I don’t stress how I dress👗
because I live on a boat

But my favoured attire is
peaked cap and waist coat 🧢🦺

with sturdy worn boots👢👢
and a bright neckerchief 🧣

I sometimes let slip
those garments underneath 🩲

It’s a shock for gongoozlers📸
Who see more than they ought😱

A bare bottomed boater🍑
Hanging out on their boat

Originally the plan was that we, three couples and two dogs, would take a leisurely cruise on the Canal du Midi in a very comfortable hire cruiser operated by one of France’s premier boat hire companies Nicols, who design, build and operate some 400 cruisers. This plan was much like the cruises on Nicols Boats that some amongst us had done in the past before Covid, but this time we planned to cruise on a section of the Canal that we hadn’t explored previously.

Over the past twenty years or so, given that several amongst us are experienced seafarers, we have undertaken cruises on a number of different models from Nicols’ extensive range of cruisers and have then provided reports both on the boats themselves and on the cruising areas that we explored. On this occasion we planned to start and finish our cruise from Port Lauragais, one of Nicols bases on the Canal du Midi between Toulouse and Carcassonne. As I said, that was the plan!

A day or two prior to our departure from the UK I received a call from Nicols to ask whether we might like to consider a change of plan and rather than starting and finishing in Port Lauragais we could instead take one of their latest and largest cruisers from the Nicols base at Le Somail near Beziers north up the Canal du Midi to its home base at Port Lauragais.

The idea was quite appealing but there were a couple of logistical issues that we needed to address before agreeing on the change of plan. Nicols were very helpful and cooperative as regards these, including allowing us more time to complete what we correctly anticipated could be quite a challenging 120km cruise through no less than sixty locks, fifty-nine of which were “uphill”, to the summit of the Canal at the Seuil de Naurouze 190m above sea level - only the last lock from the summit to Port Lauragais was a less demanding “downhill” one.

So, after a lunchtime meeting in Cholet with a representative of Nicols management team, it was agreed that we would board our boat, one of the latest 15m long Sixto Fly class cruisers, at Le Somail the next afternoon with the aim of delivering her to Port Lauragais the following week-end giving us at least seven full days to complete the voyage which looked quite feasible had everything gone to plan and had the weather not had other ideas!

Despite travelling from different parts of France, all three couples and our two dogs duly arrived on the Saturday afternoon in glorious sunshine at the very attractive port village of Le Somail. Once we had sorted out who was to have which of the three cabins, stowed all our gear and parked our cars in the secure car-park at the base, we welcomed the Nicols engineer aboard to go through the usual procedure of showing us how everything worked including the heating, air-conditioning and on-board 240volt generator. We then completed the necessary paperwork at the office.

However, by this time, it was late afternoon so we made the decision to book a meal at the very popular local Auberge for that evening and to spend the next hour or two exploring the beautiful historic village, including a visit to what is the biggest bookshop any of us had ever seen!

The village of Le Somail is really not much bigger than a hamlet. Long before its development as a tourist centre, it was clearly an important commercial port on the Canal during the 17th - 19th centuries with some 28,000 travellers passing through the village in one year during the 19th century. The buildings themselves, such as the Auberge, the former port office, the chapel and the warehouses are indicative of Le Somail’s past importance. Today it’s not only one of the most popular of Nicols Boats hire cruiser bases it is also a tourist destination in its own right and attracts lots of visitors from far and wide; it boasts a busy and very helpful tourist office too.

We spent a couple of hours during the late afternoon exploring the village, visiting the bookshop and the “provisions barge” that’s moored on the canal to stock up with various supplies, such as fresh milk, that we were likely to need during the early part of our voyage before enjoying a pleasant meal at the Auberge alongside the Canal.

Sunday morning saw us preparing to cast off when we noticed that the fresh water pump appeared to be struggling to supply water at any reasonable pressure. We managed to get hold of the engineer who had given us our briefing the previous afternoon, which was lucky because it seems that the problem had not been reported by the previous hirers. Having to wait whilst a new pump fitted meant that we didn’t actually leave Le Somail until Sunday midday so it was just as well we’d agreed some leeway with Nicols as regards when we needed to get the boat to Port Lauragais.

