Winning a seriously big IWA trophy

At the back of my mind when we got to Pelsall was an e-mail which listed the various awards and the entry conditions. Two days before the deadline I decided we could enter for a couple of categories, namely the most "meritorious route", that including little travelled waterways, and the longest route. We'd certainly been to some out-of-the-way places, such as the Grazebrook Arm, the Fens Branch and the Ridgeacre Canal, and I thought we stood a chance in the "most meritorious" category. I calculated the miles and locks we'd covered since 1st May this year, the start date for the "journey", and made a document with these figures, some photos and a detailed diary of where we'd been before arriving at the Pelsall Festival of Water.

This morning I got a phone call from one of the organisers of the event suggesting we might like to be in the marquee at 1215, so I thought, "That's interesting". We were, nevertheless, surprised to be announced as the winners in the Longest Route category and were presented with the most enormous trophy.

This is the A.P.Herbert Market Harborough Challenge Trophy which has the engraved names of the winners since the historic 1950 rally at the Leicestershire town. The first winner was S.V.Offley, Esq. MBE. There was another MBE winner in 1953; it wasn't until 1990 that people dropped the use of "esq". We will now have to get our names engraved on the cup - and find somewhere to keep it until next year. I'm struggling to think of anything on the boat that's older!

Oh - our totals were 521 miles and 372 locks since 1st May.

Other things which happened today include: a two-hour stint by me handing out programmes to visitors arriving by car; Kew returning in the afternoon having finally successfully winded at Birchills Junction; Jan doing a two-hour stint working with children in the WoW tent (photo below); helping our neighbour on the next-door stand to dismantle her gazebo (we have commissioned her to paint our coal shoot); helping Captain Ahab dismantle his gazebo; me helping with the dismantling of two large IWA marquees; going for a meal in the Finger Post pub with David, Mary and the aforementioned Captain; jamming along on my recorder to some folky-type stuff in the entertainment tent this evening.

There'll be more derigging tomorrow, then we'll have to get to Fazeley sharpish.