We have now booked the boat, the airline tickets and the two hotel rooms we need from Wednesday the 12th (when Ryanair still has affordable prices) till we get the boat two days later. Now all I have to do is deside what to pack. In comparison to going south in the winter, one doesn't need to go in the attic for summer clothes for a trip on the canals. In fact, I can pack more or less what I would have packed for a skiing trip - omit the skies, add rainwear. The problem now is to pack so little that we can manage to carry our bags on and off all the public transportation we need to take before we get to the boat. And to leave room for a little "finery" since we are going to London. Not totally necessary may be, but I do have a fear of being taken for a bag lady after a couple of days on the boat. I tend to think boat is boat and forget that this boat actually has both shower and hair dryer, and I have no excuse for looking like an old rastafari after a week on the boat! Which I have on the sailboat.
I thought I should bring some kitchen wear, since most rental places at least has dull knives, but after having read the inventory list on the luxury boat we have rented, I found out I could open up a catering business from the boat (coffee grinder and cake tins were extra, and I think I will get them just in case... are there any laws agains opening up a small business on a rental boat?), so all I will bring is a knife sharpener.
And then its the weather question: What will it be like? We always expect rain in UK, anything else is an extra bonus (and first time we did this, we had a heat wave, and came back as tanned as if we had been to Spain, so I have to remember bathing suits), but what about the small (and some times large) storms we "inherit" from UK three days later? How will the keel-less monster react in strong gales? And how will other canal boaters react to us if we are unable to steer the boat then?
We found out the hard way (we were yelled at a lot) that there were a couple of "no-nos" in canalboating in comparison to sailing. You can cling clang the boat into a lock as much as you like (it's an iron boat on muddy ground), but you can NOT bump into somebody else's boat. You can not moore outside another boat without asking (and then expect a NO), and I suppose being "distressed at sea" does not give you any rights on the canals. Very much unlike at sea, where if in distress you can moore anywhere you like and if not distressed, anywhere a "horse can not wade", and in the harbours the boats moore outside each other without asking and in the evening if you are in the boat moored closest to the harbour, you just have to endure all the people from all the other boats jumping on your boat on they're way to the next one. And our pubs close at four in the morning! And if you want to go out early in the morning then ... well you have to retie all the other boats with fenders and all...
After having opened up a lock in Stourport that haden't been opened for 20 years (all the kids in Stourport had to help us) and thereby wasted about 50.000 litres of water, we found out we had a "narrow" boat and not a very wide one, as we first thought! Well, we learned. Coming back, we sort of dog-walked the boat through the basin not to touch other boats (while our kids were washing the boat on the outside) and then the lockmaster yelled "you can rent my boat next time". Well, we did give him a couple of beers as an excuse for our miserable entrance to Stourport, and he yelled something very different before that!
Thursday 28 February 2008
Anticipating Canal Boating in Two Weeks
I have now been browsing the internet for a month since we decided that we would go canal boating again, and since I can't get enough of canal boating histories myself, I thought I should add my own. This will be the third time we hire canal boats and I know I could write a book about every trip because it's such a nice way of holidaying, besides we meet som many interesting people, see so many interesting things and something funny happens all the time. This time I will write it down, so I have the memories till next time I get a longing for the canals. As I read blogs I find myself looking forward to retirement while calculating how long my Norwegian old age pension would reach on the canals.
This time we have rented from the Black Prince company and why we rent from them is a good history in itself. When we canalboated last time we did it in the Llangollen canal - a must see for at least all Europeans. In the Chirk marina we met a really nice man. First he taught us how to navigate one of the really big canal boats and later he seemed to be quite impressed with us for washing the rental boat we had. It was yellow with pollen, but since we were in the UK it gave us associations to assid rain! We asked to buy washing powder which they didn't sell there, but the nice man gave us some + a mug and his card - with the words: "I give you the washing powder, if you promise to rent from us next time".
We come from a little village along the Oslo Fjord which used to be a big sailing town. Today, however, only two ships are registered in the village (called Hvitsten): The two cruise ships "Black Prince" and "Black Watch", so one can say we have a connection there.
Next time I was looking for a canal boat was for Christmas 2006. I wrote to the mail address on the card, reminding what I thought was the nice man from Chirk about our encounter in Chirk. Somebody from the head office called Tim answered and he and I had the most hilarious correspondance there for a while. Now we ended up with the most amazing house in Italy for that Christmas, so our correspondance lead nowhere then.
This time - as a more experienced renter - I found a page that sent out requests to all kinds of small boat companies, and what I was looking for was (honestly) a big boat for a small price and preferrably in the London area. We have discovered that a lot of our British friends have never been canal boating and we would like to take them, and since most of them live in London... Besides, canal boating in London, how cool is that?
