I have just discovered [2018] that search engines sometimes access these obsolete pages written in .php format. I'm trying to keep these up to date too but will have missed lots.
Cribbit
cribBlog 2018 volume
cribBlog 2017 volume
cribBlog 2016 volume
cribBlog 2015 volume
cribBlog 2016
cribBlog 2015
cribBlog 2014
cribBlog 2013
cribBlog 2012
cribBlog 2011
Greenford
cribBlog 2009
Cribbit's first log book
Wolf
Wolf 2016
Wolf 2014
Wolf 2013
Wolf 2012
Boat Notes
Sj visits
Account of 2017
Account of 2012
Account of 2011
Account of 2010
Account of 2009
Account of 2008
Account of 2007
cribBlog is meant to complement the handwritten account of Cribbit's travels which we keep on board and rather euphemistically call 'the ship's log'. This will have a briefer narrative but will include more photographs than make their way into the paper log.
Terry joined me at Willowtree and we moved down to Limehouse where Jim joined us. The return journey took us along
the Limehouse cut to Bow, the Lea Navigation to Ford's Lock and then Duckett's cut back to the mainline, past the
Olympic park.
Dropped Terry at King's Cross Station, with Jim staying for a further night before abandoning ship at Perivale.
Early to Willowtree to move the boat off her mooring, through the bridge, to the bistro moorings. This was to give us sufficient time to move down to Greenford in daylight after lunch.
Margaret and Terry were joining me for lunch so set to, to get that ready.
I had already decided that we should have a 'proper' lunch for which a suitable pheasant had been bought from
Clay's of Thame.
Pot roasted the pheasant using Mackeson instead of red wine but otherwise following my
Cooking on Cribbit
pheasant recipe.
Then off for our first night by the Black Horse at Greenford.
Next day we head East, crossing the North Circular Road.
Met up with Zoe, Peter, Oscar and Eve on the towpath by the zoo and moored for the night by the Constitution pub, above St Pancras Cruising Club. This is practically on Camden High Street but turned out to be a quiet mooring until the early morning commuters rattled their bikes over the wobbly and noisy concrete covers to the towpath fibre optics ducts.
The plan for the next day was to meet up with Jim at Limehouse Basin, but first.....
Sj is a big 'puzzle event' fan and has recently taken part in The World Henchmen Organization game in Seattle, aka 'The Game'. The competition involves driving all around Seattle finding clues and solving [difficult] puzzles [with style and panache]. Her team had a small bus and their team logo was affixed to its door.
Not far past Zoe's flat is a wall covered with graffiti. Look the World Henchmen Organisation has been here too.
Met Jim just as it was getting dark and soon put him to work lighting the fire.
The evening spent in the
Prospect of Whitby
and the
Captain Kidd.
Both Terry and Jim being habituees of the Prospect in the late 50s and early 60s,
Terry going there on Sundays with Margaret and Jim whenever he could after his ship had been berthed in London
Dock just behind it. The Captain Kidd being the goal for one of my short long walks.
An early start the next day to enable us to visit the Olympic site via the Limehouse Cut, returning to Victoria
Park and the Grand Union Main line via Duckett's cut.
Soon we are back on the main line heading north but still with hazards to negotiate. This filming crew had just picked up the girl in black, sitting in the bow, who appeared to be wearing spray on leather trousers. Crew probably justifyably distracted.
Jim and I managed to get a mooring on the Camden visitor moorings which was very unusual as they are nearly always
full.
An advantage is that the towpath gate is locked at night so you must remember your key. We had a beer in the Lock Tavern before going for a
Caribbean meal at Cotton's in Camden. And very good it was too.
Next day we took a little detour at Paddington Basin to see the
classroom barge
that Jim built.
This time I got a photo of it.
We carried on to Denham Deep Lock where we stocked up on gas and diesel before moving up the lock for the night. In the morning we winded and headed back down the cut.
Now this might seem a strange length of canal for an e-eulogy but it so happens that I travel it regularly from my home moorings at Willowtree Marina to the Black Horse pub at Greenford. The reason for this is that I meet up with friends at a 'mutually inconvenient' location, The Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street which is just about a 45 minute rattle along the Central Line from Greenford Station.
My plan is to try and take a few photographs each time I do the trip and will put them up here. I have also started what I am rather grandly calling Wildlife 2010 which is really a collection of photographs of coots nests. So far it has one other, rather spectacular entry, the BIG CAT! which just goes to show what you can do with a bit of imagination and a blurry photograph.
I'm also intending to include some bits of the land journey from the Black Horse to The Cheshire Cheese . Both canal and rail follow or cross the A40 which was my regular route into London when I was working, so there are several landmarks which were familiar from my journey to work, which now seen from the other side so to speak.
There are lots of links to the Paddington arm, most concentrate on its 'more interesting reaches', further to the East. This one describes walking its full 12.5 mile length.
