Just dropping in...

One of the spectacles at this year's IWA National Festival at Ratcliffe-on-Soar was the arrival of the Tigers, the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment's Parachute Display Team. They jumped out of their aeroplane 2000 feet above the festival site at about 1225 on the Monday (disappointing some who'd been expecting them at 1245, the time advertised in the programme).


the first two jump ...



... and here they come...



... the orange X on the ground marks the spot



daintily stepping over the cooling towers





all safely down



job done.

Highlights of the 2009 IWA National Festival (3)

One of the reasons we like going to the IWA National Festivals is because we meet up with other members of the Boaters' Christian Fellowship.

As well as helping out on the BCF stand we enjoy going to the two services held on the festival site on the Sunday. The first of these is a communion service at 0800 for boaters, campers and people working at the festival. This year's was held just outside the food court and was a peaceful and reflective time.


the 8.00 am communion service, with the appealing food of bread and wine (click on photo to see what I mean)

The second service, at 1030, is for the public too, and people from a local church usually come to help. This year there was a good crowd of musicians from nearby churches assisting the worship in the food court.

It was good to meet up again with David and Mary Litchfield: thank you for the meal on board Kew.

Top Thirty, 2009 week 37

Here is the UK Waterways Site Ranking as it stood at 0830 on Sunday 6th September 2009.

Headlines: Towpath Treks jumps straight in at number 12; there's a minor change in the top four (which until now has been the same for weeks), with JustCanals.com - Forums swapping places with Pennine Waterways.

1 Jim Shead's Waterways Information (=)

2 JustCanals.com - Forums (+1)

3 Pennine Waterways (-1)

4 Granny Buttons (=)

5 CanalPlanAC (=)

6 Canal Photos (+2)

7 UKCanals Network (-1)

8 NBNorthernPride (-1)

9 Retirement with No Problem (=)

10 Jannock Website (=)

11 Narrowboat Gypsy Rover (=)

12 Towpath Treks (-)

13 nb Epiphany (=)

14 Narrowboat Caxton (+1)

15 Waterway Routes (-1)

16 Boating Holidays in the UK and Europe (-4)

17 nb Lucky Duck (+1)

18 Warwickshire Fly Boat Company (-2)

19 Derwent6 (=)

20 Narrowboat Bones (-3)

21 nb Warrior (=)

22 UK Waterways Ranking Site (=)

23 nb Anonymous Two (=)

24 Water Explorer (-4)

25 Khayamanzi (+3)

26 Takey Tezey Tales (-)

27 Seyella's Journey (-2)

28 Herbie (-)

29 Google Earth Canal Maps (+1)

30 Lazy Days (-3)

The figures in parentheses denote the number of places moved since the previous chart; (-) denotes new entry or re-entry; (=) denotes no change.

Halfie is at number 39 out of 82 entries.

Responding to Granny Buttons's challenge

Andrew Denny yesterday posted a wonderful photograph he'd taken of the cooling towers of Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station. It was a grabbed shot through the rainy window of a bus taken with his mobile phone camera, and was a lesson to us all about photographing the light rather than the scene. You'll have to read him - and look at his pictures - to understand.

Andrew wondered how many people at the festival noticed the light or carried a camera. Well, I can't hope to get anywhere near his photographic skill, but I did take the above picture which possibly captures some of the drama of Andrew's photo.

Now I must own up. The picture is a still taken from my timelapse camera while filming the sequence I posted earlier (the camera was on a small tripod I'd perched on the roof of my car). So it's more by chance that it looks this way; and the camera produces quite contrasty images which helps!

The Harley Davidson in the foreground belongs to Dave and Carol who camped one night.


just after sunrise the next day, Monday 31st August 2009: you can see the timelapse camera on the roof of my car

Classic cars at the IWA National Festival

As threatened, and as you will have seen from photos in previous posts, we drove to this year's IWA National Festival in my 1969 Volvo Amazon (that's the blue car in the photos). Despite what it said in the programme there was no display of classic cars on the Saturday, but the organisers - Malcolm and Janet Fry - were very happy for me to join the slightly more expensive-looking cars in the line-ups on Sunday and Monday. I got up at 0615 on Saturday to polish the car ready to impress the admiring public, and drove to the main entrance at 0915. The blue-shirted IWA volunteers didn't know what to do with me. I was sent to park in the exhibitors' car park, from where I walked back to the site entrance and spotted a gazebo for exhibitors to report to. I reported myself there, and was told to get my car out of the exhibitors' car park. I waited for a while, and began to regret not having made a flask of coffee. Eventually Malcolm came and apologised for there being no classic car display that day, but he walked with me to where I should drive the next day. Then I drove back to the campsite and made myself that coffee.


The photo at the top of this post is from Sunday, when most of the cars were from the local Daimler and Lanchester club; the bottom one is from Monday, with cars from the local Jaguar club. As I was at the end on Monday, I led the procession into the arena. One of the car owners gave a commentary on each car as it drove round the arena (I'd supplied a few nuggets to help him talk knowledgeably about mine). On the Monday we'd packed up so everything was in the car: as we left the arena we drove straight out of the exit and straight home. A good quick getaway, and no traffic!

