The river and canal trip.
October 2010
I may have changed some names to protect the innocent and famous. I would hate one of our number to displace Wayne Rooney from the front of the tabloids.
Perhaps it’s best if I start on who we are. Ronnie Murphy with a rupture and sciatica. Alex Wilkie with diabetic complications and stiffening joints. John "Picko" Pickering who has got Von Hippel Landau syndrome which has already resulted in him losing one kidney, knackering the other one and starting growths on his pancreas. And me, as you well know dear reader, a mental and physical wreck.
The first day started with me and Alex getting up at the unearthly hour of six am, pack the car and take an uneventful drive to Upton on Severn to the boatyard. I have mentioned the Bruce Wake Charity before which caters for disabled boating complete with two wheelchair lifts and a bed hoist. www.brucewakecharity.co.uk The boats are absolutely superb and are fully equipped. Well the journey was uneventful until we got on the M6 or the M sick as I liked to call it. There were signs galore to say the toll M6 was clear and I bet it was but I already pay a King’s ransom of road tax and fuel and tax on insurance.
So we get installed on the boat and wait. And wait. And wait. Several cups of tea later and there is a phone message – they are stuck on the A453. The A453 is the most congested road in Europe. The A453 is a single carriageway trunk road from Nottingham to the M1 and the A453 is a road which Picko did not need to use to access the M1 as we have the beautiful A46 to the M1 when going south.
I strike Picko off the navigator’s space on the crew deployment list and demote him to tea and sympathy. Finally they arrive. Picko selects the other fixed bed which leaves Ronnie with the bed in the galley which has to be put together every night. Ronnie who is the tallest by at least six inches of all of us who has size twelve feet and a nose to match. Yeah that made sense – but it did to Picko because he needed somewhere to house his autumn collection.
The boatyard owner comes along to instruct us on …….the boat. Check the oil, grease the gland, run the generator for the 240 volt, make the tea and splice the mainbrace. Finally we take to the high seas. Well the River Severn. “Hard a port!” Mr. Christian I shout, forgetting we haven’t got a Mr. Christian, in fact it would be hard pushed to call any of us “Mister”
Our boat is called Lillia and is the sister ship to Isabella. The Bruce Wake Trust first boat was called Charlotte and then they got Charlotte II which is a wide beam river boat. She handles very well for a delinquent and it is not long before Ronnie takes the helm and we steam towards the end of the world. Well the River Avon lock at least. The sun is shining, there is a nip in the air but could there be a better day to be in Nelson’s navy? I think not.
On the way down we see Herons and swans and there is a pair of buzzards circling and soaring high above us. The Buzzard is a relative of the vulture – do they know something we don’t?
We arrive at the Avon lock in the sunshine. It is the lock keeper’s lunch hour and although he might not have seen another boat for days if you arrive in his lunch hour there is no chance of awakening him from his slumbers. There is another boat waiting and finally – probably full of cheese and bread and other nice things, the great man conducts us through the lock with the other waiting boat that falls by the wayside to take on water. I use the word conducts for that is what the lock keeper does. He makes rampant gestures which suggests that a thirty ton sixty foot steel boat can be slid around like a carpet when in fact the bloody thing has a mind of its own and is more disobedient than when Picko has found that he has snagged a pair of his tights and we won’t stop so he can buy some more!
We settle down to a nice cruise up the Avon, leaving Tewkesbury on our way to Pershore to take on vast quantities of beer............To be continued.
