You have to start somewhere.

                      The l0 year old me trying to look professional on our first canal holiday.

http://www.michaelnyewriter.com

                                                      

So it started on July 28th

Recently I found a small blue book which, in the summer of 1967, I'd taken with me on the family holiday. Because I would be doing the “Eleven Plus” exam some time during the following academic year, the teacher of the top class (year 6) said we should all keep a diary of our holiday, to improve the quality of our English. They never told you when the exam was coming, so that you could enjoy the luxury of being on edge until the thing appeared, then enjoy wondering if you had passed or not. Passing or failing the “Eleven Plus” was, at the time, about the most important thing in my life, as it was for most ten year olds, so I kept the diary through from the 28^th July until the 18^th of August 1967. It took some prompting from my parents to do it, and sometimes I hated it. I hated the fact that when I went back, feeling I'd really achieved something by writing the thing every day during the holiday, and bringing an envelope full of my holiday snaps too, the teacher had forgotten she'd set the task! Worse than that, nobody else had bothered to do it! With that sort of commitment, you'd think I'd have passed the dreaded exam with more marks than anyone. In truth, I didn't even get the chance to sit it! I wasn't privy to the reasons, apart from me knowing that I'd got so wound up about it that I was staying awake most nights, and couldn't answer simple questions that I would have had no trouble with a year earlier.

That's life though, and the eleven plus actually means nothing to me now, apart from my being vehemently opposed to any sort of selective exam that segregates children at such an early age. I do have the diary though, and reading it does remind me of the summers spent on the inland waterways with my mum, dad and brother. The first of these was in 1964, and was the first family holiday since my mum had been very ill with virus pneumonia, which had associated complications. She recovered, but, from the photos of the time, she did look very thin, and it was Dad's suggestion that hiring a boat on the Thames may be something she'd enjoy. She did, and so did we, so the formula was repeated the next year, but instead of hiring the “River Gypsy” a 22foot Freeman Sports cruiser (which looked a bit like a malformed Tupperware box), we hired the “River Rose” a rather bigger wood boat that handled rather badly and leaked a lot. When we had a small windfall in the form of some money that had come from a house in Greece that my Grandmother had owned, but had to leave due to family reasons. The house survived the second world war, and remained occupied, though for some reason it could not be sold, and no money from rent could leave Greece. Eventually a resolution to the situation was worked on over about two or three years and some cash came to the family, part of which was used to buy the Lady Jena. Although it's a grand name, the boat was far from grand, it being a sixteen foot DIY built cabin cruiser with a rather less than reliable Swedish petrol motor, and various soft spots in the hull. It was designed for two people, but fitted the four of us at a squeeze (my Granny having, I think, been less than impressed with the waterways) for our 1966 holiday which, much to my brothers disgust, meant that we listened to the England winning the world cup final on a Ferguson transistor radio rather than our 405 line television.

The following year, by calling in some favours at work, my Dad was able to get a bit over three weeks concurrent holiday and we were able, for the first time, to explore the canals. It being the first sortie onto the system, we hedged our bets and included the almost customary annual run to Lechlade in Gloucestershire as well.

So it was that I, aged ten (almost eleven) arrived back from school, and changed from my uniform into normal clothes and waited until just after five when my dad arrived back from Kingston Power Station where he worked as a charge-hand instrument mechanic. Hearing the familiar three beeps of the horn as he arrived, the holiday seemed to have officially started. Mum, being the organiser she was, had made sure everything was packed, and that it would fit into the family car, a yellow 1960 Triumph Herald, with a black stripe that ran either side from headlamp to tail of the vehicle. With all packed, the last item was the family pet, a banded cinnamon hamster called Cheeky.

                         Mum Granny and me aboard Lady Jena at Thames Ditton Marina 1966/7

                                                     The Art of Getting Underway.

I'm not entirely sure quite how we fitted five people, a hamster and all our stuff for the holiday into a Triumph Herald saloon, but we did, and fairly quickly too. My Granny had opted to stay with her sister and her daughter (my Aunties Helen and Thetis) in Surbiton, so we paused the run for a brief visit, after which we finally arrived in the car park of the Thames Ditton Marina, which occupied a no longer used part of the water works on Portsmouth Road in the district known as Seething Wells. I'm not sure what function it performed but was told it was a reservoir, though it may well have also been a filter bed. Either way, an enterprising person, presumably not long after the second world war, bought the place and knocked through into the river. The atmosphere was always friendly, as it still seems to be, and was then owned by the Pearce family, namely John Pearce, and his father (a member of the Thames Conservancy) was known to the lock keepers as Nobby. Lady Jena was not the only small boat run on an even smaller budget there, but there were also a number of rather larger craft. Having no perception of class, and being a talkative ten year old, I was happy to chat with people on the site, and felt the place to be a kind of refuge, hidden away from Surbiton, school and the rest of the world by the high boundary created by the (reservoir?) walls. I still have very happy memories of the marina, and really enjoyed restoring a boat that I bought with money I'd been saving for a moped, some years later. That boat, a clinker built plywood cabin cruiser which measured just fifteen foot six in length, was called Bee 1 and had been owned by a very nice couple of canal enthusiasts. When writing Mayfly, I used Bee 1 as the craft that is rescued and forms the spine of the story. Back in 1967, I do remember seeing Bee 1 tied up not far from Lady Jena as we took the stuff from the car, and stowing it around carefully. For some reason best known to her, my mum decided to take all the milk for the holiday with us in the form of a crate of crown corked bottles of the sterilised version, which was ordered specially from the milkman the week before.

As I remember there was a chip shop that used to be called Jimmy Riddle's on Brighton Road, which we used to eat at regularly as a Saturday lunchtime treat up until I was around six years old when, for whatever reason, we stopped going. When I was six we had a red Reliant van which, like the Albin motor of Lady Jena, was rather less than reliable, the van was replaced by a green Ford Squire (which disintegrated), and then by the yellow Herald. The chip shop is still there if my reading of Google Maps, and my memory, are both correct, though now the shop is simply called Surbiton Fish and Chips. Though I don't really remember, it's more than likely that Dad revisited the place to get our tea

After the evening meal, it was time for bed, something of a performance with four people occupying a space meant for two. Lady Jena went through various permutations of sleeping arrangements, and this, was a good first attempt. My brother had flatly refused to sleep on anything other than one of the two proper bunks. Mum occupied the other, and Dad slept across the widest point of the cabin on a home made plywood construction that had to be assembled each night. That left me, who, as the shortest and lightest member of the family, slept on a piece of wood that slotted onto the back deck and projected into the cockpit, supported on a metal “T” bar. This was also the table, when we chose to use it. At the time the boat had one of those covers that pulled over the whole cockpit in the same way as the hood of a sports car. I forget if I slept with head to the back (and face over the petrol tank filler), or the other way round. I know I fell off the thing a few times, but at least it was a bit private and rather more airy than the cabin.