Highlights of the 2009 IWA National Festival (2)

bluetop Kew with the Mikron Theatre Company's narrowboat tied alongside

I've already talked about the Mikron Theatre Company being one of the highlights of the IWA Festival. Another one was Tony Brooks's mini-maintenance courses, which were free this year. I've borrowed a picture from your website, Tony: I hope you don't mind.


In conjunction with RCR - River Canal Rescue Ltd. - Tony gave three hour-long tutorials on each of the three days: The Diesel System; Battery and Charge testing; and Stern Glands. Over the course (sorry) of the long weekend I managed to get to each of these courses, though some were in bits when I had to be elsewhere. Does that make sense? Stupidly I failed to take a photo, hence the "borrowed" one above. We were all given a booklet of course notes: these will be very useful for refreshing my memory. I found the explanation of the fuel system very good. Tony talked about diesel bug and water, and how to deal with them. We were shown the insides of a sedimentor and an agglomerator. At last I know what a lift pump is. (Everybody talks about them but I've previously hidden my ignorance.) We got hands-on too: bleeding the fuel system; and bypassing a failed starter solenoid on the electrics course.

There's nothing like seeing a real stern gland, for example, to remove some of the scariness of attempting one's own maintenance or repairs. I now know what repacking a stern gland involves, and will know what I'm doing if I needed to adjust one. At least, I think I will. I'd have a go, anyway.

The festival was worth the £25 each three-day entrance fee (including evening entertainment) and the £36 camping fee just for this - and there was so much more!

There's an in-joke hidden in this post: if you've been on one of Tony Brooks's courses you'll spot it!

Camping at the IWA National Festival

This year, for the first time, we brought our tent and camped for the IWA festival. We arrived at the site on Friday evening after a long, tedious journey from Norfolk with lots of traffic and frequent heavy showers of rain. She-who-must-be-obeyed (the voice of my satnav) took us through the middle of Grantham during the afternoon rush hour. This was a mistake. I should have remembered the last time I came this way, when I'd consulted a map, and found the way round the town via the A1. (Interestingly, on the way back, the satnav took me on this better route.) It's just so tempting - once you've discovered that, yes, the satnav really can get you from A to B - to trust the machine blindly (so to speak). After skirting Nottingham we were soon passing the huge pile of coal outside Ratcliffe Power Station, and, no, I didn't obey the satnav and turn into the entrance (the postcode given for the festival site was that of the power station). Just after this point we picked up the temporary signs for the festival, and were clearly directed onto the campsite.

Signing in was straightforward, despite not having pre-booked (we had been told there was plenty of space), and we were shown to our pitch. Conveniently close to the showers and loos, but not so close that we could hear the diesel generator nor smell anything nasty. And what a pitch! What a location! Just behind us was the river, with boats moored both sides; and in front ... What could be more dramatic than the vista of eight cooling towers and a tall chimney? It could have been an art installation. There was no smell, no noise. The wind blew it all - was there any anyway? - away from us. (Above is a short timelapse film of the scene. It has somehow got corrupted in the process of uploading, I don't know why. I tried again with similar results.) The main festival site was similarly blessed.


our tent is in the foreground on the right

We quickly got the tent up, thanks to the owners of NB Felonious Mongoose - the review of which we read in Canal Boat magazine - who helped stop the fly sheet blow away while we pegged it out. The wind was a bit of a feature over the long weekend!

Once the tent was up we inflated the airbeds and made up the beds. Then it was most definitely food time, so we went into the festival site via the boaters'/campers' entrance and had fish and chips from one of the many mobile caterers (actually only two or three open in the evenings). Excellent chips! After sampling some of the entertainment in the theatre tent, about which more later; and some ale (J. W. Lees, for old times' sake) we returned to our tent and piled all our clothes on top of our sleeping bags in an attempt to keep warm overnight.

Highlights of the 2009 IWA National Festival (1)

We had a thoroughly good time at this year's IWA National Festival at Ratcliffe-on-Soar. A highlight for me was the Mikron Theatre Company who put on two shows: Fair Trade and Tales of the Thames. Fair Trade was a dramatic history of the Co-operative movement, from its beginnings in a shop in Toad Lane, Rochdale, through the formation of the CWS, to the present day and Suma.


I saw only the first half of Tales of the Thames as I wanted to catch one of Tony Brooks's maintenance courses (another highlight: more to come on this later). Tales of the Thames interwove a love story with a history of the River Thames, from estuary to source, using "river magic" to transport the action into the past.


Both productions combined excellent acting with well performed musical numbers, humour, and an awareness of the audience. The four actors achieved some amazingly quick costume changes. I was sorry to miss the second half of Tales of the Thames as there were a few loose ends I wanted resolving. If you haven't seen any of Mikron's work do go if you can (if you have already seen them, you'll know how good they are). I will now seek out Mikron's performances either as they travel the waterways by narrowboat or as they tour by van.

I forgot to add: And once you'd paid to get into the festival all the theatre performances were free, which ensured full houses.