Blue-top boating booked ... and playing the train fares game

For a week next month I shall be helping friends move their blue-top boat Kew from Stourport to Braunston. To that end I have bought my rail tickets - most of them anyway.


Not only am I saving money by buying the tickets in advance, I am also saving a considerable amount by breaking the journeys into discrete legs.

The quoted fare from Wymondham to Kidderminster is £41.50 (advance) but I'm doing it for just £20.00 over the same route. How? By splitting it into Wymondham to Liverpool Street (£8.00); Euston to Birmingham New Street (£6.00); and Birmingham Moor Street to Kidderminster (£6.00 "anytime" fare - not yet bought).

I shall be taking my folding bike, so will cycle from Liverpool Street to Euston and Kidderminster to Stourport. Coming home I'll cycle from Braunston to Long Buckby and get the train to Euston (£6.00 advance); cycle to Liverpool Street; and then get the train to Wymondham (£8.00 advance). Total for the homeward journey: £14.00, saving £7.20 on the quoted "one hop" fare.

One more ridiculous anomaly: if I wanted to go by train from Long Buckby to Milton Keynes and bought the cheapest ticket for that journey it would cost me £11.20. However I could get a ticket to Euston for only £6.00 and get off at MK. I pity visitors from overseas who are not used to this malarkey. I'm sure they wouldn't understand how it is that it costs twice as much to go half the distance. I don't.


I'm looking forward to steering Kew again. It has an air-cooled Lister engine and a large wooden rudder - it is a converted butty. Now, what do I need to pack? Bike, windlass ...

Not all Willows are trees

In the distant past, when we lived on the edge of Milton Keynes, and before we had children, we did some boat moving jobs for Cowroast Marina. These were effectively free boating holidays: all we had to do was to get to the start point with some bedding and provisions, and then cruise the customer's boat to the marina. One boat, I remember, suddenly refused to respond to the Morse control: it was stuck in forward as Jan was steering into a lock which I was operating. I remember leaping onto the roof of the boat, lifting the decking, and somehow finding the relevant lever on the gearbox to stop the otherwise inevitable smashing into the top gates. On another boat, or it might have been the same one, we woke up after a rainy night to find a hatch over our bed had leaked. Waking up in a wet bed is never pleasant!


NB Willow by the stop planks at Dutton Stop Lock on the Trent and Mersey

Why am I recounting this? Well, in a few days' time I shall, once again, be doing a boat move for someone else. Last "summer" we had the use of NB Willow for two very wet weeks in which we explored much of the western end of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Now the boat's owner wants to move it from the River Weaver down to Willowtree Marina (appropriately) on the Paddington Branch in London to be nearer where he works. I'm to take it on what could be the final leg of this journey, starting at Braunston tomorrow week. I have a maximum of five days, so if I don't manage something like ten hours each day, including the first day, I won't get as far as Willowtree Marina.

I'm likely to be doing this single-handed, which means I'm unlikely to miss any fellow bloggers on the way (I missed Keith and Jo on our return along the Leicester Section recently: I was inside our boat and emerged to see the back end of Hadar disappearing in the distance).

Boating with a purpose: now that's even better than a circular route on holiday!