On Saturday, we got up rather early for what was supposed to be a holiday. I remember it was a feature of the early part of the journey most years that we did a sort of route-march until we got to Caversham where we would meet my Uncle John and Auntie Olive. It's in my diary that when I went to wash, I found someone had left a rather expensive looking watch on top of the electric water heater. At that time in the morning, there weren't many people awake so it was fairly easy finding the owner, who was just about to set off downriver and was very thankful that I'd taken the trouble to return it to him. The boat was one of the larger ones at the marina, and the owner felt the need to reward me, and insisted on giving me half a crown for being honest. That's a whole 12 ½ pence in today's money!

Our target for the day was Cookham, which was about as far as it was possible to get, so, after hand starting the motor (something that only Dad could do) we were finally off.

                         This is a very similar motor to the less than reliable one in Lady Jena.
                                  I'm sure they were generally dependable, but ours wasn't.

                   The famous Amphicar.   Described by one owner as "Not a good car, and not a
                                                             good boat either"

                    Caversham, our goal for the day.   Not sure if this photo is from 1967 

                                                     But it's one that I took.

                                                         Caversham or Bust!

The lower reaches of the Thames are pretty wide, and go through places that, although close to home, were somehow changed by water travel, and I'd guess from the diary that we were making what we must have thought was good progress, as we stopped for lunch in Staines. It would have more than likely been something made aboard as the only local fare was described by Mum as “Donkey Sandwiches”. In the light of the recent food scandals these may or may not have tasted O.K. but the expression of Mum's voice told me that they were best avoided. After lunch, it rained, and everything slowed down. I would also guess that we had some kind of engine trouble too. We seemed to have plenty of that, though I never noted it in my diary. The Albin twin cylinder motor was Swedish, and when running, it's solid plod of an exhaust note drew quite a few admirers and sounded the sort of thing that, once started, would run forever. The problem was that it seldom did. The best you could expect was a day or two without failure. You knew that trouble was on the way when it began to misfire, intermittently making a small click instead of the usual thump escalating to the point that the thing would either peter out in mid river, or simply refuse to start when it was time to leave a lock. It had no electric starter, so my poor dad had to kneel in the cabin and swing a cast iron starting handle which, if the motor was in a bad mood and kicked back at him, often resulted in him skinning his knuckles on the drip tray that sat underneath it in the bilges. If we had a spate of bad trouble, dad would spend an hour or so trying to fix the thing by dismantling various parts, cleaning and reassembling them. The carburettor and magneto (no electronic ignition then) were favourites for this attention, and usually the motor was coaxed back into life. Then there was the rain. Small boats are very much like mobile tents in that when it rains, however you try and cover up, everything gets wet. Lady Jena did have a folding fabric cover for the cockpit, complete with side screens, but this only seemed to seal the water in and get in the way through locks. Hence, the combination of the two resulted in us not arriving at Cookham until the last lock of the day, and finding the usual mooring, a large high banked meadow, was full. The decision was made to push on until we found something suitable, which in this case was a small riverside hotel at Bourne End. It was late, and we were tired, so Dad made the decision to see what was on offer at the place. I seem to remember us being allowed to go in (minors were not usually allowed in pubs under any circumstance) to the restaurant area. Mixed grills at the time were pretty popular, and consisted of pretty much anything they establishment chose to fry or grill. They were eclipsed some time in the seventies by chicken in a basket, or gammon stake with a tinned pineapple ring dumped on it. They could have served us all with a reject school dinner and we'd have happily eaten it by that time. I noted in the diary that we didn't eat until ten in the evening, which is pretty late for a ten year old. One thing I do remember (though yet again I chose not to mention it in the diary) was that there was some entertainment in the form of a female singer, who, accompanied by her guitar, gave us renditions of various popular songs and, as I remember, was pretty good. For me, the place was pretty memorable, but when I asked if we could stop there again, Mum and Dad looked at each other with one of those parental no-verbal communicative looks and I was told that it was a bit of “One of those places” in their opinion. I asked what they meant, but got nothing by way of explanation, and we never stopped there again on any of our waterways holidays. Some years later, when I was in my late teens, and had got my own boat (Bee 1) into a good enough state, I put what money I had saved into a short holiday on my own, which, due to the rise in petrol price, was run on far more of a shoestring than I'd planned. I had half a mind to visit the hotel again, but when I passed, It was clear that the place had changed hands (possibly more than once) and name. Worse than that, it had gone up-market, and the cruisers there looked like they'd use my little boat as a dinghy, probably (and pretentiously) called a tender to whatever posh lump of plastic the owner had bought.

It was very late (for a ten year old) when we went to bed, which probably accounts for the fact that it was twenty to twelve in the morning before we set off on the second leg of the dash to Caversham. The weather was better, and I noted that we overtook two cars on the way. These were red Amphicars, which I remember from then, didn't look that safe in the water. We tied up for lunch at Hobbs boatyard in Henley-on-Thames, one of the many places that hired small day boats powered by 6 horsepower outboards by the hour. Hobbs has at some time decided that wood or GRP was not tough enough so their fleet were made of Aluminium. A couple of years later, one of these caught the port side of Lady Jena amidships, and just above the waterline, making a hole that you could (if stupid enough) put your head through. I remember Dad leaning over the side to patch the hole with a piece of plywood given to us by Hobbs (who were most apologetic and helpful) as the rest of us counterbalanced him on the other side of the boat. With the repair done, that holiday was able to continue, and the patch remained until the side of the boat (that had a few soft spots already) finally gave out one winter when a bolt on the jetty worked its way though and Lady Jena sank. She was pumped out though, and took us on several more holidays and river trips with the offending sheet of plywood replaced.

The diary mentions nothing of the rest of the afternoon, lunchtime having been three in the afternoon, and we arrived at Caversham that evening.

When I was at primary school I made a model of the Kon Tiki out of balsa.   This is a larger version that went by when we were moored for the night "enjoying" our home cooking.   Another photo from the old Ilford camera.

