Down to the River (On this blue and grey September day)

JOURNAL ENTRY

4th September, Thursday

“Clouds pillow and pile
 Black skies behind us
 A fleeting sun catches
 the scarlet of bryony berries
 That wrap themselves around
 Spiky vines of midnight blue blackthorn.
 The canal reflects the flight
 Of a raven passing overhead.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

The geese are beginning to gather filling the evening air with their wild songs on the wing. The sun has set in a glow of tangerine and apricot. It’s very nearly a full moon tonight, and a blustery wind from the southeast ruffles the waters and sets the clouds racing.  

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the dark by the light of a harvest moon, to you wherever you are.

You made it! It's so good to see you, I was hoping you'd be able to come. It's a beautiful night, scented with autumnal promise. The door is open, the kettle is on and there is a seat waiting for you. Come in and make yourself comfortable. Welcome aboard.  

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS

The grass, for so long parched, raspily dry, worn down to its roots until only dust and hard-baked earth was visible, is beginning to green again. Almost over night, new shoots emerge. Puddles form for a short while in the old familiar depressions before seeping away into the thirsty ground or evaporating back up into the warm gusty air. Petrichor and rain thrum on the cabin sides and roof. Mostly short showers, but showers nonetheless. We’ll take what we can get. For so long we’ve agonisingly watched the charts and weather radar, watching the approach of heavy rainfall only to see it either divide and move south and north of us, or just dwindle and disappear before it reaches us. But now it is coming. And it has been coming in the best way possible. Gentle showers rolling in one after the other. Then later, heavier bursts that drum and rattle on the roof and create bubbles in the canal water, aerating the sullen, hypoxic water. Drought, combined with the lack of boats to stir up and aerate the water, has meant the fish are suffering. They’ve been floating nearer the surface gulping air in through their mouths – never a good sign. The crack and roll of thunder is as good a sign for them as it is for us and the land.     

We’ve a long way to go, yet. ‘Several months of sustained rainfall, significantly above the long-term average’ is what the official sources say is required in order to restore the depleted reservoir levels and replenish groundwater. But, for now, this is good and welcome. In fact, it is amazing what even this short spell of rain and showers has achieved. Locally, the water has almost returned to its original levels. No more stepping down onto the boat. Maggie can once more reach the canal in her favourite drinking spot. The navigation closure relating to this part of the canal has been partially lifted, with just one large section just below us remaining closed. It seems a sensible call as there are numerous thirsty locks in that section and it can get very busy seeing lots of boat movements in one day.

A narrow single chamber lock, like those on the canal where we are currently located, will typically move some 30,000 gallons of water. The wider, double chamber locks able to take two narrowboats at a time the figure rises to around 80, 000 gallons. You can see why the old canal companies fought so vigorously to protect their water, policing all who used it, demanding payment from those who did, and bitterly fighting over ownership to waters and its sources.  

Things are going in the right direction, and, although I feel desperately sorry for all the holiday makers – as well as hire companies who must have been hit so badly – not having the locks in use has really helped stabilise the levels.

On the subject of stoppages and closures, I had a great question from listener Bill Thomas on the Nighttime on Still Waters Facebook group page. Bill wrote to ask about what actually happens when a canal is closed. Does everybody have to get off it? It is a really good question as issuing a closure order must seem a strange and rather difficult thing to implement.

Network or section closures are terms that have been readily bandied about for some time by those of us on the waterways and probably come up from time-to-time in the canal vlogs, and if you have been watching any of them recently, I am sure that you will have heard the terms. However, as with all terminologies that develop within specific groups or communities, it is easy to forget that what makes perfect sense to us, might not be quite so clear for those coming across these terms for the first time.

First of all, to answer Bill’s questions, no, you are not expected to evacuate or even move your boat – although the inference is that, should you stay, you take responsibility for anything that might go wrong. You might have come across posts on social media citing and email sent by the Canal and River Trust (the organisation that oversees most of the canals in Britain and some of the rivers too) which advised all boaters to return to their permanent or winter moorings or find mooring spots close to facilities as a significant number of closures were about to be enforced. This put paid to many boaters’ summer cruising plans.       

