Procrastination is the prerogative of princes. Not Presidents. One consequence of the unintended year's delay of the "Under the sea tour" meant that festivities originally planned were replaced by smaller events or became simple visits. On the other hand, some people will say that the Hartford to Ely trip was one big party. It would be more accurate to say that it was several big parties.

Thursday, 17th July 2008:

The crew gathered in time for an evening meal at the Hartford Mill. Martyn] arrived in time for supper - his traditional cheese "butties".

Friday:

Reveille for most of the crew was not long after 7.00 am. President and Kildare were urged/squeezed out past the nearby houseboat into the vast expanse of the Hartford Marina and thence onto the Great Ouse. Alan and I were to do most of the tiller work, Colin did nearly all of the filler work: filling us with tea and sandwiches. A refreshed crew is a happy crew.

The weather was unexceptionable - funny how rarely they forecast that - with only minor spatterings of any rain during the day. Houghton Lock was the first "port of call". [[The following may have already been mentioned in previous trip reports, thus superfluous - Au.] Nearly all the locks - except the manned tidal Hermitage Lock - had a guillotine gate at one end and mitre gates the other. Operation of the guillotine gates requires an Environmental Agency key. There was a small variation between some locks as regards operation and warning lights but essentially it was a push-button job plus heaving on lock beams.

These locks were not designed for craft the size and shape of - full-length - narrowboats. Some would only take the boats singly but most had a "lay-by" inside which allowed Kildare to squeeze in and lie [lay?] alongside President. The signs showing the direction of navigation are not designed to be seen: most are ridiculously small arrows.] [[The following has small value but is overdone - could be better: Au.] The Environmental Agency skillfully avoids complaints about the size [of its navigation signs] by hiding them behind bushes. This secreting away is not very skilful but does not need to be: small signs are easy to hide. The EA was clearly not looking for a challenge but is happy to leave navigators looking for a sign.]

President and Kildare overshot one such sign but the resulting u-turn - v-turn? - was smoothly and pleasingly executed by Alan. Not all approaches worked so well. One lock mooring was at an approximate 45 [?] degree angle to the lock. President was too close to midstream and the turn for the mooring meant she headed towards the lock mooring bow-on. Caution-first steering by Martin positioned President alongside the moorings - if you ignore 6 or 7 foot [not feet! - Au.] of water. (But Alan had been going on about the fact that he could walk on water and some people were hoping to see a repeat performance.)

President only grounded once but it took some minutes to back her off, by which time Kildare was almost alongside, facing the opposite way. Further down, cruising the tidal section after Brownshill Staunch [?Earith] lock, a seal and pup were spotted resting on a riverside mudflat.

The boats reached the tidal Hermitage Lock [Earith?] just after 1 o'clock. According to published timetables the lock is not operated between 1pm and 2pm but the lock-keeper was happy to ignore that. Even so, the boats had almost reached the - angled! - lock moorings before the gates opened and the green light came on. It was not too difficult to get into the lock chamber: just a small irritation, having to "work" the boats in (separately). The Captain was able to have a few minutes chat with the lock-keeper while the boats passed through.

There were no more locks on the way to Ely but our progress was to have significant transient markers. The first was a small crowd forming on a road bridge as we approached it. The possibility of a gang of youths willing to throw stones is unfortunately a frequent worry but then a coach could be seen parked close to the bridge: an organised party. Perhaps a school "nature" trip? The "gang", however, turned out to be much older, well-armed with cameras and greetings. A man, having the combined age of a gang of three or four youths, began running and may have vaulted a fence or two to get ahead of us and take photos[pictures?].

With much whistling and waving we passed on by. It seemed likely that they were visiting the museum of the Stretham fen pump engine immediately after bridge. This is the sole surviving steam-powered drainage engine. [Now looked after by the Stretham Engine Preservation Trust[?]].

The day's planned destination had been the locality of Stretham but the comparatively speedy down-flow from Huntingdon to Earith meant that this was passed not long after 2 pm[?]. Before then a local pub had been phoned to cancel the evening's table booking.

Much less than an hour later, approaching Pope's Corner (where we would join the River Cam), we encountered another crowd of people. Many of the men were wearing collar and tie, suggesting some formal occasion. Whatever it was, people waved to us, we waved and whistled back.

Ely Cathedral was clearly visible some 3 miles away. Soon we were going past it and our intended - but already occupied - mooring place, alongside the Jubilee Garden [name? singular? plural?]. Seeing nowhere more suitable we turned to go back, though it was not as smooth as the turn for the lock earlier in the day. We settled for mooring just off to the side of the Jubilee Garden[s]. This was a very small distance from a very large rock that had been brought to the town by [narrow?]boat. The rock was placed there in recognition of earlier boat cargoes of stone brought to the town. These had turned the town into a city[?] once their substance was transformed into the body of the cathedral, now less than 500 yards away from us. A similar distance away on the other side of the river, and parallel to it, we could see the railway.

After a few chores and cleaning up, the crew adjourned to a nearby pub [name??] for a feed. It was not so much a hostelry as an "eatery" and the crew felt no impulse to linger after the meal. In any case, the price of a round was enough to drive people to drink.

Saturday:

President was to be in steam but static during both "working" days. Even so, wake-up time was not much before 7.30 am, with some cleaning-up before we faced the public.