                                                     The day before I discvered Canals

Once at Caversham we would normally arrange to meet my Uncle John and Auntie Olive who lived in the town. I notes in the diary that we went to phone my Granny that evening, and we'd probably have phoned my Uncle and Auntie at the time, to arrange a meet up for the following day. My brother managed to twist his ankle somewhere along the way to, or back from, the phone box that sat outside of the Thames Concervancy's building on Vastern Road, just over the bridge. This wouldn't have stopped him enjoying the feast from Joe Eighteen's chip shop, which was a regular feature of our early stops in the town. The shop was very much in the old style, and served a number of things, the most famous of these being the battered sausages which (in my non-vegetarian days) I, and the rest of the family often ordered in preference to (and sometimes alongside) the more traditional fish. The “sausages” were a large glob of sausage meat, shovelled directly into the batter, and then fried. How on earth a ten year old could eat two of these plus chips, baffles me. I remember on one holiday one of us jokingly asked for seconds. Somehow a look was passed around the boat, and Dad duly dispatched to get extra (rather smaller) portions, which were enjoyed the more for them having the feel of being in some way illicit in nature. Joe retired a year or two later, and the recipe for battered sausages did not get transferred to the new owner, who's fare was nowhere near as good as Joe's. After the meal, we all felt suitably jovial, and it is noted that we sang songs. I'm not sure quite what this would have sounded like to any passers by, but the form of communal singing was a feature of our early holidays before, on becoming teenagers, my brother and I became far too “sophisticated” to indulge. Mostly the songs were corrupted versions of Adge Cutler's best offerings, with some names and places and activities suitably (or unsuitably) altered to where we were and what we'd done that day. No doubt they were pretty unpoetic and tuneless, but they were also one of the more enjoyable aspects of the holiday.

The following day we spent some time tidying and generally sprucing up the boat ready for my Uncle John and Auntie Olive to visit us, but, after a long wait, Dad went off to the phone box and found out that Uncle John had woken up feeling groggy enough for them to call the doctor who had just been (doctors used to do home visits as standard then) and diagnosed chickenpox. Quite how he'd managed to avoid that one as a child is a mystery as most childhood diseases were generally shared in the school environment. My tally consists of measles (never got the German variety), mumps, chickenpox, and suspected whooping cough (I don't remember that one) so when I had kids I was at least immune to those favourites.

Eventually, with the Lady Jena all spruced, we set off again, stopping at Pangbourne meadow for lunch. The weather had picked up, and I noted in the diary that I went for a swim after lunch. This was something of an exaggeration as I could not, and so far have never been able to, swim. What I referred to as swimming would have been paddling, or, with the aid of life-jacket and other means of flotation, simply floated in the river, tethered by a line to the boat. Wallingford was where we tied up for the night. It was never a favourite spot but had the advantage of being a good staging post for us getting onto the Oxford canal the next day. After the previous evening's feast we'd more than likely made our own tea that night. To say cooking facilities on Lady Jena were primitive is something of an understatement. We had a “Desca” methylated spirit stove made (rather poorly) in East Germany and a “Kubex Wonder oven” which was pretty similar to a large biscuit tin in construction with a vent at the bottom to let the heat (and fumes) in. We did cook in it though, even if the Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie was no more than luke warm, with pastry almost raw in the middle, and scorched at the edges. It also tasted (like the toast made on the tinplate “Pyramid” toaster) quite strongly of meths.

                                   This is the Abingdon Boat Centre (probably snapped by me) 

                      These Ceremonial barges sat in a row close to the Uni Boathouses (Photo by Dad)

                                                 Last leg before uncharted territory.
                                                       (With guts still intact.....Almost)

Having survived the pie with it's strange overtone of stove fuel, we set off the next day, with the aim of getting onto the Oxford Canal. The decision to use Duke's Cut, near to King's lock, was a wise one on the part of Mum and Dad. It would have been quicker to go through the “Sheepwash Channel” in Oxford itself, but there had been a little pre-warning on the state of the waterway there. Some years later (after the fiasco that was the “Ocean 4 plus” outboard) we used the channel by way of a change, and regretted it. I used this experience when I wrote “Mayfly” and can still remember the sport that was had at our expense by the operators of the now defunct electric lift bridge that served a local factory.

The diary mentions Whittenham clump, which no doubt may have been pointed out to me, though it's more likely that I was told to mention it to bulk the page out. I do remember us stopping at Abingdon for lunch. It was and is a pretty looking town, and was often a night time mooring spot, though, due to a newish hotel on the opposite bank, it became rather noisy. The continual reprise of “March of the Mods” played on an electric organ with drums as an accompaniment was a little wearing one year, and forms another lifted experience that I grafted into “Mayfly” when I wrote it. I also borrowed the café that we visited in the town have another “Mixed grill” for lunch. It's doubtful that they would have served vegetarian food in the sixties, but I bent the rules slightly as small places are often more than obliging and they'd no doubt have done their best had Amanda or Jim (the two main characters in Mayfly) actually walked into the place. What sticks in my memory of the day was the tinned button mushrooms that were served with the meal. They were something of a conversion on the road to Damascus for my brotherwho, up to that point, was vociferously opposed to the eating of mushrooms. I remember him on several occasions saying “I'm not eating fungus!” Tinned button mushrooms bear only a passing similarity to the real thing, and he (at 12) didn't recognise them as the processed fungus that they were. Dad suggested he tried one, and, when he did, the conversion was complete. John, from that point on was a mushroom fan. I sometimes wonder if my dad felt just a slight pang of guilt at the deception. I remember a story he told us of the same trick being pulled on him with eels. Dad was as disgusted by eels when he was a child as John was by the idea of eating mushrooms. When he'd been fed sufficient eel for Nana and Granddad Nye to be satisfied that he probably liked them, they asked for confirmation of the fact. When he said he did, they told him that he'd just eaten eel. The result being that, in Dad's words, he was, “As sick as a dog.”

After lunch we headed off up river, going through Sandford lock, (noted in the diary as the deepest on the Thames and on towards Osney lock. The area around Oxford at that time largely ignored the river, but places of note were the bridge (the lowest on the river) and the famous “goalposts” at the island occupied largely by Salter Brothers, who ran the pleasure steamers that regularly plied the river and could (if you had time) be used as a bus route. The island had once been the site of a lock, and the main channel of the river was the old weir stream. When the lock was taken out (many years before) the central section of the weir was (according to Dad) blown up. Two wooden piles were driven into the river bed and the notice on each which said “Pass between piles” was definitely to be heeded. There was only one time that I saw the consequence of not doing as told, when a “Bermuda” style hire boat decided to go their way. The type of craft was very wide, and had a cabin that ran the length of the craft which was about 45 feet. Unlike most boats, the cockpit was at the front, and the boat was “Driven” from a car style steering wheel with little rear visibility. As a result they were ungainly, and best avoided. They were also (unusually for a hire boat) rather overpowered. On this occasion we were overtaken by one of the things, and we could see the course they were taking. There was no way we could get their attention, and the inevitable happened. There was a sickening crunch as the boat stopped dead in the water, rising about ten inches at the bow as it took water on through what was probably a sizeable hole created by the remains of the weir. Help (I think from Salter brothers, who, I think hired the craft) was soon at hand, and I never got to find out what happened after.

