Retirement with No Problem

Waterways news snippets

•  My Hols: Timothy West

Timothy West and Prunella Scales have been narrowboating for quite a number of years now.  They enjoy the whole system,  sometimes putting the boat on a lorry and taking it to different areas.  Prunella would like to ‘do’ the Chichester Canal, and Timothy, the Mon and Brec.. I’m not sure whether they have done either yet, but they will enjoy the Mon and Brec. We spent 4 years in a row enjoying that canal on the lovely NB Country Girl from Sue and Phill Ware at Country Craft Narrowboats

Timothy’s crew decided to open another bottle of wine while stuck on a weir on the River Avon.  How cool can you get!.. If it was me I think it would be more like a bottle of valium!

Tim says in the Sunday Times today..

“There was an occasion when I took the whole cast of Twelve Angry Men on the River Avon and got stuck on the top of a weir all day. If the river’s running hard it’s sometimes difficult to turn accurately into the lock. We were teetering on the edge — the barrier that comes up with the rising tide caught us by about two inches. Most people opened another bottle of wine. Kevin Whately and I stood bravely on the stern, pretending that things were all right. Finally, a lorry and a canoeist got us off “

Andrew Denny reports on Granny Buttons that a new blog called  Zooskree , not a narrowboat blog this one,  Davidh , the author, has a canoe!

I expect you are wondering what this has to do with Timothy and Prunella, well I was thinking, back in 1999 Timothy had another bit of bad luck.

In Canal and Riverboat back in 2000

“We lost a mooring, and the boat drifted out into the middle of the canal with nobody onboard”  Fortunately, a passing canoeist came to their rescue and recovered the mooring rope.

Canoes are very much needed then in our narrowboat world!

“So I should mention my paddle steamer, the Waverley, the only remaining seagoing example in the country. We go on her as often as we can. I call it “my” paddle steamer because I was one of the original members of the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society, which bought the ship from the breaker’s yard for �1 in 1973.”

I will show my age now… I’ve been on Waverley several times travelling from Portsmouth to Ryde on the IOW in my childhood days. Fond memories tempted me to browse a bit this morning.. This is exactly how I remember my weekend trips to the Island here