However, all this talk of closures is not quite as Draconian as it probably might sounds. Hordes of elite special forces CRT personnel are not quietly air-dropped by helicopter all along the cut under the cover of night, sealing off the canals and erecting barricades and checkpoints all along the navigation!

Essentially what happens, is that the CRT send us a notification that a section is closed to use with an explanation for why this decision has been made. While sometimes strategic locks are padlocked (for example, at the top and bottom of a busy flight of locks) which makes them impossible to use, most of the time it is a question of 'in the interest of the canals and everyone using them, please don't use this section.' There is a tacit assumption that the majority of canal users will pull together and do what is best. In other words, there’s a basis of trust on both sides and assumption of good will in adhering to advice, even if it might not be in the individual’s best interest (for example, they need to get somewhere for boat maintenance – it could so easily have been us earlier in the summer, or they need to return to their home mooring). I like it that way, and I have to say, for the most part, it works. Unfortunately, you are always going to get the small minority who think better and will go ahead regardless (or some who simply genuinely haven't got the message) - more often than not private owners and not hire boats as is often assumed. The pressure on hireboat companies to continue regardless must have been horrendous, but (again I can only speak about those local to us) respect where it is due, they have adhered to the advice and stopped their business taking a significant financial hit – not for just this year, but I am sure for years to come. People whose holidays have been cancelled I am sure will think twice about hiring a boat in the future. News is also beginning to come out of other businesses, some very old and established ones that are on the brink of bankruptcy, some having lost around 80% of their income this year.

So, what is to stop me continuing to cruise on a ‘closed’ canal. To be honest, nothing, unless I come across a gate that is padlocked. We saw a similar thing occurring during the Covid lockdowns. There’s a strong community feeling among the boaters and you’d certainly get a pretty hard time from them. I think the CRT rely on community feeling among the boaters and also the very real prospect of damaging your boat through grounding to enforce the no travel ban. After the first four or five days, when there was a trickle of boats still going past, the closure here is holding surprisingly well and seems to be working.

Small journeys to and from service points (water, waste, rubbish, etc.) are allowed. The strict 14 day mooring rule has been relaxed so that most can tie up close to service points making travel unnecessary.

It all seems to be working and by far the majority of people are pulling together and working for the common good rather than self-interest. Now the rains are beginning to come the slow recovery has hopefully started.  

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

DOWN TO THE RIVER (ON THIS BLUE AND GREY SEPTEMBER DAY)

Let’s go down to the river now that September has come, slipping soft and stealthy. Let’s go down to the river now that the dusty heat of summer has begun to settle, and the winds ride on curtains of much needed rain. Let’s go down to the river, where the water is alive and sings unknown songs to ancient currents, dark and deep.

Let’s go down to the river and see what we can see. For the canal is quiet, almost sleeping. Closures are still in place and the water level, although still low, is beginning to rise. So, for now, the canal is resting. The locks lie motionless. The moorhens and coots scuttle and bustle undisturbed by boats passing by, exploring the embryonic trickles of water that are beginning to appear again in the by-wash. The ducks are left in peace to doze centre stream.

Let us leave the canal for a short while, at peace, healing, recuperating and stand with me on the banks of the Avon on this blue and grey September day. With the wind chasing leaves and litter around our ankles and squally showers and gusts leave their footsteps across the water. Wait long enough and you can see the next bluster come to you, moments before you feel it brushing your face and playing with your hair like the lover that September is. Spits of rain fleck the air as the skies ahead turn tumultuous.

This part of the river acts like a bit of a seaside promenade for the town. People come down here to stroll along the paths that line both sides of the bank to take the air and see the sights. To catch a bit of nature, even if it is all rather tailored and closely choreographed within concrete, paving slabs and neatly trimmed flowerbeds. Shoals of rowing boats knock and cluster alongside the pontoons. Thick varnished dark wood, each bearing the name picked out in gold lettering of a Shakespearean character. The river laps and chuckles beneath them and swans shoulder their way alongside.

