Snowy by Berlie Doherty & Keith Bowen

Snowy is one of the most delightful children's books there is.  It is about Rachel who isn't allowed to take her canal boat horse into school when the teacher invites the children to take in their pets. As a result she gets teased by her classmates. That is, until they meet Snowy on a surprise school trip to the canal. That brings her the admiration of all her classmates. Maggie used to read it to her class when she was a primary school teacher and the kids loved it.

If you look at the illustrations carefully you can see that the story is set in Chester. I recognised  immediately, but I never for one moment considered the provenance of the story. However, last night I read again PJG Ransom's The Archeology of Canals. There on page 110 was a colour plate of a grey mare called Snowy at Chester. The horse was being prepared to tow a trip boat called The Chester Packet with a butty in the background on the far bank. The butty carries the name Betelgeuse as in the book. Berlie Doherty and Keith Bowen's book is therefore authentic in terms of canal operations. It appears during the summer Jim Marshall used Betelgeuse, pulled by Snowy, to carry passengers as The Chester Packet. The butty was converted for this role, with a small cabin extension, in the mid '70s.

A picture on the current owners web site shows Betelgeuse as The Chester Packet but the horse is not Snowy. Therefore, in homage to that great children's book here is a photograph from Ransom's book showing Snowy being prepared for work with Betelgeuse in the background. Doesn't Snowy look fine. Presumably this photo comes from the late 1970s (the book was published in 1979). The picture was by PJG Ransom. I wonder where Rachel is?

Snowy and butty Betelgeuse at Chester

Blog Pages

Following on from my redesign of the blog, I have recently been developing pages to give readers easy access to some features of Albert's blog. There are now dedicated pages covering the basics about Albert, the Ruston & Hornsby engine, Albert's boat builder, and a page cataloguing my waterways books that also links to some related posts.

Thames Diamond Jubilee Pagent

I see that today they announced the list of vessels (powered and unpowered) for the Queens Diamond Jubilee Pagent on the River Thames. The list includes forty narrowboats but not, as Andrew Denny recently revealed, Granny Buttons.

The Narrowboat list is strong on community boating groups as might be expected and it was good to see a local representative in the Mountbatten Crusader. It is operated by the St John Ambulance, Northamptonshire and normally moors up at Gayton Junction. She is regularly seen about our area but appears to be a bit wider than 7ft. But still, who's counting.

Mountbatten Crusader at Stoke Bruerne

Amongst the boats in the Narrowboat section is also Beatty representing Merseyside. I presume that it is the Grundy family boat that we have met on several occasions; at Bath (2003), Brinklow(2004) and Preston Brook (2009). She is a wonderful example of an early converted working boat (built by Yarwoods at Northwich in 1936). The Beatty website  gives lots of great details and photographs of the boat during her working days and subsequently as a family leisure boat; it's a delight to read.

Converted working boat Beatty and Albert at Brinklow in July 2004

It is also good to see a strong rowing contingent with crews from Putney Town Rowing Club, Twickenham Rowing Club, Leicester Rowing Club, and Weyfarers Rowing Club.

Finally,  the press release labels the leisure cruiser section "The Tupperware Navy" but narrowboats avoided the equivalent label of "ditch crawlers"! 

Boat Identified

In my earlier post about Stoke Bruerne in 1976, I wondered about the identity of the butty with David Blagrove's name on the cabin. Following a clue from Bob Westlake it appears that it is Elton which is now in the hands of the Wooden Canal Boat Society.

As it says on their site:

By 1968 even Willow Wren were unable to compete with lorries using the expanding motorway network. “Elton” was sold to David Blagrove, a teacher and diehard canal carrying enthusiast, who used her to carry coal for retailing from the boat.

It appears that Elton has been at Portland Basin on the Aston Canal for some time and has been used as floating storage for much of the societies equipment. She did however sink in November 2003 but was raised again.

Elton was built in 1936 by Walkers of Rickmansworth. Her history is on the WCBS web site.

Rowing in the 1960s

In the 1960s and 1970s I was involved in competitive rowing, firstly coxing as a young lad, mostly at Llandaff Rowing Club near Cardiff, and then rowing and sculling at Tiffin School in Kingston-upon-Thames, Stratford-upon-Avon Boat Club and then Loughbrough University.

I have very few pictures of these times except the odd newspaper cutting when we happened to win (rarely). However, a few days ago I came across two colour pictures taken in 1965. They both relate to events held on river navigations used by canal boats. The first is a shot of the Stratford coxed four which won at a few Midland regattas and eventually reached Junior-Senior status. I am seen rowing at my usual place in the bows. At two is Barry Burke, three is Boris Holdsworth and the stroke is Richard Lawrence. The cox is out of shot. The photograph was taken at Leicester Quarts, an autumn event held over the straight mile on the River Soar in the middle of Leicester. I remember that we didn't do too well that day. We are wearing tracksuit tops and are obviously making our way to the start.

Leicester Quarts Event, River Soar 1965 - Stratford Boat Club Crew

For reference, here is a picture of the same area when we passed that way forty years later on Albert. Our friend Edward Winter is steering and taking a phone call!

River Soar 2005 - NB Albert

The second image is of a joint Stratford and Evesham crew that in the same year (1965) entered the Boston Marathon. It's basically the same crew as above but Richard Lawrence has been replaced at stroke by a rower from Evesham whose name I can't recall. The Boston Marathon covers the 31 miles from Lincoln to Boston. This was not the only time I took part in this gruelling event. I took part again in the early 1970s when I rowed in a coxless four from Loughborough University. The picture below was labelled "only five miles to go". We had plenty of blisters on our hands and other places when we finished! You may just make out that there are fisherman lining the opposite bank. As we approached Boston I remember that our cox kept asking them how far it was to the end of the race. They gave very misleading answers!

Boston Marathon, 1965 - Stratford/Evesham coxed four