So, in very pleasant weather but with a forecast of heavy rain and strong winds overnight and the following morning, we made our way through the four locks between Le Somail and the quite large port of Homps where we moored for the night after booking lunch the following day at the nearby restaurant. Homps is an attractive large village with the third biggest port on the Canal, a marina, a supermarket, an excellent wine shop and several restaurants all within easy walking distance.

The large canal basin/marina at Homps was one of the relatively few places where the 29m commercial barges could turn round and enjoyed a prosperous period in the 17th-19th centuries thanks to shipments of the local Minervois wines to Sete, Toulouse and Bordeaux.

The weather forecast proved to be accurate. During the night and the following morning we experienced torrential rain and high winds that, thanks to me having left our cabin window slightly open when my wife Lois and I went to bed, managed to soak all our bedding before our dog Fudge woke us all up at around 2 am. Lois and I ended up spending the rest of the night on the sofa bed in the saloon, and we owe a huge vote of thanks to our friends for lending us extra bedding for what was left of the night, and for helping us to dry out all our bedding, (including the mattress!)in time for us to use the following night.

With an overall length of 15m (the maximum permitted for hire cruisers) the Sixto Fly is one of the most sophisticated and luxurious hire cruisers operating on the French inland waterways but is designed mainly to take advantage of the summer weather conditions, especially those prevailing in the south of France. Hence the “Fly Deck” with its Bimini cover. There are two steering positions; one inside in front of the saloon, the other on a “Fly Bridge” which commands a far better all round view and helps no end as regards manoeuvring in restricted spaces, especially in the locks where there is no room for error! Hence we made a decision to use the fly bridge helm position most of the time rather than the lower inside position.

We enjoyed a very good lunch at the restaurant that we’d moored alongside at Homps. After lunch the rain eased up and we set off immediately to the next nearest port at La Redorte where we moored for the night having managed just a pretty pathetic 5km and only one lock that day. Obviously we were falling well short of our daily target which required us to average at least eight locks every day!

Come the next morning we got away early and managed to cover some 20kms and negotiate a dozen locks during the passage from Le Redorte to the port of Trebes about 10kms east of Carcassonne and its famous Cite. Trebes is a bustling town with a busy port where fortunately we managed to find a mooring with mains electricity and fresh water connections. So, after what had definitely been our busiest day so far, we retired to a nearby Italian restaurant which would you believe also served the local speciality Cassoulet which was enjoyed (I think!) by at least one of us.
The weather during this long day was fair but with a pretty fresh wind and even stronger gusts bordering on gale force. Previously we have had other boats, mainly hire cruisers, some of which were rather obviously crewed by people not used to dealing with strong and gusty winds. This made for some interesting experiences when the lock-keepers understandably wanted to accommodate two, three or even four boats in a lock chamber at the same time; a deliberate policy designed to conserve water.

However we were quite relieved to find ourselves alone after having shared a lock chamber on three occasions with one particular hire cruiser who appeared either to not understand or to simply ignore the lock keeper’s instructions. We finally managed to lose him when he moored so far back from a lock that the lock-keeper closed the gates before we could enter it.

To be fair, locking in the winds we were experiencing wasn’t that easy even for an experienced person on the helm, especially when several locks are only entered through a very low bridge requiring whoever is on the upper helm to duck down or even to kneel down on occasion. In fact the same cautionary ducking was needed for quite a few of the many bridges over the canal too.

Not only was locking quite challenging for the helmsman, it was pretty demanding and hard work for the crew too, one of whom had to be dropped ashore about fifty metres before the lock so he or she could make their way to the correct side of the lock chamber to receive fore and after mooring lines from the members of the crew still aboard. On a 15m long boat the mooring lines need to be pretty long and quite heavy duty which makes them distinctly difficult to throw to the person ashore, especially when the person concerned may often be 5m above the crew member on the boat! With our crew all retirees and three of them ladies it had been a pretty demanding day with the prospect of two more similarly interesting days to follow!

Despite the somewhat adverse wind and weather we were all enjoying ourselves. The two dogs Stanley and Fudge (both Cocker-poos) seemed happy with occasional walks along the old towpaths and longer walks in the evening. All in all we were all having a good time on this beautiful historic canal.