An important part of the normal static day's work is encouraging members of the public to appreciate the work of both the Black Country Living Museum and President's crew and even, perhaps, to consider becoming a member of FoP. The sale of raffle tickets is a valuable - though not particularly popular - adjunct. I took the line that next year is President's one hundredth birthday and that the raffle proceeds are an essential contribution to the crew's beer fund for the centenary party. I am not sure that I convinced anyone else that there was such a fund but it seemed to provide me an incentive and the buyers a small humorous buy-in.

During the morning, other members of the crew told me of hearing stories that a steam locomotive would be visiting Ely that day. I suspected that local people might have heard about a steam boat and had just become confused. [[the following constitutes a large "aside"[side bar/footnote] (I know I get confused - for instance, the time when I first encountered the Friends of President stall at the Black Country Museum, as it then was. I thought the FoP members were having me on. I had never heard of steam-powered narrowboats: none of the boats my crowd had hired had been like that. There were steamy relationships and much hot gas but no steam-power. I now regard this as an understandable ignorance on my part. Though it is in fact almost logical to have had such vessels, they existed for only a fraction of the time that steam railway locomotives did, passing swiftly into history. FoP is now committed to ensuring that that history is not simply unloaded from memory and forgotten.) [end of aside].

There are, of course, others who are committed to preserving and commemorating histories of various kinds. We were visited by some people with an interest in industrial archaeology: they were on a tour of a few days. And they were also the people on the bridge at the Stretham Fen Pump Museum[]. Meanwhile someone else we had passed the day before had spotted us in Ely and made a phone call. Thus it was that a lady [lass/woman] called by to tell us that her brother used to live - and had just died - on a narrowboat. She had come to Ely especially to express her gratitude to President and crew for whistling him on his way to the Pearly Lock Gates as we passed and left him in our - and his - wake. She was emphatic that he would have appreciated the salutation.

The next notable happening was the appearance of the locomotive Kinlet Hall [?] from the Tyseley Railway Museum, Birmingham. She steamed into Ely Station with about eight carriages of enthusiasts and passengers, many of whom were not slow to discover our mooring. One of the train stewards gave us the phone number of the "train manager". Kildare was moved slightly so as to give a better view of those on the train as it departed. Kinlet Hall[?] set off for home to the accompaniment of a vigorous whistling competition between the two beasts of burden and steam, while train passengers and boat crew[s] did a spirited re-enactment of The Railway Children. Quite daft, even absurd, but a little bit of fun. And from some angles it made quite a good picture ... did anybody take a photograph?

By the end of the day, we had made our presence felt, sold raffle tickets, given out membership packs. The work had not been enough to instill a deep, lingering thirst, so it was decided to eat in that night. It was cheaper and the Driver just could not haul himself away from commanding flames somewhere - furnace, cooker, anywhere.

Sunday:

Start time on Sunday was much the same as Saturday but the riverside was much quieter. The Hermitage lock-keeper and friend turned up for a more relaxed view of the boats.

One passer-by was a teacher: there was a brief discussion on several subjects - the teaching of mathematics, the uses of twittering, ... (For those who do not know about it, "twittering" is a service via the WWW which enables users to place small "public" messages about where they are, what they are doing, etc.) [[the following constitutes a large "aside"[side bar/footnote] The first impression for most sensible people is that this is a rather grotesque idea: all about ego, self-publicising, self-importance, etc. For many this would be true but for President [- herself a publicity tool of the BCLM -] this could be a valuable aid. Schools and other organisations could keep tabs on President's progress, arrange for meetings en route, even use the system to have President carry - small, symbolic - cargoes between them. (At the same time children could more actively learn about geography, along with use of Google Earth and "mashups" - which might be described as "tailoring" the information on maps or elsewhere.)]

We were planning to set off for the Waterbeach/Clayhithe secure moorings at about 2.00 pm. Before then, one of the previous day's best customers turned up as arranged - though with another friend who had not been "arranged" - to help crew the boats and obtain an idea of what was involved. This was David - with an interest in old Pashley bicycles and such - and Sue.

There were no locks to be negotiated. Occasional side winds required a notable amount of tacking. To make it more interesting, Alan, steering President, decided to show David - trying his hand with Kildare's helm - how important a butty can be to its motor. So he popped into the back cabin to find the canal guide. Turning to pop back up again, he discovered that he had been grabbed by the gremlins and could not get out of the cabin. A step back to wrong foot the gremlins failed completely and they tightened their grasp. But with might and main he struggled forward and broke free, leaving the gremlins with only a little scrap or two of his waistcoat as a trophy. By this time President was aiming to go overland but David[?], under Richard Thomas's tutelage was able to bend President away.

In summary, it seems on the whole to have been a successful weekend. Distributing President and Black Country Living Museum "flyers" is now an integral part of this fly-boat crew's work. There was a reasonable acceptance of these and the "beer fund" incentive may have helped raffle ticket sales. Some of the "success" was quite unexpected. President's whistle was originally meant to be used to signal maneuvering intentions but now is more frequently "Hail and farewell".

We hailed a crowd of industrial archaeologists and a crowd of steam train/railway enthusiasts. We bid fare ye well to someone we did not see, someone who had reached the "end of navigation". Members of FoP steam through life, doing their little bit to help humanity know where it has come from and how it has done so. Knowing where we are going is a different matter. There comes a time when we will all lock up - or down? - permanently, having reached the end of our own navigation. Somewhat ironically, President should get closer to immortality than any of us. FoP will play a part in ensuring that President will continue her navigation on the canals: a "cut" into the future that will outlast us all. For we mere mortals it will, one day, be RIP - President may never rust in peace.

 

Contributions from Martin Burke, Alan Claridge, Colin Grantham, David Powell and Richard Thomas.