Wide concrete steps sweep down to the water’s edge here. Under the huge canopy of a sweet chestnut tree, tucked into a corner, it is a good spot to linger. To watch the swans, and the bickering gulls. To people watch, to lose yourself in the ever-moving patterns and sun-glanced dimples of the water. The boats clunk and clang against the pontoon. ‘Boats for Hire’ proclaims a large red sign, although all the time I have been here no one has taken up the offer. This pontoon is run by two young girls, who sit in one of the boats chattering to each other the whole time. The sleeping bat-like leaves of the chestnut quiver and tremble as another shower begins to fall, like dancers shaking their limbs when they are limbering up.

There is a constant stream of people passing by. Hastily buttoning jackets, zipping anoraks, pushing buggies with small heads watching the world weep and melt behind their plastic covers. A group of young mothers with a collision of prams and pushchairs stop beside a statue of an actor declaring his line to the un-answering sky. They take pictures of each other with their phones, their hair whipping around their faces in the wind, blown awry. The sun plays hide-and-seek among the clouds in the now slate grey river. A woman, sits on a bench, sipping a drink from the cup of her thermos flask. Her dog lies at her feet. I begin to jot down some notes in my notebook. More spots of rain begin to fall. One lands on the word that I am still writing ‘wind.’ The ink bleeds and smears into a smudged blot. I am strangely annoyed, frustrated perhaps. I have only just taken out my notebook. Perhaps it is with me that I am annoyed. I have had plenty of time before now to write down notes, and it isn’t as if the sky overhead hasn’t given me enough warning of inclemency. But I am also struck by how perfect, how apt, what has just happened is. In trying to capture squally rain showers, the very words I am writing turn into water.  

Was it just a little over a week ago that we were being alerted to a yellow heat warning, and we clung to the shadows? Picking out our coolest summer clothes. Now, it feels as if autumn is here, auburn is here and we should be digging out our woollies and big coats. Although, it is still much too warm for anything other than a light rain jacket over a T-shirt, it feels somehow as if the picture on the calendar has been turned over. Elderberries and honeysuckle entwine in rich gold and indigo brocades. It feels as if we should be cradling warming mugs of hot drinks in our hands and scuffing our feet through large piles of fallen leaves. Groups of people pass swaddled in coats with their hoods up, umbrellas pirouette down the streets and, down here by the river, pull like kites in the wind. When the sun comes out, it is summer again – a summer washed clean. Gulls wheel and scythe in a brand-new sky and below them, the river sparkles with sunlight in delight.

A group of tourists following a tour guide snake their way through a knot of sightseers, in an unmusical conga line. Pigeons and gulls dance around their feet. They have come for the sights and for Shakespeare and for an England that has never really existed and yet it is one we all know so well. Most are elderly, but here they have somehow transmogrified back into school children, falling back in to the rhythms and patterns of the children their older bodies clothe. Follow the teacher, crocodile line, the only thing they are not doing is holding hands – or, at least, most aren’t. Most appear to half listen to the guide. Some stragglers more interested in the things not being talked about. An elderly man with a shock of white hair wears a brand-new, pastel-blue sweatshirt with Oxford University written on it (a very un-Oxford kind of blue!). Its packing folds still visible by deep creases incised across his chest and down each sleeve. He walks stooped, mechanically following the person ahead, eyes down, absorbed deeply in his guidebook, deaf to the tour guide cum school master, who casts his eyes over his straggling disciples and waves above his head a furled umbrella. Where would I be, where would you be, if we were in that group? Within that tight-knit group on the heels of the umbrella-toting guide, devouring every word that pours without breath from his mouth? Or maybe, lagging behind the rest of the party; in danger of getting lost or being left behind. Chattering to a new-found friend, or catching glimpses of the world that lies just outside the orbit of the official tour. Maybe, with that gentleman with his brand-new sweatshirt studiously reading his guidebook.

The river draws them down here, like it draws us. Down to its banks, to watch the light dance, to listen to it weedy green songs. Oh! Here come six old boys, filled with the spirits of their youths. I see grey and white hair, broken trainers, the clap of walking sticks, scruffy jackets straining to remain buttoned. They see none of that – just the whiff of Brylcreem, the roar of a motorbike or scooter, the chase of love and heartbreak and the glory of a world to be taken. I can see it in their faces and in the excitement of the loud rich roll of their northern voices, flattening the vowels, each noun patinaed with an expletive and cheeky, daring grins, like some archaic dialect – which I suppose, in some senses, it is. Watch out Stratford Town, the boys are back. The boys are back in town.