The next day dawned sunny but still with a pretty strong wind so we pushed on through the city of Carcassonne (with some very good views of the Cite) for some 30kms to our next overnight stop not far from the port of Bram. This stretch included no less than sixteen locks but, having left Carcassonne astern, there wasn’t nearly so much traffic on the canal. This meant that we were able to maintain a more consistent speed not only through the manned locks but also through the new automatic unmanned versions installed on the more upstream reaches of the Canal du Midi towards Toulouse.

Given the wind conditions my friend and former Coastguard colleague Malcolm, who like myself, had plenty of boating experience, had been sharing the helm between us. However, neither of us had ever encountered automatic locks before so we agreed to ask our other male crew member Mike, who’d been doing all the work jumping ashore, talking to the lock keepers and securing our mooring lines if he could now master whatever procedure was needed for us to operate these unmanned automatic locks. The procedure is actually pretty straightforward albeit that the instructions are in the form of diagrams alongside push-buttons and it’s not immediately obvious that having closed the locks gates behind you, and watched the lock chamber fill with water via the sluice gates, the exit gate will only open after you push the button again!

Our next stop involved a run of some 20kms and another fifteen locks to the town of Castelnaudary, famous for its Cassoulet of course. We were lucky to find a nice comfortable mooring with a mains electric connection in the inner basin opposite the harbourmaster's office. We spent some time here and took advantage of the harbour facilities that included the mooring, electrical and water connections, posh showers etc. All for €16.00 for 24 hours which compared very favourably to some of the campsites in the south of France!

Unfortunately the same could not be said of our choice of a restaurant for our evening meal that night. It was on the harbourside and, had the weather been warmer that evening, we could have had a table outside. The choice of main courses was very limited indeed (mostly salads) and the quality was not at all what you would normally expect from a bistro in France – very disappointing. We later discovered that the quite a few British privately owned boats, who spend the winter months from November through to March here when the locks are all closed, use a nearby bar/restaurant which is apparently much better than our choice had been.

So to our last day’s run from Castelnaudary to Port Lauragais a distance of about 12km with a number of uphill locks leading to the summit of the Canal du Midi some 190m above sea level at the Seuil de Naurouzeour, where there is a monument to Pierre-Paul Riquet the engineer who directed the building of the Canal du Midi in the 17th Century. The monument, in the form of an obelisk, is situated about ½ km from the canal and if you want to visit it involves a pleasant tree-lined walk, thoroughly enjoyed by Fudge who had her first run of the week off her lead.

Finally we reached our last and 60th lock which, for the first time of course, was a DOWNHILL lock where the ropework is much easier as all that is needed is to take a half-turn around the lock chamber bollards and pay out the rope as the boat drops down as the water is released from the lock chamber.

In no time at all after that last lock we entered the spacious modern canal basin/marina at Port Lauragais, found the appropriate mooring, tied up and reported to the Nicols harbourmaster’s office before enjoying a good meal at the marina restaurant before what was most of our crew’s last night aboard before taking the taxi kindly provided by Nicols the next morning, a Sunday, for the hour and a quarter drive back to Le Somail to collect our cars. We then drove back to Port Lauragais to pack our things, clean the boat and prepare it for inspection the following morning for which Lois and I and Fudge stayed aboard overnight.

Judging from the feedback from our “crew”, everyone seems to have thoroughly enjoyed this cruise despite some pretty indifferent and at times quite challenging weather conditions and the pretty hard work undertaken by all those manning to the ropes. I think by the end of the voyage everyone, not least myself, felt a sense of achievement at having accomplished what we set out to do without any serious mishaps and without any damage at all to the boat apart from my having broken a bedside coat hook in our cabin when removing the bedding that had got wet during the second night’s storm! We all started out as good friends and we all ended up as good friends even though we did have a row one evening!

Would we all want to do it again? Probably, albeit in warmer and less windy weather, and preferably, given that we’re all retirees, on the south-eastern stretch of the canal where there are fewer locks!

For Timothy West and Prunella Scales, nothing compares to narrow-boating.  Yet they both developed a passion for canal cruising for diametrically opposing yet surprisingly similar reasons: "I'm rather a 'snail' person," explains Prunella, "I like to carry my home with me.  I don't really like travelling, to do with childhood, being evacuated and careering round the world when my father was in the army."  Similar reasons had the opposite effect on Timothy; "I adore travel, having been evacuated and my father being an actor so it's strange really."

