At Dundas Aqueduct

Boat on a Bridge

Our narrowboat pootling across the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Llangollen Canal

Bristol Docks

At dusk on Saturday afternoon on the way back from Queens Square to Temple Meads station.

Happy New Year everyone!

Canal Art

Traditional narrowboats are famous for their brightly coloured canal art. Boat doors and utensils such as cans and spoons are covered with the ‘Roses and Castles’ form. The sides of boats often have stripes and the pictured diamond motif.

This picture was taken at one of the display boats inside the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port.

Graffiti Boat

Seen on the dockside on the way from Pier Head to Albert Dock. Albert Dock can be seen just peeping out above the boat.

National Waterways Museum

The complex at Ellesmere Port is vast, so it’s difficult to provide an all encompassing scene to give you a real overview of the place. However, whilst this picture is just a portion of what’s on offer, it does show a number of the key elements which shows you why this is such a good place for a canal museum.

• Canals which still work
• Canals with locks
• Basin areas and moorings
• Lots of brightly painted boats
• Typical canal art
• Working boats and lots more requiring restoration and depicting a good cross-section of the kind of boats which worked the canals
• A huge complex of different building which were used during the heyday of canals
• Volunteers getting stuck in!

Cill or Sill?

I’ve been on many a canal holiday and know how important it is to keep a narrowboat as forward as possible so that it doesn’t run aground as the lock fills. However, it wasn’t until we visited the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port just over a week ago that I realised cill is spelled cill and not sill as in windowsill.

Ferry Boat

Dragon Boat

Chippenham had its first ever River Festival at the weekend. On Saturday there was dragon boat racing. About 8 local teams took part, two at at a time and over 3 rounds. There was raft racing and a Viking fire boat on Sunday.

There were various watery related stalls, plus The Black Farmer sausages to try. The Black Farmer – I’ve forgotten his name – is standing to be Chippenham’s MP at the next general election when Chippenham will have its own MP – instead of being lumped in with the rest of North Wiltshire – for the first time since the Rotten Borough constituencies were removed from parliament.

I really wanted this festival to work as it’s about improving the river and life in Chippenham. There was something of interest on some of the stalls, especially the one showing the history of the river in Chippenham. However, the space in Monkton Park hadn’t been used that well and everything was too spread out. There didn’t seem to be that many people there on Saturday either – the Bank Holiday effect?

I hope they were successful enough to have another one next year and can learn some lessons to make improvements for next time.

Bristol Boats

I rather like the washing lines strung across this residential barge instead of sails.

Apparently the demand for residential boats on our rivers and canals has soared over the last year. It’s another aspect of the effects of the ’credit crunch’ – boats and moorings are substantially cheaper than bricks and mortar.