Back in 1967, we acted as an unofficial pilot, allowing a rather nervous first time hirer to follow us closely though the piles, and under the low Osney bridge before we headed on towards our destination. As I remember, the only other features that really stood out in a positive way were the university boathouses, mostly because of their clean modernity, and the ceremonial barges which looked rather forlorn. Some were actually rather derelict in appearance. I also remember a long corrugated iron fence which had a lot of daubed images of a tortoise, and a selection of political slogans on it. The fence ran alongside the river for some distance and behind it was a terrace of what was probably low grade student lets. There were two more locks until we turned off into Wolvercote Mill Stream and then Duke's cut.

 Here is what I remember as Shttleworth's Lock (1975 Shell guide gives it this name too)

Bradshaw's (1904) refers to it as Duke's Lock

Modern guides call it Duke's Cut Lock.

(I leave you to take your pick.   But the fingerprint on the slide will be Dad's)

 Here is Lady Jena going through a drawbridge in the Summer of 1967

On the left are John (my brother) and I sitting on the balance beams.

Clearly we shared this one!

Into a Different World

The weir stream above King's lock had been a favourite tie up spot, more often than not for lunch, but I do remember stopping overnight there a couple of times. It sticks in my memory in particular as being the site of the only tree in the world that I have ever been able to climb. The main reason for this was that it came out of the ground at a sufficiently shallow angle for me to walk along the trunk until it split into a V, which made a rather pleasant place to sit. On this occasion though we went past it and onto the Oxford canal via Duke's cut. I have mentioned in the diary that we went through Shuttleworth's lock, which all maps and guides now refer to as Duke's Cut lock. Bradshaw's guide of 1904 refers to it as Duke's Lock, and what is now Duke's lock on the canal itself as Shuttleworth's, but the Shell guide to canals from 1975 goes the other way. The lock (which I choose to remember as Shuttleworth's, and I think had a BWB sign to declare it as such) was situated under a railway bridge, had a very shallow drop, and space for a second set of gates (these were present in 1904 according to Bradshaw's) so that it would have been able to work both ways. The paddle gear is noted as being quite unique. It was a sizeable chunk of cast iron with a fully enclosed mechanism which, because of the shallowness of the lock and the low gearing, was very easy to operate. Looking on the internet, there are still several photos showing the thing still in place and (hopefully) in use. It looked like it has been there since the lock was originally built, and it would be a shame to see it removed to a museum.

My first impression of the canals was one of complete contrast to the Thames, which, even at King's lock, was still quite wide by comparison. In 1967 canals were still a very undervalued amenity and one which, in my view, the government of the time would quite happily have liked to forget about. The Oxford Canal was narrow, quite shallow, and not in the best of condition. I remember walking along the towpath after Duke's lock, and it was at best narrow, and in parts almost non existent. Anyone trying to tow a horse drawn narrowboat would have needed an very emaciated animal for it to balance. I loved the age of things that made them almost timeless, and it was hard for me as a ten year old to think that it had all been dug out by men with picks and shovels and was as artificial as a road. Later on, when I read the stories of other canals, I realised how they were as much of a modernisation as HS2 is now. I can remember explaining the basic simplicity of it all to my children when they were young. A horse could pull a relatively small cart over the rough mud roads of the time, or the same animal could pull a narrowboat laden with 25 tons with rather less effort.

We stopped for the night at Dukes Lock (on the canal proper) and didn't leave until midday the following day, when we stopped just below Northbrook lock. I made several notes of water voles crossing the canal in front of us, and one of passing so close to a moorhen's nest in the prolific reeds that the clucth of eggs was clearly on view. It still confuses me slightly that a watercourse seeming so natural was man-made.

On our first full day of canal travel we also encountered an Oxford canal curiosity, this being the drawbridge. In an effort to save money (probably) a there were a lot of these wooden structures which lifted by means of two balance beams that stuck up ad 45 degrees and which pivoted by means of two short cast iron gear tracks with corresponding geared sectors on the bridge deck. They were fun to open, and I used to enjoy jumping to grab the chain that dangled just out of reach, and hanging from it to allow my bodyweight to do the lifting. Once open, you sat on the beam, or the bridge would close again. The enjoyment of bridge opening was shared by my brother, and a system of taking turns was soon instigated by Mum and Dad.

My brother and I got on reasonably well most of the time, and he, being two years older, was allowed to help Dad operate the stiff paddle gear. I was told I might get a hernia if I tried. That may well have been something to fear if I'd actually known what one was. More effective in preventing my brother and I doing dangerous things was Dad telling us that we'd bust our gazoynk if we did. Neither of us knew what one of them was either, but it sounded like something we didn't want to risk breaking.

Top photo is Mum and Dad crewing Lady Jena through a lock

Bottom one is the long since demolished Shipton Weir Lock house.

Weed, Deserted buildings and Superslosh

The following day it looks like we had our first encounter with what was a perennial problem on the canals, water weed and other debris fouling the propeller. Most purpose built narrowboat style cruisers have a small hatch somewhere that you can access the prop from inside the boat, but Lady Jena being a small cabin cruiser did not have this feature so, when our progress was halted by a fouled prop, we had to tie up at the side of the canal at an odd angle so that Dad could reach under the back of the boat to disentangle things. The process was repeated several times throughout our week on the Oxford Canal, and Dad became quite skilled at removing pretty much anything.