Neither Prunella nor Timothy's childhood love of boating stems from canals. "Not canals but rivers," says Timothy; "my father was very fond of boats.  We used to go on the Thames in launches."

Prunella fondly remembers the sea: "I've always had the most tremendous thing about water. " She says, "I remember when I was little wanting to sail around the world in a square-rigged ship. I grew up spending a lot of time by the sea and always longed to sail like the kids in Swallows and Amazons."
"I can crew, I do what I'm told, but I couldn't sail single-handed.  We took care that the boys went to sailing school when they were little to learn to sail properly.  But they love the canals as well.  We tend to think that people who sail in dinghies and yachts won't abide canal boats, but actually they love it."

Timothy explained what brought them to canals years later; "we were lent a boat by an actress friend on the Oxford canal when our kids were very young.  They had the most marvellous holiday, and the great thing was that they got so wonderfully tired, working locks and swing bridges."  Prunella agrees; "They'd have supper and go to sleep.  We'd chat and play chess or whatever and it was a wonderful holiday for us all."  They were hooked.  "That was our first canal holiday and we both fell for it completely and in the end bought a half share in that boat."
Some years ago, their son Joe, then aged ten, took his parents' instruction a little too literally when, while carrying a windlass in each hand, he fell into the canal.  "He was perfectly able to swim, actually quite a competent swimmer, but he'd been told never to drop a windlass," says Prunella.  "He sank like a stone," laughs Timothy, "and as he came up for the third time, we had to tell him to drop them!"

"Canal people are tremendously helpful," says Timothy, "and there's a community and if you're in trouble, they'll always help you."  Timothy explained that they were grateful for such help last year;  "we lost a mooring and the boat drifted out into the middle of the canal with nobody on board."  Fortunately for both, a passing canoeist came to their rescue, recovering the mooring rope.

Timothy obviously draws an enormous pleasure at the helm.  "There's just enough to do to think that you're not being carried along on somebody else's say-so.  There's a certain amount of skill involved in navigating a narrow boat and handling all the locks and bridges is interesting and informative.  You learn an awful lot about a fascinating and important part of our economic and engineering heritage which has really been alive in more or less the same kind of way since the 1770s or before."
"What I love about the canal system is that you're always seeing England from the back.  If a river is an actual thoroughfare of a town or village, the canal is its service road.  You find bits of a town or a village or a city that have not really altered around a canal because nobody goes there much anymore.  Since the mercantile aspect of canals has tailed off, you find wonderful old wharves and warehouses, cranes and landing stages, which have just stayed as a forgotten monument to Victorian technology."

"On the other hand," adds Prunella, "out in the open country it's instant countryside and deep countryside.  The flora and fauna and the birds, on the whole, are quite specialised, and there are plants you see along the canal you don't see in other places."

Both are well known for their association with the Kennet and Avon canal, and Timothy explains their special relationship with this waterway: "I went with old school friends in Bristol in the early 1950s to the first meeting of the Kennet & Avon Canal Society.  It was saving the canal at that time from a Government Bill planning to abandon the canal completely.  The meeting was held at the bottom of Widcombe Lock in Bath.  It was a very lively meeting, the Bishop of Bath and Wells spoke and Tudor Ede MP who was then, I think, Home Secretary, spoke very movingly.  There was a very strong faction of farmers who had begun to feel that the canal bed was their own and they didn't want it open at all.  They were quite vociferous, and a fight broke out in which one of the farmers was actually 'ditched' into the dry, but very muddy, Widcombe Lock."

The meeting sufficiently impressed Timothy to keep a watchful eye on its proceedings and progress.  "Then I heard that it was getting on and that things were getting done," he says.  "Of course, restoring the canal is one of the major engineering feats of this century.  It's absolutely astounding what's been done in terms of rebuilding and reclaiming back the route of the canal."  "Dredging and sealing, building locks, building bridges, reclaiming wharves and aqueducts.  But particularly, of course, the enormous staircase of locks at Caen Hill, which in anybody's terms is a major engineering feat."

