The outbound crew all arrived during the afternoon of Sunday 24th May. The boats were prepared, the goodies stowed and the Elsans primed and ready for duty. We duly stood by our beds after a trip to the Bostin Fittle for suitable lubrication and sustenance. Some of us wished we still stood by our beds after climbing into our bunks as the new mattresses felt like granite disguised as foam. Changes would have to be made in the morning before setting off.

To add insult to injury I think the old lady was a bit grumpy before the first trip of her centenary year as the safety valve kept lifting and broke our already disturbed sleep. If anyone was moored outside the museum it probably gave them a pretty rough night.

After raiding Brook Street for the old mattresses the already tired crew slipped the mooring, lifted the bridge, which seems to get stiffer every time its used, and set off. The trip to Wolverhampton was fairly uneventful, although we grounded a couple of times. The biggest problem we had was with the new cross straps to Kildare. We concluded, initially, that they needed stretching and decided to run with them parallel for the first day. All was about to change as the trip down the 21 was slow as there were only 5 in the crew. Alan pedaled ahead and set locks whist Tony and I worked Kildare through the locks. DS took pity on us after we had cleared the first 12 locks and used President to tow us through the pounds. Once clear of the 21 we set off for our first mooring at Coven. This part of the journey seemed nice and relaxed and we reached the Fox and Anchor in time for a good meal and a little libation.

Tuesday started well and we made good time. As our objective was to reach Great Haywood we needed to have a trouble free run. It was not to be as about ¼ mile from Radford Road Bridge we were stuck on the outfall from the nearby estate. Once clear we headed for the bridge and got stuck again, thus taking 3 hours to cover a ¼ of a mile. A family on a hire boat was very helpful and did a lot of pulling to help us through. Unfortunately another boat decided that a high speed ram was the answer and bounced off President onto Kildare causing damage to the elum. Enough was enough so we moored outside the Radford Bank Inn. We checked at the pub to see when they stopped serving. “2130” sez they. Huh we went in at 2105 to see food being put away and serving had finished. So off we walk to a pub I had used when the Radford Bank did this to me last visit. Unfortunately we were really late and they had finished serving too. However we had a libation and then headed to the chippy. We managed to get the last of the day’s frying and it was pretty bad. Maybe Wednesday would be better

Who said better. We got stuck almost immediately and had to use the Tirfor. On to the next bridge hole we grounded again and out came the Tirfor. In the end Kildare sported a new figurehead in the form of the Tirfor. This continued on all but three bridges. Maybe we were through and heading for better times. Some hope as the injector stopped working and wouldn’t take water for the boiler. However a saviour appeared galloping over the horizon (at 3mph)in the form of the tug Bittle. They offered to tow us. It must have been quite a sight to see three historic boats in line. There were plenty of photographs taken but we haven’t seen any yet. Maybe they’ll appear in one of the canal magazines! The tow to Great Haywood was fairly uneventful but the hand of fate was to strike again. Somehow Bittle didn’t make the turn and President pushed her onto the opposite bank. There was much pushing pulling and swearing but she was well and truly stuck. It took another boat and use of ropes to pull her and us off.

To really rub in the day’s misery it started to rain a very fine drizzle and then it got dark and miserable. We finally gave up after a struggle to get into Aston lock and called it a day at 2230 and tied up on the lock landing for the night. We were only half an hour sailing to Stone and the plan was to clean the boats in the morning and arrive all bright and fresh –Huh!! In the event we thought we would head off for Stone first and clean the boats when we arrived. It was a good job we did as once more we got stuck. We finally arrive at Stone at about 0900 and started giving the boats and ourselves a good clean.

The Captain (DS to you and me) looked positively resplendent to meet the Lady Mayor. After her arrival and introduction to the crew she was taken through Star Lock on President where we had deep moorings at the top. Stone proved to be a very successful day with a lot of interest from the good citizens and steady book and raffle sales. Tony Tibbins could probably sell coals to Newcastle whilst simultaneously supplying fridges to Eskimos he was that successful. The Lady Mayor was presented with a copy of the book signed by the crew and she duly donated £10 to FoP. Thank you your worship.