Eventually, after the sinking I referred to earlier in the blog, Lady Jena was converted to outboard power, which allowed obstructions to be removed by tipping the prop out of the water. I remember the first outboard being delivered to our home where it sat in the hallway until the boat was ready to receive it. The device, an “Ocean 4 plus,” boasted a host of features in the publicity material. It was made in England, had a full forward-neutral-reverse gear-shift, a four stroke power unit, came with an alternator built in, remote controls and the option of an electric starter (we didn't pay the extra so ours had the pull cord). This all came for less cost than a very basic American motor, and didn't it show! When it arrived we should have realised that it wasn't quite as good quality as advertised, but, we'd paid for it and it was guaranteed. The box of accessories that came had the remote fuel tank, which was a round can similar to those that contained bulk cooking oil, onto which a nozzle and clear plastic tube had been pushed. The other end was a push fit to the fuel pump. The charge regulator was a couple of cheap looking electronic components and a sheet of aluminium for a heat sink. Once on the boat, the motor was extremely noisy and rather underpowered. The gearbox made an alarming crunching sound when either forward or reverse were being engaged, and the control cables kept on flying off, leaving us stuck in gear or unable to select one. Once on the canal we found another annoyance, this being that the prop moved forwards and back as the gears were selected, meaning that when in reverse there was a cavity behind it that had a habit of packing itself with water weed and any other debris preventing you from disengaging the gear until the cavity had been cleaned out. By that time we'd also found that the fuel pump had a habit of sucking so much air in that we had to hang the tank higher than the outboard and let gravity take charge. Then the whole thing seized up about two miles from Kidlington, never to run again. Thankfully it was under warranty and we insisted on getting our money back which we spent on a “Last years model” Mercury 3.9 outboard which was a little gem of a machine. It was quiet, reliable, powerful (for its size) and had the added feature of a weed free prop which did exactly as quoted. I later used my memory of this motor as the power unit of Mayfly.

Back on the canal in 1967, it still surprises me that canal-side houses, particularly those on the sides of locks, were in such a poor state. The house at Shipton Weir Lock was empty, with holes in the roof, and another at Hardwick lock was no more than a shell. Both of these are long gone, though others such as Kings Sutton and Nell Bridge are now highly sought after homes. I remember having something of a soft spot at the time for the house at Shipton Weir, and was shocked a year or two later to find that it had been demolished.

The canal was also ignored largely through Banbury, where we stopped to do some shopping. The town itself was quite pretty, though somewhat rubbished in LTC Rolt's account, and we enjoyed wandering around being typical tourists. When my Dad told one of the sales people that we'd come by canal, he was pretty surprised to find that, despite only being a few hundred yards from it, the person was completely unaware of its existence.

We tied up for the night, according to my account, at the bottom of the Claydon Flight of locks, ready to cross the winding ten mile summit pound the next day. Our evening meal may well have been a favourite concoction which we'd christened “Superslosh.” Given that we had a single burner spirit stove, most of our meals were of the one pot variety, and Superslosh was one of these. It was typical camp-site fare comprising of just about anything we could tip from a can or dried pack into the camping pan, the handle for which we'd left at home. The result was interesting, and I am still alive, so probably not poisonous. In lieu of a handle Dad substituted a pair of spring loaded “Mole” grips which on more than one occasion released themselves, and in so doing, landed in the meal we were cooking. Undaunted, we simply called it “Mole wrench flavour Superslosh,” and ate it anyway. As I said, I'm still alive.

The tunnel that isn't.
This is one of Dad's photos of Fenny Compton "Tunnel"

This is one of my photos (from the time) of the old
Engine house arm close to where we moored at Napton

And here is Mum with some vital supplies and a hopeful
looking farm dog.

To Napton on the Hill.

It took around an hour the following morning to ascend the flight of five locks, and then we were on the ten mile summit pound. The Oxford canal being built to follow contours in the landscape, in order to avoid major engineering works wherever possible, winds around and can often take several miles to cover no more then two or three. This makes it picturesque to the tourist, but I must have been something of a nightmare to working boaters. The pound, as I remember it, seemed to go on forever, and there was a certain bleakness to it despite it being in rural Oxfordshire. It seemed to avoid habitation, the only major feature being the tunnel that is nothing of the sort at Fenny Compton. Fenny Compton tunnel was never far beneath the surface and, more than 90 years before our holiday, had been opened out into a cutting. Presumably this was to avoid roof falls and make it easier for boaters to get through. The canal kept to the width of the original tunnel and had the luxury of a towpath, which at the time of our holiday was just a little bit overgrown. With a length of around two thirds of a mile, it seemed yet again like another world, with banks so close that you could, at a stretch, have touched either side. It says in my diary that I saw a yellowhammer fluttering in the bushes, but I never had any recollection of it at the time, and was probably told it was there as something to put in the book to flesh it out. What I do remember is one of the hazards that we often encountered. The 70 foot ex work-boat hired out to a pack of Boy Scouts. The Willow Wren Canal Carrying Company, were making the transition between cargo carrying and holiday hire with such success that they are still in existence now. They had several ex work-boats and hired them as “Camping craft” usually, because of their size, to youth groups. Under the control of a good group, these were a pleasant sight, but every now and then, you would come upon the Scout Master who would declare that “Everything is under control” usually before hitting a bridge or running aground. Of course, we met one coming in the opposite direction in the infamous tunnel. It almost seemed to have a homing device targeted on our little plywood cabin cruiser, and could easily have sunk us had any heavy contact been made. Thankfully, it missed, the Scout Master or Akela waving pleasantly to my dad, who was furious at having had to take refuge by running into the shallows and getting weed on the propeller in the process.

After some more time, we got to the other end and the Napton flight of locks. There was a good mooring near a farm a couple of locks up the flight, and this is where we decided to spend the night, buying some ready made food from the nearby farm shop. The mooring became a favourite with us and other boats, and canal related business at the farm has grown over the years. Napton was the limit of our first sortie onto the canal system and, the following day, we completed the flight, going on to Napton junction, where we turned and came back to the same mooring as the previous day.

The sixties were still a time where holiday souvenirs were something of a boom industry, usually consisting of small, mass produced, pottery items with with whatever town they were being sold in printed on the base. As a family on holiday, near a souvenir shop, we, of course, entered into the spirit of things. I remember getting a “Wade” pottery narrowboat, in a dull red/brown colour, and my brother getting the same in a dullish olive green, as well as a couple of canal related books. When it was time to pack things away, (for some reason, Mum always insisted that souvenirs were packed up, to be reopened on our return home) there was something of an altercation between my brother and me about whose boat was which. It was easy so far as I was concerned. Mine was the brown one. I didn't know at the time that my brother had inherited the colour blindness gene from my maternal grandfather and saw both boats as pretty much the same colour. Mum eventually sorted things by repeatedly showing each boat until John was sure which was his. Thankfully he picked the green one each time and a very uneasy truce was achieved. This at least answered the aged question as to why he thought my painting of our previous pet hamster (Butch), which was put up on my classroom wall, was green. I thought he was simply jealous, and my pride was duly injured as this was one of the few paintings of mine that was deemed good enough for the honour of a public display. The uneasy truce of the evening in Napton was eventually overcome by what seemed the mother of all thunderstorms. It was pretty late, and John and I had argued over just about everything you could think of to argue about (and a good few wildcards that nobody would have come up with). The first flash was met with stony silence, and when it was followed by a few more, and what sounded like rather a lot of TNT being detonated close by that I heard

      “Michael, are you O.K?”

