Victoria

The last full day on Solace for this trip marked by a shot of the coal boat Victoria.

An unusual capture in one or two ways. Coal boats are just about the only true commercial working boats left on the inland canals. As the name suggests they carry coal to supply stoves of other boaters and people living beside the canal. The observant among you will notice they carry more than coal, often diesel as well.

So the second reason this shoot is unusual is you don't see many boats crossways on in a canal. In fact in most parts of the canal unless your boat is very short (and coal boats aren't)you need to go to a"winding hole" to be able to turn round.

I should mention that while on the Caldon Solace wasn't handling as we expected. This was probably due to the early stages of the break down I have mentioned. The Caldon is very twisty and there were a number of occasions where we had to resort to a "manual" bowthruster. For the non boaty among you a bowthruster is a device which can push the bows sideways making manoeuvring in difficult situations easier. A "manual" bowthruster is our term for a boat pole, somebody rushes to the bow grabs the long strong pole and pushes off from either the bank or the bottom.

It was therefore a great relief to see that an experience boatman who obviously knew he had just enough width to turn the boat relied on his manual bowthruster and I managed to catch the moment!

Other than that excitement it was a cold grey uneventful March day.

Back blipped into the period when I was a guest my blipping started 17.12.13