When finally, the canal re-opened in 1990, Timothy and Prunella's boat was the first to travel the entire length of the Kennet and Avon, all but for a 400-yard stretch encompassing lock 43 at the summit of the Caen Hill flight.  "The four hundred yards were reserved for the Queen to open," explains Timothy.  "We were craned out and taken on the back of a low loader through the streets of Devizes and put back in the canal."  The Queen officially re-opened the Kennet and Avon canal by navigating through lock 43 on the 8th of August 1990.  Timothy emphasises the role of volunteers in canal restoration, citing his own experience of the K&A:  "It was restored almost entirely by voluntary work under the direction of skilled engineers."

But do they think commercial carrying will ever return to the canals?  They both doubt it.  "Canals are only really viable if you can take the goods by rail to a rail-head where you can load it immediately onto barges," believes Timothy.  If you've got to put it onto a lorry, you might as well drive the lorry to the destination."  "But also, the expense," adds Prunella, "two men to carry coal from Manchester to London is terribly expensive, to put it on a train is infinitely more sensible, economic, and efficient."  Nevertheless, they do believe there is a place for commercial carrying, as Timothy pointed out: "If you don't mind things happening at a slower pace and both you and your business co-respondent live on the canal, it's the obvious way to do it."

Neither would see living on their narrow boat as a permanent 'home' because of the hectic and varied nature of their work, though they have from time to time.  "When we were living on it while working in Bristol," explains Prunella, "we were rehearsing a very, very difficult play and we were iced-up.  But we were very warm, and very comfortable because we've got bottled gas central heating."  They were in fact better off than the rest of the cast, as Timothy pointed out; "They'd all been frozen up in their digs.  They used to come on board for a shower because our water was okay.  We were in a marina, which was snowed over.  There were a couple of inches of thick ice, and snow all over that.  Around us, there was this little one-inch 'moat' generated by the heat from the hull, and we were very comfortable."

They have travelled the canal system quite extensively and have in the past taken their boat by road quite a long way.  "There are a few land-locked canals we'd like to try," they say, "but if you do own your own boat, it means either craning it out or hiring someone else's boat, which doesn't feel quite right."  The Monmouth and Brecon Canal is one of Timothy's ambitions, while Prunella would like to try the Chichester Canal.

They've owned their current boat for over ten years.  "It was built for us," explains Timothy, "custom built onto a standard steel hull and our friend Barry Morse of Morse Marina in Banbury fitted it out."

And what would Timothy West and Prunella Scales have to say to people who see canals as dirty ditches and narrow boats as cold and comfortless?  "Try it," they say, "Just try it."

If midsummer’s day is kind of important to me, on account of it being my birthday, then so is the winter solstice. I’d have been six months old when I saw my first one. I was held as a baby whilst the sun came up, and again when it went down. I remember absolutely nothing, nor will my little friend Joshie here. I was asked to take him with me for my walk along the towpath. I know I wanted to be alone, but the little lad talks to me in a way that someone that has language can’t. I look at him and his big blue eyes look back. There’s all these expressions he has that let me know that he’s aware exactly how I’m feeling. Like when his mum had the baby blues a bit on the heavy side, he somehow got that I was looking after him so that she could get herself into the right headspace. I guess he managed to get the message to his mum that I wasn’t taking him away too. Right now he seems to be just looking at me as though he wants to know something. Even if I look away, he still gets my attention. I mean who’d want to look away from such a beautiful little face anyway.

What I want to tell him is that things work out, but when I try to actually say anything he just looks right through my eyes and fires the same back at me. He’s telling me that things in my life will work out too. I mean, how can he know so much when he’s only been in the world for around half a year. He has no concept of Christmas, birthday, spring or anything much else. I think he can see what’s happening to nature though. The trees are bare of leaves, there’s been snow which, with today’s milder weather, is melting and dripping on me from the branches. He can’t write anything and, according to the health visitor, he isn’t even that aware that he’s an individual human being. Well Joshie, all of that’s a load of old cobblers isn’t it. Yes, I know I’m from the north and we don’t do rhyming slang but it’s cobblers anyway. You know far more than anybody thinks you do. I’m pretty sure the lad spots what others may well miss. Like the wild animals, he can sense that the trees aren’t dying but instead are preparing for when the victory over cold sees the days lengthen. He knows when he looks that there are buds slowly getting ready to burst into leaf. What I know for sure is that what’s going on in that little head is kind of pretty awesome. He also knows when I’m busy going too deep into thinking stuff out. This time a little arm popped out of my coat and pulled my hat down over my eyes.
“Who put da lights out!” I said, using a funny voice to amuse the godson that I’m technically too young to be godmother to.
It always makes him chuckle in his own special little way when I say daft things, which then makes me laugh and forget whatever was bothering me. I told you the lad was smart didn’t I. Anybody walking past might think I was talking a load of rubbish into mid air as Joshie is tucked up all cosy and warm in a baby sling under my coat. Also I’m mostly not actually speaking in words.

