel, Saltersford and Barnton Tunnels, all of which are in Cheshire, which is a gorgeous county, heretofore unknown to me. (I love the word 'heretofore', it makes you sound like a twitarse but it tumbles around in the mouth deliciously like a just-bitten-into chocolate digestive). These tunnels are long and narrow and pitch black and after 25 minutes splishing about in one, the Freudian connotations were not lost on me, no. It was in the second of these tunnels that the bikes on our boat's roof got caught up in what can only be described as the ceiling undulations. Quick-thinking Al slammed the boat into reverse as the bikes crunched their way between the stone ceiling and the roof of our boat. After a sickening wait, they finally ended up teetering over the edge of the handrails like two lemmings that had suddenly thought “We don't have to do this, do we?”. I walked down the side of the boat (only two inches wide, thrills-and-spills-fans) in the dark with the boat now free to float the half metre towards the side wall and crush me. Al's arms were acting as a strut. After close inspection I decided that we might well be fucked. There was no way we could reverse out of the tunnel. We were stuck. So Alan went down the side while I took over strut-responsibilities and after much faffing and fiddling managed to get his bike off the top and here's the impressive bit: one hand holding him onto the side of the boat, the other hand dangling his bike free of the boat and over the canal-water he walks backwards on a two inch wide rail and hands me the bicycle. I thought: Things might be looking up. Unfortunately, just as I thought that, my own bike groaned and unceremoniously plopped into the black waters of the canal. “Shit. Shit”. These last expletives from Alan who never usually swears.

In this moment, I was reminded of how in the previous tunnel I had handed steering duties over to Al when we were ¾ of the way through so that I could look back at where we came in. Everything was black save a little bright green arch gleaming like an emerald ¾ of a mile back and I was busy imagining an out of body experience (“Come to the Light, come to the light” and all that) when I looked round and saw Al's face reflected in the green light of the leisure battery charger. The black waters, the green face, the light ever receding and the ominous swirly watery sound made me suddenly feel like that bloke Orpheus who gets taken by the devil's boatman over the river Styx to the bloody Undeworld. Spooked myself, didn't I?

So when I saw my knackered but beloved bike of 12 years sinking into the black waters of doom I was not only a bit miffed but filled with dread. This was quite bad. We could now not move at all since the bike would damage our propeller and that of anyone who came through behind us. I was beginning to not like this tunnel. But I was beginning to appreciate my boyfriend in a not wholly new, but nevertheless highly pleasing way when he then said “I'll just pole it out”. Steady now. What he did was get the boat hook and, with my verbal guidance (a bit like the Crystal Maze but more dangerous) found the bike in the Death-Black-Hades-Water, hooked it and lifted it - one handed remember, he was holding himself up with the other – dripping like a new born er, bike out of the canal. What a hero. Then he went all funny with the stress and that, so I had do navigate us through that and a third narrow, dark, dread-tunnel.

It was when we got out of the third tunnel that the stress of concentration pulled the plug on my sensibleness and I hit my ankle bone on the cog of Alan's bike. This would've been OK had I not hit a vein – a non-major one thankfully but still with the force of my heart behind it. It was a tiny cut but it spurted claret like a wine taster enjoying a very funny but ill timed joke. It then immediately clotted and the vein began to swell like it was pooling blood. It got to the size of a gobby* before I had to sit down. Then it began seriously to hurt. So that is how we ended up at the Minor Injuries unit. No harm done, I was checked over and told it would really hurt for a bit. It does.   But that cannot dull my enjoyment of Cheshire and the intermittent but happily throbbing sunshine as we chug off the Trent and Mersey canal and onto the Shropshire Union in our pursuit of a Welsh August.

I haven't told you about dalmatian man, have I.....?

* for those as bemused as the nurse at NHS Direct, it is a large marble.  Not as big as a Queenie, but bigger than an ordinary one.