I got a really good price (although a small boat) from a company in the Llangollen canal. We can see the Llangollen canal again (and at one point we will) we have friends there also, so we weren't really disappointed, although London was our first choice.Then I get a mail from Tim of Black Prince's head office asking if I had forgotten him. Not at all, but I thought he had forgotten me, so I told him about my very good offer and told him that if we should go with Black Prince he had to serious underbid - for a joke. But woulden't you belive that he not only matched the price but offered us a bigger boat and - near London! Be careful what you wish for....
Now reading all these blogs and canal boat sites I keep coming across a really mean man called Tim Parker, who flatly refused to reimburse some renters who had damaged a boat by negligens. At least that's what I got out of the story, and that the renter had Aschperger syndrome. One of the things that is special about these people is that they get fixations on a subject and the fixation is there till the Aschperger person is finished with it and not before. Ask any parent of one and they will tell you. We have a house friend with the syndrome and he was at one point totally fascinated with lead paint (the orange and poisenous stuff they used to paint boats, bridges etc. for it not to rust). I finally gave up trying to change the subject and just decided that I probaly would not hurt if I learned a bit about lead paint, so I let him finish. It took five hours and now I know more of lead paint than I ever will get the use for.
The Aschperger man who got cross with Tim Parker has posted they're correspondance on so many sites (and with all the 170 comments) that it's difficult to avoid it, and all of sudden I realised that Tim Parker must be my really funny and helpfull new pen pal! I could of course post the letters he has sent to me, but I am not going to because then he also could post my letters to him! But I will say this much: If you had read OUR correspondance you would get a very different opinion of the "Terrible Tim" from the 1000 internet pages. His customer care has so far been about 300% above what I have expected!
And in two weeks we will meet him in person, and since I am a perceptive person with gypsy genes, I will then give you an accurate acount. Till then you can wonder with me: Is he a willain or is he a prince?
This time we have rented from the Black Prince company and why we rent from them is a good history in itself. When we canalboated last time we did it in the Llangollen canal - a must see for at least all Europeans. In the Chirk marina we met a really nice man. First he taught us how to navigate one of the really big canal boats and later he seemed to be quite impressed with us for washing the rental boat we had. It was yellow with pollen, but since we were in the UK it gave us associations to assid rain! We asked to buy washing powder which they didn't sell there, but the nice man gave us some + a mug and his card - with the words: "I give you the washing powder, if you promise to rent from us next time".
We come from a little village along the Oslo Fjord which used to be a big sailing town. Today, however, only two ships are registered in the village (called Hvitsten): The two cruise ships "Black Prince" and "Black Watch", so one can say we have a connection there.
Next time I was looking for a canal boat was for Christmas 2006. I wrote to the mail address on the card, reminding what I thought was the nice man from Chirk about our encounter in Chirk. Somebody from the head office called Tim answered and he and I had the most hilarious correspondance there for a while. Now we ended up with the most amazing house in Italy for that Christmas, so our correspondance lead nowhere then.
This time - as a more experienced renter - I found a page that sent out requests to all kinds of small boat companies, and what I was looking for was (honestly) a big boat for a small price and preferrably in the London area. We have discovered that a lot of our British friends have never been canal boating and we would like to take them, and since most of them live in London... Besides, canal boating in London, how cool is that?
I got a really good price (although a small boat) from a company in the Llangollen canal. We can see the Llangollen canal again (and at one point we will) we have friends there also, so we weren't really disappointed, although London was our first choice.Then I get a mail from Tim of Black Prince's head office asking if I had forgotten him. Not at all, but I thought he had forgotten me, so I told him about my very good offer and told him that if we should go with Black Prince he had to serious underbid - for a joke. But woulden't you belive that he not only matched the price but offered us a bigger boat and - near London! Be careful what you wish for....
Now reading all these blogs and canal boat sites I keep coming across a really mean man called Tim Parker, who flatly refused to reimburse some renters who had damaged a boat by negligens. At least that's what I got out of the story, and that the renter had Aschperger syndrome. One of the things that is special about these people is that they get fixations on a subject and the fixation is there till the Aschperger person is finished with it and not before. Ask any parent of one and they will tell you. We have a house friend with the syndrome and he was at one point totally fascinated with lead paint (the orange and poisenous stuff they used to paint boats, bridges etc. for it not to rust). I finally gave up trying to change the subject and just decided that I probaly would not hurt if I learned a bit about lead paint, so I let him finish. It took five hours and now I know more of lead paint than I ever will get the use for.
The Aschperger man who got cross with Tim Parker has posted they're correspondance on so many sites (and with all the 170 comments) that it's difficult to avoid it, and all of sudden I realised that Tim Parker must be my really funny and helpfull new pen pal! I could of course post the letters he has sent to me, but I am not going to because then he also could post my letters to him! But I will say this much: If you had read OUR correspondance you would get a very different opinion of the "Terrible Tim" from the 1000 internet pages. His customer care has so far been about 300% above what I have expected!
And in two weeks we will meet him in person, and since I am a perceptive person with gypsy genes, I will then give you an accurate acount. Till then you can wonder with me: Is he a willain or is he a prince?
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