John knew that I hated thunderstorms, and, as is the duty of elder brother, was big enough to set the arguments of the day aside. We ended up in a bit of an impromptu sing song, with brief intermissions as we pushed toilet paper into the various leaks that the pelting rain had found in the plywood cabin. Needless to say that for the next few days at least, John and I were the best of friends again.

Heading back

Having gone as far as we could on the Oxford canal in the allotted time, we set off back the way we had come, after spending a day at Napton. It's one of my memories of the river and canal holidays that we rarely strayed from the immediate area of whichever waterway we were on, despite there often being things worth seeing in the area. We'd visit the towns along the way when we needed provisions, but never really did the tourist thing. I have absolutely no idea as to whether this was normal practice or not, though I have to say that I did find the whole process of moving on the water so thoroughly absorbing at the time that I neither minded nor noticed much. I liked the sound of the motor (when it chose to run reliably) and watching the scenery slowly roll by. I also fond the paddle gear on the locks quite fascinating though, yet again, I don't seem to have mentioned it in the 1967 diary. The Oxford canal had quite a selection ranging from the basic rack and pinion, which was stiff and lumpy to operate, to the more common type of gearing which, though still basic, had two rows of gear teeth on the rack, offset so that a gap in one side corresponded with a tooth in the other. These were still still stiff, but at least they ran a bit smoother. There were also some that employed reduction gears, some of which were quite intricate and, if well greased, a lot easier to work. On a later trip we found that some of the antique paddle gear had been replaced by a windlass operated hydraulic system which was appalling. It was still quite stiff, looked ugly (not having the timeless simplicity of the cast iron gearing) and, worse than that, would not allow the paddles to be closed by gravity in case of an emergency. Instead had to be wound back down, which was about as stiff and long winded as winding them up thus giving any unfortunate that fell into an emptying or filling lock a good deal more time to drown. Of course “crashing” of the paddle gear had always been regarded as a cardinal sin as it could damage the gearing, but in an emergency, a split second could save a life. On my first encounter with the hydraulic system I thought of the wide locks on the Grand Union canal which employed an enclosed gearing system that used a screw thread and bevel gear. Though the locks were larger, the paddles were easy to work, and could be released to let gravity do its job in an emergency. They'd even been fitted with rubber bump stops to prevent damage. All of this was done when the refurbishment of the canal took place in the thirties! There's progress for you!

The return run was pretty much the reverse of the trip up the canal, with the odd observation on birds and other wildlife that I may or may not have seen added to the diary. Cropredy sticks out in my mind as a favourite place, and features (though not by name) in my fictional writings. I remember that on the way up, Dad went off to the Red Lion to book a table in their restaurant. Mum and Dad's wedding anniversary fell during the holiday, and we were to celebrate with a family meal there. I'm not absolutely sure how, but, Dad managed to get permission for John and I to be allowed into the restaurant (which was definitely not child friendly). After some persuasion John, who had said he did not want to go, changed his mind, and we headed off at the allotted time for our meal. I was fascinated by the place, as I was by any new environment, in particular as to how the coffee maker worked. I have no idea why it took my interest, but spent a lot of time during the meal looking at the thing and trying to work out how the person in charge of it was making it work. The meal itself was one that I wouldn't enjoy now (as a vegetarian of over nearly 40 years). The starter was either a prawn cocktail or smoked salmon. It was that distinguished in flavour that I really can't remember which I ended up with. Then there was the main meal which was a steak. I'd never had steak in a restaurant before so I had little to compare it with. Thinking back I could have exchanged the thing with the souls of my shoes (which were made of vulcanised rubber) and there probably would have been no perceptible difference. It was hard to cut, and almost impossible to chew, but I got through it on the promise of Black Forest Gateau for dessert. That I could eat, and (showing my age) still quite like the idea of. Maybe the experience of the steak on my impressionable mind set me off in the direction of vegetarianism, but it would be a good few years before that happened.

Whilst at Cropredy, Dad took an interest in the church there, with its rather annoying chiming clock, and the tradition of tolling a bell at certain times in memory of some unfortunate soul that got lost in the fields a couple or so centuries back. The vicar there was an interesting character and clearly quite happy that someone had taken an interest in the place. He showed us all round, even allowing us up the badly worn stone spiral staircase into the bell tower and onto the roof. Dad had it in mind to write a travelogue beginning with this holiday, and I still have some of his writing, though he never got anywhere near completion with it. At some point I will add his writings here in another post.

Along the Thames

The next couple of days were spent on the slow return to the river, the only minor interruption being some maintenance work that the BWB were carrying out on the lock at Banbury. The repair was presumably something to do with paddle gear as we were not held up. All the locks on the Oxford Canal have two sets of paddles either end and it would appear that we were allowed to go through, despite the repair not being complete, using just the one. Kings Sutton lock was our stopping point for the night. As I have already mentioned, the lock cottages of the Oxford (an many other canals) were not as valued as they are today. Having looked on Google, I find the property and those similar to it worth a cool half million. Kings Sutton was occupied, but, as I remember, was off the national grid, and its owner had a generator in one of the outbuildings powered by the engine out of an old Ford Cortina. The building is now grade 2 listed, which is a good thing, but I do feel sad for those houses (particularly the rather pretty bungalow at Shipton Weir) that didn't make it.

The following day the weather turned to a mix of sun and very heavy showers, necessitating us running with the hood up. When we bought her, Lady Jena had a “Sports car” style windscreen and a plastic coated canvas cover that normally sat folded around the back deck of the boat. Onto this were clip on side-screens of the same type of fabric. It was relatively good at keeping the water out, and there was a reasonable amount of visibility provided by the plastic windows. It did make the boat rather prone to side-winds though, and it was during a squally and very heavy thunderstorm, that the boat was shifted a few inches sideways and caught a bridge with the top of the hood. The bridge won, and we got through to the other side with a good sized rip in one of the seams. Undaunted by the thunder, Mum set about sewing the cover back together as we continued on our way. As she'd expected at some point to be patching either John's or my clothes and not a canvas cover, the sewing needles were better suited to this sort of repair, and the thread was standard “Sylko” from the local shop. With a good few flashes of lightning, and an even better soaking from the rain Mum continued to stitch and re-stitch the seam until it was more or less waterproof again. I can't remember any other repair work being done on it, until the fabric eventually wore out and the assembly was replaced by a fixed cover.

Lechlade was easily within a day's run from Kiddlington, where we'd tied up after a couple of days of non-eventful cruising. Throughout the days on the canal I'd had mixed feelings about it, and canals in general. The Oxford must have worked its magic as, 48 years later, I'm enjoying re-living the holiday though this blog. All things come to an end though, and we were soon back on the more familiar territory of the upper reaches of the Thames. Lady Jena being a lightweight and small craft drew very little water, and was not as likely to fall foul of the shoals that existed on the meanders of the river. Hire cruisers however, were built more for luxury interiors which required a rather larger hull. It wasn't uncommon to see one of these stuck firmly on the mud, employing any tactic possible to get back off it again. Most had taken the bends too fast and tight, resulting in their grounding with some force. In some cases they crew decided to push the motor to its limit and plough their way through, whilst others pushed the same power into reverse to dislodge themselves. Eventually they would work themselves free and be seen coming in to moor at the meadow near Halfpenny bridge shortly after the last manned operation of St. John's lock. It was at this lock that dad had the misfortune of landing himself in the water. Thames locks all have flights of steps cut into the side, and Dad had been stepping off onto one of these when he lost his footing. It was all over quite quickly and, as I'd been looking at Canada geese on the other side of the lock, I managed to miss it, thinking that the boathook or some other item had gone into the water. Dad was none the worse for the incident, and, once in a clean and dry set of clothes, was happy to make a joke of the whole thing.

 The beautiful little cafe in Lechlade, now long gone where we were regular customers over the years.

 We never went to the source of the Thames, but here is my Uncle sitting in it.

Here is the entrance to the Thames and Severn blown up from a photo I took.

Into the Unknown... Again

Just below Halfpenny bridge, which is the official limit of navigation on the Thames, is a large meadow with free moorings. This has been the goal of holiday makers on the river for many years, and we had visited the place since our first river holiday in 1964. Though larger than most, Lechlade still retained a lot of the charm of many Cotswold stone villages and, at that time, had not yet succumbed to commuters and holiday home buyers pushing property prices beyond the reach of the locals. There were several shops we returned to, all of which have long since changed ownership. The Black Cat as I remember was a shop where you could buy just about anything, including souvenirs, toys and some groceries. The name still exists today but it is now a well presented tea room. Another place for souvenir buying was the Studio Pottery, who sold some ceramics that looked (but were not) locally made, along with transfer printed wares by Wade and other mass manufacturers. They also did some of their own work, but this I would guess, was too expensive for us. Of the many souvenirs bought over the years, I still have an egg cup with a transfer of Halfpenny bridge which I think I bought on our first visit in 1964.

When in Lechlade we invariably had lunch in the town at a beautiful old café run by two old gentlemen who looked well beyond retirement age even on our first visit. The place had a simple frontage bearing the name A. Smith. The proprietors were two of the most pleasant and helpful people you could wish to meet, and spoke in the local accent as they took our orders for roast beef or whatever we had chosen onto small pads. The food was always well cooked, and clearly (thinking of our limited funds) inexpensive. When I returned to the town in my own boat in the mid seventies, the café was already long gone and is now, having traced it on Google Maps, a well respected Indian Restaurant. One thing I will always remember was a framed sign with the letters “YCWCYTFTB” written in faded gold on a dark ground. John and I had wondered for a few holidays what the sign meant, and eventually one of us asked. One of the gentlemen smiled and, with a glint in his eye said “Your curiosity will cost you thruppence for the blind.” Given that we'd all been wondering, it was deemed well worth the shilling we paid for the information. I'd like to think that the old sign has managed to survive, but I rather doubt it.

Beyond the head of navigation lies the junction with the long abandoned Thames and Severn Canal. Given the history, and that our funds must have still been buoyant, dad decided to hire a small motor boat the next day so that we could go a bit further up the river and see the canal entrance, and the associated roundhouse. Park End Wharf, which was just over Halfpenny bridge (both of which have strong connections with the canal) hired glass fibre dinghies fitted with 1½ hp Stuart Turner motors, and it was in one of these that we set off exploring the upper reaches, going just beyond the canal junction. I took a few photos and was rather disappointed when they came out that the roundhouse didn't show up too well. These days I could have zoomed in on it but the simple 120 format camera I had was devoid of just about any feature beyond the shutter button. The experience stayed in my mind though, and started what is an on-and-off lifelong interest in disused waterways.

After several visits to the town, and many hours of playing in the meadows and flying the “Kiel Kraft” rubber band powered balsa aeroplanes we'd bought from the Black Cat, it was eventually time to head back down river. Lechlade (although now not the target for our holiday) was still, in my mind, a turning point and meant that the holiday would soon be over. Although I didn't know it, it was also the last time we went there as a family on a boating holiday. I have been there twice since, the first time was on my boat, Bee 1 (the boat which Mayfly is based on) and the second in 1988 on a camping holiday with Janice. The place still had a charm then and, if Google street view isn't telling lies, is well worth a visit today.

The air of anticlimax was more apparent on the day we actually turned to set off back down the river. Though we were still in the lovely meandering top section, we also knew that, in less than a week we'd be back home, and then soon afterwards it would be back to school. Then the “Back to school” offers didn't appear in the shops until the last couple of weeks of the summer holidays. These days such pointers can be largely ignored because many offers actually start before the summer holiday begins. The next school year for me, of course, would have the dreaded eleven plus exam. It was still a distance away though and, by the time we'd paused for lunch at Radcot, the enjoyment of being on holiday had more or less fully returned. Radcot bridge, which seemed to be very narrow and low on the way up the river, now seemed to be an outsize copy of the little hump backed bridges on the Oxford canal. The afternoon run took us back to the mooring behind King's lock and the much loved tree. This time I was able to enjoy climbing the thing, which I generally did by walking along the shallow slope of the trunk. On John's suggestion that I should be a little bit more adventurous and climb properly by adopting more of a crawling stance to get further up the tree, I decided to have a go. About thirty seconds later I lost my footing and fell out of the thing, landing on my back and winding myself by way of reward. I can't remember there being much by way of worry about this and I was soon back up, sitting in the forked branches nursing no more than a graze and a couple of decent bruises.