I will try and keep the sequence of pics geographically correct though they may be taken on the outward or inward passage which I hope won't be too confusing.
She is moored in the 'inner basin' which means that the first operation is to raise the bascule bridge move through it and then close it again afterwards.
The Southall gasometer is one of my landmarks which I like to use it to orientate myself.
The cut is particularly messy at the moment with a winterful of miscellaneous rubbish. Had to stop at almost exactly this same spot on the way back as the prop was well fouled with plastic bags. Remains of black, white, blue, orange, as well as printed ones, almost a full set.
Tried to get the Oxford Tube in as well but they are gone in a flash. The Oxford Tube, or more likely the X90 were my regular conveyances in my days as a 'dashing commuter' to London from Oxford but that I only did it for the weekends.
NB Balzac is the last boat and his bust graces the towpath, he is also my sign to speed up again at last.
That is the journey to Geenford and my intention is to make up a similar set of photos each time I do it. I'm missing several this time as the memory card slipped in the camera.
I'm also going to do a similar one of wildlife. I have pics of 4 coot's nests which I will hope to follow as the spring develops AND for once only I suspect, I have one blurry pic of a BIG CAT!
Headed for London as the weather forcast for home was dire but slightly better there. I was expecting a big change since my last trip but was somewhat disappointed. It was a lot warmer operating the boat though and I returned from Greenford wearing just a tee shirt.
A quick trip down this time, mostly to have a beer at the Cheese on wednesday as usual, as heading up to Sheffield for baby sitting duties on thursday.
Probably I'll still keep trying, at least until I get one where you can see a little commuter's face pressed against the glass gazing longingly at the cut like I used to do.
This week we are taking the camera into London with us, a different perspective.
Now I always have a problem with the name of this road, and the next one, Ockham Drive. Just where do these two names come from? They don't actually mean anything, and this might be the point, but they ALMOST do. Each time I see them they occupy a few minutes of my tiny mind exploring where they might take me.
Auriol Drive: Is it that my hearing isn't very good perhaps? Or is this, 'not a 'very good areal for aeriels' as Ann was once told in Bristol when her TV didn't work. {Bristol was originally called Bristow, but its inhabitants even then, put 'ls' on the end of words and so it became Bristol.
Perhaps they mean that they keep herds of extinct cattle, or paint their likeness on the sides of their buildings. [aurochs].
Or is there a great fake biscuit factory there making counterfeit Orio cookies? To those of you who don't know, Oreo cookies are round biscuits made by mixing chocolate floor sweepings with sawdust and then drilling a hole in one of them before sticking them together with a mixture of cement and sugar.
And then there is always the Baltimore Orioles but that baseball isn't very popular in the UK.
Of course it could be the other sort of Baltimore Oriole but they are not a common bird on the cut.
Just what they have against seriffed fonts I don't know but that sign looks like it might be in Arial font.
Perhaps an aerial view of the site would be more enlightening than the canalside view?
At one time, I used to hanker after an Ariel motor bike.
Ha! You thought I had forgotten about Ockham! Not so! I think that Occam holds the solution to all my musings, though the spelling is a little variable. Occam's Razor was first posited by Occam and states that the simplest solution is usually the correct one. This is a much used principle in physics and makes me think I am just trying too hard and it could be that those names were devised especially so that they didn't mean anything.
The Central line and the A40 follow much the same route up to Marble Arch, so familiar sights from the bus on the A40 are seen 'from the other side' from the tube.
Some Autumnal pics
They are making progress knocking down the factory. For a short while, the new flats will have a glimpse of the canal. So much for the marketing hype!
Look back to the pics from last year for comparison.
I've seen him so much, we are becoming old friends.
The Black Horse has quite a few photographs on its walls of scenes around old Greenford, including this one of a bridge across the canal. Now I am pretty certain that this where the Central Line crosses the canal, about 1km west of the Black Horse and at the end of the Highline Yatching moorings and NB Balzac. In those days, it was one track working, and when you go under the bridge you can see that one section of it is older than the other, though both have the modern superstructure. So, what do you think?
Now I am rather pleased to be able to report that I have had an e-mail about the railway bridges. This is much more complete than my usual rantings so I have pasted it in full below.
Hi,
Just enjoyed your pages along the canal at Greenford. Happy memories of the smell of coffee from Lyons everytime it rained. The picture of the bridge in 1920 of the old GWR line, just a comment. The 2nd bridge was built just before WW2 as part of the extension of the Central Line from Acton to Denham. The 1920's picture bridge was built about 1902 as part of the Great Western Railway and Great Central Railway Joint project. From the GWR's point, the line was to provide a shorter route to the Midlands and beyond than their existing route through Oxford. The line was, until the 1990's always double track and could take Kings & Castles, and in later years the Blue Pullman services.
Best Regards
Chris Smith
Below is a pic of the bridge taken from the other side. They have been re-painting the bridge all year so this is the first chance I have had to get a photo of it without the scaffolding and covers.