On Friday we set off for Etruria with two new FoP members who had joined us for the day. The run was uneventful although we had trouble with the bottom being too close to the top at a couple of the Stoke locks. On arriving at Etruria we were asked to reverse President into the Caldon arm. This looked fairly easy to start with until we realised that we were to moor a couple of hundred yards away and round a long sweeping bend. When we got to the mooring it was too shallow to get President into the bank. Everyone wanted to give advice and suggestions that we should bump her and force our way into the mooring. We decided against this as it would potentially damage President. Fortunately a coal boat let us moor in his place. The only disadvantage was that the funnel was below the rather pretty white painted footbridge. (Its an interesting black and white now)

Saturday was the first day of the show. The weather was very sunny and hot. President was part of the Wild Over Waterways (WOW) for children where they have to collect a number of stickers for their WOW passport. There was a lot of interest in the boats with many questions. Once more Tony’s selling technique gave us good sales of books and tickets. As an additional bonus the Museum caravan was parked beside the boats and this proved very useful. Not only could we supply them with tea, and each could publicise the other, but we could scrounge pens and most importantly the free pork scratchings. We ended up with rather a lot of these by the end of the show on Sunday evening.

Sunday – Captain DS and Tony headed off to Church leaving the motley heathens behind. We could have been converted if we’d realised the visit included a couple of pints and a lunch provided by Angie Stott. We missed Tony the salesman as neither Keith, Alan nor myself were very successful at the sales pitch. Still we had many children working out the questions for their WOW sticker. Some of the answers to the questions were hilarious and some worrying. The first question was How old is President. We gave some clues such as she was built in 1909 and if they did a little sum they could reach the answer. What was really worrying was that some of the parents couldn’t do the sum. Answers varied from 58 (????) to 1396 years of age. The second question of why President has a whistle was answered easily. The third produced some of the most hilarious answers. The question was how does the steerer tell the engine driver if he wants to speed up or slow down? The answers were pretty imaginative ranging from shouting to using the whistle, or banging on the roof. The most inventive was to poke the driver with the mop. (Sounds like a good idea to me).

Monday – Keith had left us the previous evening as he scrounged a lift to the museum with the caravan and we were joined by Brian and Pat Empsall. We had an uneventful day and decided to spend the night at Salt Bridge. The pub in Salt, The Holly Bush, was excellent and we can recommend it to anyone who moors nearby. It supplies very good beer and wonderful food.

Tuesday – We started off well and sped through Tixall Wide as though we were on the Fens. It wasn’t to last though as the dreaded shallows got us and out came the Tirfor at one bridge. Thankfully we managed to scrape through all the others that caused us a problem on the trip down. We needed gas but unfortunately arrived at Midland Chandlers just 10 minutes after they closed. We moored at Penkridge and ate at the Littleton Arms, once more this was excellent and can be highly recommended

Wednesday – Fairly easy day as we were aiming for Coven. First job was to re-water, empty the cassettes and pick up gas by Penkridge lock. Of course nothing on this trip was easy and we were just entering bridge 67 after the narrows when we ground to a halt. President was sitting on something but she could be backed off. It turned out to be a supermarket trolley, bike, a set of wheels from a trolley and a folding chair. This was the second bike we’d removed on this trip.

Thursday – started out as a comfortable day. However the God’s weren’t finished with us yet. The Wolverhampton 21 was to prove tiresome. The water level in the pounds was very low, mainly because boats were going up the flight without any coming down. Alan was sent off to start letting water into the pounds, some of which were 2 feet below the by pass weirs. As the flight only has a by pass weir from the pound above lock 2 it meant letting water in from the pound above lock 1. Apparently the lock keeper, who clearly wasn’t doing his job, objected to this. Alan was mainly successful although we had to wait in lock 2 whilst the water was run into the pound to fill a further 18 inches to reach the by pass weir (the lock keeper had told Alan that the levels were quite normal). In total the 21 took us over 5 hours rather than the normal 2 to 3.We finally arrived back at the museum in time to go to the Pie Factory for a celebratory libation and some food.

Friday- We had decided to clean and put the boats to bed on Friday morning. We gave them a good clean inside and out and re-filled the boiler after a full blowdown the previous evening.

In total we raised £207.50p from books, tickets and good old fashioned donations.