This is all going between him and me as he snuggles up to me. I love moments like this, you know, just wandering along the towpath then standing on top of the bridge looking out along the canal, and also sitting on the damp lock-side bench. I could happily sit here for hours today but I know Joshie is either going to pee himself, do a poo, or start dropping rather heavy hints that he wants a feed. He knows where to look too, and if I could I would but he understands that too. I can usually work out when it’s time to head off back to the farm though so he doesn’t ever get too restless. Right now we’re just happy here as we watch whatever comes into view. I kind of think that when that social worker thought he was my son, he knew that I was annoyed with her assumption of me being some reckless teenager. I felt his little arms pulling himself closer to me and then thought, well, what if? Where else but Bank Top could I do something like that and know I’d get support and not judgement? I’d be proud to be his mum but I’m not, that’s all. He knows that, I know that, and I also know he probably needs a feed, definitely needs a nappy change and I need a fresh sweater. Thanks Joshie. I guess this one needed a wash anyway!

So we’ll head back on the track across the meadow running diagonal to the towpath as the drizzle increases in pace making the canal shimmer in the haze as we move on up the slope. In front of us is the big old farmhouse that has been home to a lot of people since what is referred to as either a hippy commune or the freak farm began a good long time before even my mum was born. Back then the rather beautifully restored canal was no more than a ditch, the house was crumbling and we had no electricity (so I’m told). Over the decades our little community has survived though. So I guess the solstice is a good excuse to party as well as to contemplate. I think Joshie and I are quite ready for a good sing song around the bonfire now. Well we will be once we’ve cleaned up and wrung the weather out of my coat, hat and scarf. Seasons greetings folks.

Meet Paddington!

If you travel the waterways or walk the canal towpaths of Britain, you may meet Paddington Bear. He can be seen sitting in the prow of his very own vessel, a 25-year-old, 60-foot narrowboat in royal blue and red colours that bears (not meant to be a pun!) his name of Paddington. He is very much admired by the children who discover him moored at Aston Marina, Staffordshire.

Paddington finds sailing on a narrowboat a very sociable and relaxing way to travel around the country – and he is never seasick! He usually takes a month’s holiday every year and also spends weekends with his partners, co-owners of the boat since 2016, and their family and friends.

A year ago, he took 17 days to sail a clockwise route via Autherley Junction, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Worcester, Stourport on the Severn and back home, sailing by day and mooring by night. He always enjoys an evening meal in a pub if it is canalside. Paddington said that cruising through central Birmingham and mooring near Gas Street Basin close to the Symphony Hall was special.

This year he and his friends took the boat north to the Llangollen Canal, cruising along the iron clad Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and parts of Cheshire.

He met many interesting people along the way – live-aboard boaters, holiday cruisers and others busy on working boats. One of the most interesting was a working blacksmith towing an unpowered butty boat at over 71 feet 6 inches, which only just fitted into the locks.

Among these interesting people were the Waterways Chaplains, who are always ready to help boaters negotiate locks or lend a sympathetic ear to their problems and concerns, giving advice and help where they can. They also talk to folk walking the towpath or fishing in the canals. Paddington says that sometimes it is a great relief to unburden yourself by chatting to a friendly chaplain. And visiting the lovely old churches along the way is always a pleasant and peaceful experience.

As for next year – he’ll be off again and says that the waterways of Britain offer miles of natural beauty for everyone to enjoy. Perhaps he’ll sail by you along some peaceful stretch. If so, do shout, “Hello, Paddington!” as you pass. You can be sure he will raise his hat and wish you well. He is such a well brought up little bear!