I struggle to place what all this reminds me of, and then I have it. Down here, on the pontoons, under the chestnut tree that weeps rain drops and leaves upon the clustered rowing boats that jostle and bob beneath them. It’s those two girls looking after the hire boats; the way they talk. The excitement, the animation, how their voices climb over each other’s.    

And now the rain begins to fall. Further up the riverside walk, along the slick boardwalk, we shelter beneath some oak and chestnuts. Eight swans gather, splashing and nuzzling the water. One of them snortles and I am immediately stabbed with the sense of loss. For all their stroppy behaviour and messy nuisance, I miss our little swan family. Saying ‘hello’, watching their progress.

The rain is getting heavier. Some people take shelter; most carry on walking. Two elderly couples seek refuge under a tree, shaking the wet from their glistening coats. There is still a cheerfulness with the rain – or at least a knowing tolerance in its acceptance. We have not yet got to the point of complaining. Along the road behind us, cars swish past in a cats-comb. The rain falls in thin wetting drops that pebble dash the river. On the river, you don’t get the play of rings you get when rain falls on the still waters of the canal. The current continuously washes them away. Instead, it’s more about the flash of light. My trousers begin to stick to my legs which reminds me that I could really do with a black coffee thick with crème, preferably drunk while sitting in a small coffeehouse whilst gazing out of a rain-streaked window at the crowds of pedestrians scuttling down glistening wet pavements. I know of just the place. Fingers crossed for a window seat. But not quite yet.

Retracing our steps, the rain eases once more. Light glances off the choppy waters in dazzling sparking shards that are almost blinding; scrunched foil. The clouds above us build in height, castling black and growly. But for now, we have a short respite. A small girl in pig tails and wellingtons races through a group of pigeons and gulls and shouts with delight at creating a reverse snowstorm of wings and blur. On the opposite bank a crane moves heavy iron girders. The river flows ever on, around the corner where the willows form massing green cataracts of weeping cliffs, and onto the tall spire of Holy Trinity church. It’s an iconic landscape recalling Englands of the heart – a potent and potentially dangerous siren call in these days of fracture and discord. And the river continues to flow on. We’re being left behind, we two standing here on the bank on a day of chasing sunshine and showers, watching the river pass on by, round the bend to where the chain ferry sits and then on and ever on. One day, we’ll take the plunge. Cast off from the bank and we’ll join that flow, riding that living dance of light, gull scalded, until we become so one with it, we too become indistinguishable from the water – like a word hurriedly written on a notebook in the rain.

But let’s just stay here a little while longer, amongst all the milling people, the scavenging pigeons, the bullying swans and the hectoring gulls and watch some more.      

A group of pigeons strut along the paving, assured, chippy, cocky. One is light fawn in colour. Their heads jerk back and forwards as their bodies swagger with the nonchalance of John Wayne. The six old boys have reincarnated already – trading walking sticks for wings. A man eating a sandwich bends low and offers them some crumbs.

A lone swan glides up. Trying his luck with us. I wish I had the patience and good naturedness of swans – well that’s a sentence I never thought that I would hear myself saying! But these come up to whoever is there, standing at the river’s edge, like eager labradors, a little tail wag, the dip of the head on his proud serpentine neck. When I do not move, there is no ill-will, he is happy to just wait. Floating beside me, pushing back against the current with his great black webbed feet, that hang like the leaves of this horse chestnut tree. From time to time, scratching behind his ear, or ruffling through his thick wing feather with his beak.

From under the bridge, one of the river cruise launches honks its horn as it clears the left-hand main arch. Its cream and white paint and varnished woodwork whispers of opulence and the yesterday’s dreams of Hollywood stars on the Côte d'Azur and playboys sporting captain’s hats in Venice. It’s coming in to moor up where we are standing. Let’s wait and watch.  

As they come in, a shiver runs right across the river from the far bank towards us. The light turns steely and grey. The launch takes a curving sweep in towards the bank. The water turns dark and lumpy, light playing off the ridge and furrow of its ruffled surface. Fat rain drops begin to fall as once more, the skies open.  

SIGNING OFF 

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG