We are delighted to be welcoming back old and new faces to the marina and we can’t wait to see what this boating season will have in store for us.

January 2021 was certainly gloomier than the average January, not only was the weather poor but we were back in full Lockdown. This meant that boat owners were unable to visit their boats or the marina for the foreseeable.

On Valentine's Day we had to hold our annual 'moorers and storers' wine and canapés event as a Facebook live virtual event. As much as we missed having our usual sociable afternoon, we had a tremendous level of viewings and we were extremely grateful for the support.

Thankfully, a week after out event, Boris Johnson unveiled his roadmap. The first key date was 29^th March when owners could re-visit, though were not allowed to stay overnight. This did create more footfall on the marina, but there was no great tidal wave of customers returning, probably as a result of the miserable weather. We also quietly reopened the café for takeaways only on this date.

Before we knew it, the big day arrived. The key date that everyone had been looking forward to, April 12^th – holidays could restart and cruising could begin. The waterways were officially open!

As if by magic, the sunny spring weather arrived (though frosty in the mornings) and our customers returned. Now we are a few weeks on and Aqueduct Marina feels much more normal, with people sat on tables and benches outside of the café and making the most of the blue skies. There is definitely a buzz about the place!

Our fully stocked Chandlery is back accepting customers as normal and there seems to be lots of movement as boats head back out on to the water. Some however, have been taking the opportunity for work to be conducted on their narrowboat. Our boat yard has also been busy – with DIY blackings taking place or the Aqueduct team carrying out the highly-skilled work.

Brokerage viewings were also able to commence on the 12^th April – although we are sticking to viewings by appointment only to help maintain COVID protocols and to uphold the improved service we have been able to provide to buyers and sellers through this policy.

We were able to sell a few boats virtually over the lockdown which is great and the demand for boats still remains very strong. This combined with our free collection service has resulted in a few boats arriving on the brokerage and quickly going under offer – some even before they have hit the market!

The rest of the season and the year is definitely looking promising and the Aqueduct team are in the midst of putting together plans to make up for our missed anniversary event; all to be revealed soon! In the meantime, if there is anything we can do to help or answer any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our team.

To talk about a fly boat instantly conjures up images of sleek narrowboats relentlessly gliding through the water night and day.

Shropshire Union Canal Company boat “Saturn” is now the only one of this kind left, a beautiful survivor from a bygone age who spends her retirement travelling in state to teach children and adults alike about the Old Days.

The problem with the Old Days is that there are of course Good Old Days and Bad Old Days, and not many people want to talk about the latter because they tend to be brutish and nasty.

I am of course going to look at the Bad Old Days.

By the 1820’s, the industrial revolution was heating up and speed was becoming an overriding factor of life. Boats, especially narrowboats, were what we would recognise today and the only card that the jostling competitors really had to wave at prospective clients was time and security. In these early days, vessels were broadly split down 2 types; the slow boats (carrying heavy goods such as stone or coal) and the fast ones (carrying alcohol, food, valuables or people). The fast ones were fly boats, (a name coming from the “flying wagons” they were replacing) working all the hours they could muster and often having right-of-way to overtake the slow boats.

Passengers could legitimately book a space in the hold of one of these boats with the company or they could ask around the wharves and find a boat willing to smuggle them on board for a brown envelope to the boat’s captain.

In 1823, Thomas Shaw, his sister and her 5 young children arrived into Liverpool on the ferry and took a barge over the river to Preston Brook Wharf, where they went into the cosy office of Messrs Snell and Robins and booked a space in the next flyboat bound for London.

She had, as all flyboats did at that time, a crew of 4 (2 working and 2 resting on a shift rotation) sharing a small back cabin, and her passengers were given a generous bed of straw towards the front of the hold.

The boat had been going for 3 days when they arrived at Cowley Lock (on the Grand Union Canal), Shaw was in the hold and witnessed another Irish woman being led from one boat cabin to theirs and money disappeared into the back pocket of the 20 year old captain, Samuel Hodkinson.

What truly happened next is unclear, but on arriving close to London, Hodkinson turfed the new passenger out and pointed her in the wrong direction for the city. A watchman corrected him and, as soon as Hodkinson was out of sight, Eliza Clayton burst into tears and said she had been raped repeatedly on the journey.

Although the crew of the boat were ultimately found innocent, it is hard to believe that they truly were. Eliza did not benefit from lying, and during the court case it became clear that at one point she had tried to travel in the hold with Shaw and his sister, but they had been too frightened of the response of the crew to intervene.

16 years later Christina Collins would board a Pickfords flyboat at Preston Brook and suffer a similarly distressing journey with a more tragic end, and although it can be truthfully said that the evidence against the boatmen as her murderers was somewhat thin, they were certainly frightening enough that no one dared intervene against them. Christina clearly needed assistance.

It has been theorised before that, that the development of the family boat around the 1850s was when the boatman started to become a creature of quiet dignity raising his family as best he could; before that, the boatmen were small packs of feral young men “fearing neither God nor man.”

The famous Pickfords took it as read that their crews were going to go about the country in coats with poachers pockets and shrugged it off, only getting involved if the crew had the audacity to try and steal bulk cargo off the boats. In 1811, they had no sympathy when a crate of china was found to have been cracked open and the missing goods discovered in the cabin.

For every new safety measure to seal the cargo, the boatmen came up with an answer; wax seals were melted off so they could be replaced, sacks would be carefully unpicked, barrels of alcohol would have a hoop knocked off and a hole drilled through the timbers, contents poured out, canal water poured back in and the hoop replaced.

By 1832, there was a distinct lack of confidence about the safety of a cargo and long fore cabins were appearing on some boats to allow expensive cargoes to be physically locked away from the crew, an idea that never gained particular traction due to the crew simply picking the locks.

Of course, for every flyboat that gained notoriety through some misdemeanour, another 6 or 7 just quietly and efficiently did their job. The fly boaters were a particularly tough specimen of an already hardy breed of people, and the companies recognised it. A Pickfords captain in the early 1800’s could be paid 5 guineas for a trip from Manchester to London, out of which he had to pay his crew, but as the horses were supplied by the company, a captain stood to make a good profit in just a few days' work. Not that he had much of a chance to spend it, as many flyboats worked one trip after another without break, forcing the crews to live cheek by jowl for weeks and even months on end.

It’s unsurprising then that captains quite regularly found their belongings had disappeared into the night along with a member of the crew when they arrived at the wharfs; watches and neckerchiefs were regularly pocketed but coats and other clothing also went. Trousers were a favoured target  with one apocryphal case telling how a captain woke up to find all his meagre clothes, including his only pair of trousers, had been taken in the night, leaving him forced to come out of the boat with a threadbare blanket covering his dignity in search of help. The blanket being so threadbare that a constable was summoned by security because of a pervert nudist walking round the wharf!

Becoming a new Waterways Chaplain on the Kennet and Avon canal began badly for me! For one thing, it was 2020 with Covid and lockdown; for another, I have no car. And finally, my bus driver is not allowed to transport my old fashioned ‘sit up and beg’ bicycle.

I began enthusiastically bussing and then walking. But it all took me an age. I got cold feet literally, and the dark came down before I got back to my bus stop. Scary!

So we bought me a small folding bike. Also, I began knitting with some thick wool I had so I should have some very thick socks to wear inside my cold (and split!) wellies. Oh, why did the charity shops have to be shut?

The socks turned out too thick to fit inside my wellies; and my new-to-me folding bike’s saddle decided to slip down as my weight, and the towpath bumps, aggravated it.

So, on my first official venture along my assigned stretch of the Kennet and Avon canal (now wearing my new gilet emblazoned with the Waterways Chaplaincy logo) and with leaflets, Bibles, etc. stuffed in the cavernous pockets, I once more became both benighted and cold; and, moreover, on foot again. Also, I found I had NO signal on my mobile phone to let my husband know why I was so late.

Happily, a boater miraculously emerged into the half light with a mallet: just the thing to hammer my saddle back up into a rideable position, perhaps?

She asked me what I was doing… so I prattled on about why I was there in the descending darkness along this particularly gloomy canal ‘cut’. And I produced a leaflet…

Then two things happened. One, she told me the way to a train station nearby; two, she took the leaflet.

So I got home safely and thought no more about it, except that I must get myself proper equipment!

Then, subsequently, I received a phone call. It was from my mentor: could I please visit a particular boating lady who was lonesome and in some sort of need.

So off I set. This time, I travelled by train and during a morning. I put on two pairs of socks inside my leaky boots and I took a map and money.

I had a wonderful day! I met three lovely boaters, who welcomed me with cups of tea, sat me in the drizzle under an enormous umbrella on the towpath (because of social distancing) and we laughed and chatted. This is what they told me:

That leaflet I gave away because of my useless bike had eventually been passed to a lady along the canal. She, in turn, had rung my mentor to ask for help for her friend (the lonesome one).

I made an immediate connection with them both and also with another boater who turned up (on a “spiritual hunch”).  He had "sensed" that Gillian - name changed - needed urgent help. This was true. Some welding had come adrift and her water tank had flooded. I couldn’t help with this but both the leaflet story and this man’s arrival to assist led to an amazing conversation about God’s guidance and help. Especially amazing as Gillian herself does not (or did not) have much faith.

So, what of my redundant socks? Well, her floor was flooded and would take some time to dry out so her socks (she never wears her boots inside the boat) would get wet, too, as she padded about. The shops were closed; I couldn’t get her some slippers quickly. So I took her the socks (only ever tried on once by me). She was thrilled and sent me a picture of her feet inside them, feeling cosy, she said.

Gillian and I have become firm friends and I have even had a lovely ride with her on (not in) her boat and we have enjoyed more spiritually-based conversations, too.

And all because my bike broke down and my homemade socks were too thick for me!

I received new wellies and two pairs of thick boot socks for Christmas and I’ve been lent an electric fold-up bike! So I’m sorted, too.

Nor do I go out now without a torch and an alarm. And, of course, with the bike battery well charged!