The next day took us down to Abingdon, where there was some sort of problem with the lock gates. It must have been in some way serious as it warranted a diver to be called, complete with film-set style round brass port-holed helmet. Along with several other people, I took a photo of the event, but just one as I was slowly running out of the second roll of film I'd got for the holiday. It seems strange in the days of digital imaging that you'd record a whole 3 week trip using just 24 shots. The Ilford camera I had used 120 format film, as did a lot of point and shoot cameras in the days when the cassette loading “Instamatic” was beginning to take hold. A lot of Dad's photos were taken on 35mm, but even he limited himself to just one 36 shot roll. Mum did her bit of recording, and I still have several reels of rather grainy standard 8 cine which she shot on a Bolex wind up camera. By contrast, on one of our more recent family holidays, my son shot well over 100 photos in a day. Given that we were in no particular hurry, we moored for the night at another favourite spot near Abingdon Bridge, going up to the town to replenish such supplies as we needed for the next couple of days.

The day after is the only one where I recorded an engine breakdown which, as I have already mentioned, wasn't uncommon with the Albin. The motor failed at Shiplake lock. As I remember, there had been a queue for the lock so we'd tied up at the bollards provided for the purpose and stopped the engine, which then flatly refused to start. The magneto was taken apart and cleaned and Dad tested it by turning the starting handle with both ignition leads disconnected, so that he could pull a spark from the lead ends to the engine block. Next in line was the carburettor, a brass thing made by Solex. It was easy to dismantle (if you were Dad) and soon it was in pieces as he set about cleaning it, a process which filled the boat with a heady aroma of switch cleaner and petrol. Both Mum and Dad were quite heavy smokers but I think they must have abstained during this process, though I wouldn't actually put money on it. Eventually a tiny orange fragment of some fabric, or other material was found to be blocking the jet. The colour made it difficult to see against the brass but, once removed and with the carburettor reassembled, a couple of attempts at starting saw us on out way again.

We continued to Henley on Thames, which was a rather grander place than we normally stopped at. I never really thought of it as grand at the time, but I was only ten, and things do look different at that age. At the mooring site, we met some people who were members of “The Small Boat Club” which was, and still is, based at Stephen's Eyot (which now seems to be Stevens Ait) a club which Dad joined on buying Lady Jena. We remained members for a few years until the Kingston Power Station Sports and Social Club formed their own boat club and we relocated from Thames Ditton Marina to the free moorings provided in the disused barge house at the power station. The idea of getting further than our usual mooring at Caversham was to allow us a leisurely run back home, though I do wonder if, with the engine running well again, whether we took the chance of pushing on as far as we could in case of further breakdowns along the way.

The run from Henley-on-Thames to Cookham was not eventful and, given that I noted a very early arrival, the engine must have run smoothly after the failure of the previous day. Cookham is another place with a good (and very popular) mooring spot alongside a meadow with quite a high bank. It was a bit of a climb out of the boat but there was plenty of space for my brother and I to enjoy a kickabout with a football. One of the other boats had brought a rather large dog with them, but the animal (a brown Chow) was more than amiable, and liked attention from anybody that would give it.

Cookham was the last stop that had a true holiday atmosphere, as the next night time stop at Runnymede was only a relatively short run away from home. The weather seemed to know things were winding up and rain persisted, giving Dad a notable soaking when we moored for the evening. The site wasn't noisy but was far from ideal too. I remember there being some wooden railings that we were able to tie up to which, though saving the necessity of banging mooring stakes into the ground, made the end of the holiday seem a little more real by its underlining that Dad had already hammered the things in for the last time that holiday when we were at Cookham the night before. Because of the weather we stayed aboard for the evening in the rather confined space afforded by a 16 foot boat containing a family of four.

After a reasonably early start (probably up at 8.00 A.M. To set off at 9.00) we set off to catch the first lock of the day. The motor again seemed to behave itself, and our progress was pretty much as planned, covering what was now increasingly home territory. However much you tried to think you were still on holiday, you knew you weren't really any more. By about midday we turned into the gated gap in the embankment, with its flimsy looking bridge, that is the entrance to Thames Ditton Marina where we had lunch before starting the task of getting everything from the boat back into the car and then returning home with it all. At the time Dad had a yellow Triumph Herald with a distinctive black stripe running from headlamp to tail along each side. Having been left for the holiday it was a little reluctant to start, but did so. On another holiday where we used the battery aboard, given that the new “Ocean 4 plus” outboard motor had a generator which would keep it topped up whilst it provided us with a power source for lighting, it took well over two hours to start the car. Like most things about the outboard, the generator didn't actually work. We found this the hard way shortly after the motor had seized up at Kidlington on the Oxford Canal. That evening the battery (which should have been receiving a charge for the better part of a week) went totally flat, and remained that way for the rest of the holiday. We probably could have found a garage to charge it, but we were on holiday and didn't really want to waste the time. To be honest, I don't really know why the thing wasn't charged, but the result was several futile attempts at bump and tow starting the Triumph, all to no avail. The car did eventually go though, but how that was achieved I'm not sure. I do remember the holiday mood was rather stifled by the time it did. In 1967 though, it all fared a bit better and we were all too soon on our way back to Chessington and our home on Chantry Road. The diary doesn't mention picking my Granny up from Surbiton on the way, which points to her having gone to stay in Caversham after Uncle John's bout of chickenpox. Though she was based in Chessington, Granny would spend several months of the year at Caversham, bringing back stories of the places she'd been and instilling a mild bout of sibling rivalry in Mum.

On arrival home it took some time to get used to the sound of the house which, though not big, always seemed to have acquired something of an echo. The familiar home smell was reassuring, as was the comfort of a proper bed, and a real fully functional toilet. After the first unpacking there were the souvenirs, and a chip supper to look forward to. As mentioned earlier, Mum always insisted that these be packed away soon after purchase, meaning that, by the time we'd got home we'd mostly forgotten what we'd bought. Mugs with “Lechlade on Thames” written on them Pennants from Abingdon and Windsor all got unpacked, to be placed around the house, with some being set aside as gifts for Granny and other relatives. Most of these things have disappeared over the years, but I still have a few that I bought and which have survived from that first introduction to the canals.

That's about it. 1967 is noted by most as being the “Summer of Love” which, at ten years old, did rather pass me by. Of course there were a few oddly dressed people around and there was some interesting music to be listened to on Radio Luxembourg which would turn us into drug addicts and delinquents (or so we were told) but for me it was the summer that I was introduced to, and fell in love with, the canal system of this country. Digging the diary up has made me realise quite what an effect that year had on me and, without being able to escape there in my mind, my final year in primary school would have been a good deal more horrible that it was. Thankfully the T.V. Series “The Flower of Gloster” was broadcast to serve as a reminder that the canals existed, and in my imagination I made stories up based around the waterways, though I rarely wrote anything down. It seems logical to me that the slow fermentation of some of these stories is what brought “Mayfly” into my mind.

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