Captain Ahab’s Word for the Day: ‘Nowhere is far by canal; it just takes a long time to get there.’
A very long time to be precise. It’s taken us two days of what can only be described as gentle cruising to make it as far as the Staffordshire town of Stone. Even by narrowboat standards that’s slow. By car the journey would take approximately forty minutes. But I am told that speed is not the point of canal cruising. Indeed, there are people whose life ambition it seems, is to make narrowboaters slow down even further. Captain Ahab is known as a courteous and conscientious helmsman. He nearly always sticks to the Waterways’ Code, the first requirement of which must surely be to slow down when passing moored boats. So he receives it with some disgruntlement when the turtles pop their heads out and accuse him of speeding. Turtles are those boaters moored in the most inappropriate spots – the outside of a narrow bend, directly on exit from a lock, etc. They are always just inside when another boat passes, and their heads on the end of their long scrawny necks, pop straight up through a hatch crying ‘Slow down!’ in a threatening manner. Captain Ahab is generally very polite to them but he has recently expressed an interest in investing in a super soaker water spray gun. My technique would be to rev up the engine, slam on the throttle and go so fast they could only hurl abuse at my wake. Maybe we should double up with the Captain as gunner? We could be the Bonnie and Clyde of the Inland Waterways. However, as no one has committed a bank job using a narrowboat as a get away vehicle, there is every possibility that this plan would come to naught.
A very long time to be precise. It’s taken us two days of what can only be described as gentle cruising to make it as far as the Staffordshire town of Stone. Even by narrowboat standards that’s slow. By car the journey would take approximately forty minutes. But I am told that speed is not the point of canal cruising. Indeed, there are people whose life ambition it seems, is to make narrowboaters slow down even further. Captain Ahab is known as a courteous and conscientious helmsman. He nearly always sticks to the Waterways’ Code, the first requirement of which must surely be to slow down when passing moored boats. So he receives it with some disgruntlement when the turtles pop their heads out and accuse him of speeding. Turtles are those boaters moored in the most inappropriate spots – the outside of a narrow bend, directly on exit from a lock, etc. They are always just inside when another boat passes, and their heads on the end of their long scrawny necks, pop straight up through a hatch crying ‘Slow down!’ in a threatening manner. Captain Ahab is generally very polite to them but he has recently expressed an interest in investing in a super soaker water spray gun. My technique would be to rev up the engine, slam on the throttle and go so fast they could only hurl abuse at my wake. Maybe we should double up with the Captain as gunner? We could be the Bonnie and Clyde of the Inland Waterways. However, as no one has committed a bank job using a narrowboat as a get away vehicle, there is every possibility that this plan would come to naught.
2 comments:
Hahahaha what fun that would be. It takes us 4 to 5 hours to get to Stone or as Friday night proved a good minutes in car from the Marina.
We should start a campaign :)
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