In doing the job, they left a lot of rubble in the cut, on the tow path side. This is a bit of a hazard to navigation, especially in the dark as I have found out,the hard way.
I'm collecting together some wildlife pics in the hope that we can see them develop along with the spring
There are also some blurry pics of a BIG CAT!
The male had just proudly brought the piece of soggy polythene bag that the female is busy incorporating into the nest.
I normally do the coot nest pics on my way back to Willowtree, they are all on the off [non towpath] side of the canal so the keep right rule makes the boat closer to them on the return journey. The danger of this is that the camera battery might not be fully charged, flat even. Thats why we only have one pic of nests this trip. Not quite sure what is going on with the nests though, nest 3 had 5 nice yellow fluffy coot chicks in it, but no sign in any of the others. Nest 2, by Balzac appears to have been completely destroyed
Of course watching the coot nests is a very Swallows and Amazon, Arthur Ransome sort of thing to do. By looking at these pics you are enrolled as an honourary member of the Coot Club. I got to know coots quite well when I lived at Poplar Dock and they had the admiration of all, as they were the only birds which were able to breed there. One pair made their nest in the stern fender tyres on cribbit one year, but I stopped their antics the next year with some plywood as it meant I couldn't take cribbs out for the duration, which was long. That pair, laid an egg on the stern deck as a peace offering. I think they are a bit random.
Poplar Dock was difficult for them because the water is so deep and because there is a shortage of nest building materials. The Poplar coots were marvels of the DIY world, constructing their nests out of McDonald's cartons, kevlar tape, insulation sheets, plastic bags, in fact anything that they could find. All day, the male used to bring bits of detritus to his mate, she scorned some and incorporated other bits.
One thing you do notice about them when you live at their level is how loud and penetrating their calls are. Especially at 0530 on a sunday morning. That's when they get called the 'bloody coots!'
They also have lovely furry feet, they are veritable hobbits, and to be treasured all the more because of it.
Yet another example of my expert punting, almost as random as the coots, still we did get to see the nest up close.
When we are down at Brentford, we often see the ring-necked parakeets that have taken over the eyot there. Now I am seeing them around Willowtree and this one investigating a hole in an oak tree near Greenford.
I'm still not sure what this is, at first I though it was a fox, London foxes are very dark, almost black, there was a dead one floating in the cut near to where I moored and I was able to get a good look at its colouring. It is an adaptation to city life I believe.
Then I decided that it was too big to be a fox and when I saw its tail this was confirmation enough so I decided that it was a dog though it didn't move like a one.
I walked this length at night once before and noticed the smell...definately CAT. Anyway, see what you think. I have informed the British Big Cats Society .
By the time I got the camera out it had moved so it was difficult to distinguish and then it moved along at about the same pace as the boat so I never got closer to it. I did get one glimpse of its head which appeared to be squarish.
I decided to spend my second night moored near to where I saw the cat. No sign of anything similar, though I did find two fox holes.
As the weather was good, people were out walking with their divers dogs, none a facsimile of what I saw although a black greyhound did look similar but with longer legs.
No nor can I!
I'm beginning to have a little sympathy for people who get fuzzy pictures, that could show anything, of the aliens they claim have abducted them.
All the more so as we seem to be accumulating a mighty collection of fuzzy duck photographs, although it is fairly obvious that they are of ducks and not anal probe wielding aliens. When it comes to the BIG CAT though fuzziness can't be tolerated so I broke down and bought a new long focal length camera in its honour and in the interests of picture clarity.
On my next trip down to London for boat maintenance and Cheshire Cheesing, I arrived armed with my new camera resolved to try to get my head round its rampant features.
In the evening of 24 June, after a busy day on boat electrics, I decided to head back towards Willowtree and I had the camera ready but did not expect to use it. Just before the A40 bridge I saw this small domestic cat on the tow path and decided that it would make a good comparison shot to the one I had of the BIG CAT before. Switched on the camera and when I judged it to be at about the same range as the previous shot took a pic at high zoom. As I got nearer to it, it got bigger and bigger and I'm beginning to think that this is rather large for a domestic cat, with a very square head. By the time I had decided that it was unusual it had its head in the bushes and the moment for another photograph was gone!
There was a bloke riding a bike on the towpath and as it passed the cat it spluttered in a most un-domestic way and shot off deep into the bushes.
I gauge that its back was just about level with the hub of his front wheel. Just past the footbridge on the other side of the A40, I did see a domestic black cat and it was minute compared with this one with a triangular head, quite different.
Well I have passed its haunts many times but no more sightings though we did see this one when Sj was with us in June!
Narrow boat 'Tiger Princess' passed us at the bottom of the Hanwell flight and later we saw them moored up at Bull's Bridge Tesco.
When the princess saw tw and I looking at the tiger, she called out 'oi tiymed hym moiself' which tw not being deaf and from Birmingham worked out easily, it took a little longer for the penny to drop with his father.