If I was to tell you that my plan to descend the Hatton flight with a narrowboat full of commandos came to fruition you wouldn’t believe me, and you would be right.
But, and you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, as it happens, it went better than that.
As we turned out on to the Grand Union at 0930 this morning there in the distance was a narrowboat with two blokes on it. Two blokes almost certainly means two blokes plus two girlfriends/wives we think, so that’ll do!
As we got nearer to them, and we were rather naughtily hoofing it a bit to catch up, it became obvious that the narrowboat, festooned with England flags, had at least four if not more blokes on board. At this point we wondered whether we really wanted to go down with, what might turn out to be, a bunch of football hooligans.
However, just before the start of the flight they beckoned us passed.
“You go on ahead, because we don’t really know what we are doing and in fact we may turn and not even do the flight" says a man with "Big Ian" across his T-shirt.
As we went passed we realised what a mistake we had made. The boat turned out to be a charity trust boat and on board there were five blokes mostly able-bodied but some not quite so. We later found out there were three carers and two “service users” as they were called.
Just below the top lock there was a winding hole (pronounced wind as in “wind and rain”) where boats longer than the canal is wide, can turn. So we watched, expecting them to turn any moment but they DIDN’T. Hooray!!
So we rafted up together and did the flight in just over two and half hours, a very respectable time given we didn’t rush and most locks were set against us. Those genuinely good guys, with a help from PSO, worked really hard and deserve much more than the KitKat and cup of tea each, that PSO provided half way down, and the pint I bought them each after we finished. If they were half as tired as PSO and us after the trip, then everybody would sleep well tonight. PSO did a lot of opening and closing of gates and I do find tiller-waggling very exhausting!!
I really hope I meet them again some time. (the Caen flight, I hear you say?)
Has POS become PSO or is there something you want to tell us but modesty prevents?;-)
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ReplyDeleteHey Ed Its Bigian, Thanx for yr wonderful comments n thanx for allowing us to accompany u n yr lovely wife down the Hatton Flight and for the tea kitkats n of course the beers at the cape, Would be nice to meet u both again someday but for now we will bid u well on yr weyward journey, Ian Andy Dean Yan n Colin
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