With Tom Rolt on the North Stratford Canal (Summer Readings)

I’m trying to squeeze in a quick recording as we travel on our way for boat blacking, through a sweltering spell of hot weather and very poor internet reception, in the hope that I can upload this before we leave for our few days in the shepherd’s hut.

Hot weather always brings with it challenges. However, we start early, particularly if there are locks to be done, and then hunker down in whatever shade we can get. However, the dry spring and summer, so far, has resulted in very low water levels and this poses much bigger obstacles. Various closures of parts (or even the whole) of some canals have been announced – including the one that we have just come off. It also seems the majority of the lock flights are curfewed and under supervision of that tireless band of heroes, the CRT’s volunteer Lockies! A couple of days ago, we were forced to stop for three hours as CRT needed to refill a couple of pounds (the stretch of canal between locks) that had become so shallow they were no longer navigable, thereby losing the advantage of travelling before the sun got too hot. The maddening thing was that this was not so much to do with low water levels, but carelessness on the part of some boaters in not properly closing canal paddles. It has to be said, that the local CRT personnel certainly know how to speedily and effectively transport large bodies of water down the canal.

Nevertheless, all this leaves the need to get to a certain location by a set time quite worrying. We have given ourselves plenty of time, as we had a feeling that the journey wasn’t going to be too straightforward, and we are so far on schedule. I do feel a bit sorry for the holiday hire boaters though; it can’t be that much fun at the moment. I’ve heard that quite a few hire boats have been left abandoned as the hirers simply could not get back to base in time.     

All this put me in mind of some passages from Tom Rolt’s writings. Rolt will be best known for his classic work, Narrow Boat, and I know that over the years, I have read quite a lot of it on this podcast. However, Rolt is so much part of the landscape of canals and narrowboating, I feel that I can excuse myself in returning to his books to feature as one of our ‘Summer Readings’: Partly, because he’s such a great writer on the canals, but also because, for all the challenges that we are currently facing, it is good to be reminded of what it was like to cruise on the canals when Rolt and the Inland Waterways Association championing the restoration and in some cases, reopening of a disintegrating canal network.

The reading is taken from volume two of his Landscape trilogy, Landscapes with Canals. Tom Rolt had been invited to join the newly formed Inland Waters Association (IWA) under the leadership of Robert Aickman (Aickman and Rolt were to have a rather tempestuous relationship as they tried to steer the association through its early years, but that is for another time). At the point we take up the story, Rolt has just returned from his time cruising the Irish canals with his wife Angela – a time lyrically described in another of Rolt’s books, Green and Silver. They are now back on board their own narrowboat, Cressy, and beginning to make plans about how best to campaign for the reopening of the canals. It’s great stuff!     

It might be a little noisier tonight than usual. There's a listless, restless heat, seeking in vain for a wind t play with it. Sticky and oppressive. It's the type of night you might sometimes dream of in the depths of winter. I can't even tell you what the temperatures are, as my weather monitor has given up the ghost! But it has to be around 26° or 27° (touching the 80s Fahrenheit) outside still. So, the stern door and hatch are wide open behind me. We are fairly close to a busy railway line that runs alongside the canal tonight and so you might hear the rush of a train from time to time. And as with most hot nights, people take the opportunity of the cool to take a walk, go for a cycle ride, or walk the dog. So apologies for all the extraneous noises that might crop up from time to time.  

From Landscape with Canals by LTC Rolt published in 1977 now published by The History Press.  

[READING]