If you know B-Rod, you know that he sometimes (possibly? đ¤ˇđ˝ââď¸) unintentionally latches onto words that arenât necessarily commonly used in our everyday life. Cattywampus is one that came out of his mouth regularly on our third narrowboat adventure. It is a word that two Brit brothers in another narrow boat thought was hilarious (they said the British equivalent would be âskew wiffâ). It is a word that perfectly describes the moment while driving a narrow boat when youâre doing good, youâre doing good, then suddenly (or as suddenly as things happen in a boat that moves at a max speed of 6.5km/hr) youâre completely out of control and the boat is going ALL of the ways except the way you want it to go. And it is a word that seems to sum up and embody our third adventure on the UK canals.
Thatâs not to say that we didnât have a great time and still love life on the boat and on the canals. But, things definitely did not run as smoothly, and there were a few more issues along the way and on this trip that made things a bit different than our last couple of times.
Our boat this time around was named Caitlin and thatâs where our catywampus began. Our first experience narrow boating was for a week on a boat named Lucy. We LOVED her! Last year, we were on Mable for two weeks. We LOVED her even more! This year, we were on Caitlin for a couple weeks and the best we can describe her as is (small âfâ) fine.
Besides a major issue that Caitlin had (which Iâll get to) was rectified fairly quickly, she had a lot of minor things that, though they didnât really interfere with her functionality, were somewhat annoying. She did what she needed to do, and our opinion of her probably would have been higher if we didnât have Lucy and Mable to compare her to. Though we didnât call her cattywampus, we did often refer to her as a b*$%# (same, same đ)
Cattywampus could also be used to describe the route we ended up taking. We decided, for this trip, we wanted to take on the Four Counties Ring. However, due to B-Rodâs schedule, once again we couldnât book our boat until last minute which meant we only had two options for boats/pick up points. We decided to stay with the same company we had rented from in the past which meant we would have to first travel down another canal to even get to the ring. But, the company advertised this route as being doable on their website, so it seemed to be game on.
We also had a crew of three for about 2/3 of our time with our friend J-Rodg joining us for pick up. Maybe naively we thought some extra hands might help us complete (what we realize now) was an overly ambitious task.
We very quickly discovered that in order to do this route, there had to be little to no room for errors. Our first two days, however, involved mostly errors and mishaps, which means, after a mere two days, our dreams of completing this ring were officially cattywampus and we needed to pivot. (we ended up doing the Shropshire Union Canal (which, fun fact, is said to be one of the most haunted canals in Britain) and a very very small portion of the Birmingham Canal after going through most of the Llangollen)
Overall, on an already extra slow mode of transportation, it appeared our lesson was that we needed to sssslllloooowwww down even more and were basically forced to at numerous turns including . . .
- Rolling up to be 11th in line for our very first lock and would take us two hours to get through.
- Having smoke coming from the engine on day 2. The two pilots noticed the unusual sound immediately before the smoke even started! We pulled over to figure out âwhat the heck?!â Turns out an alternator belt broke (electrical discharge situation), threw off the water pump belt (we had no idea this had happened) which caused the engine to get hot and melted a pipe which burst (no I do not know what ANY of that means, but that was the explanation I was given đ). It was actually steam, not smoke from an electrical fire coming from the engine, and we had a whole âadventureâ in contacting the company, moving the boat to a spot where they could get to us and then waiting around for a few hours for the guys to look at it and then get parts
- Rolling up to another line of boats that had been unable to move (both ways) overnight due to a tree randomly falling on the roof of one as it passed by. We were actually the lucky ones in this case as we showed up around the same time as the Canal and River Trust, and only had to wait a couple hours for things to clear up.
- a few VERY windy days where cruising wasnât always fun and pulling the boat into moor became an absolute struggle (we felt better when we learned even the âprosâ were struggling with this)
- Ending up in the middle of a kayak race which caused us to moor several times and not really knowing when we could get going again (and also unintentionally ending up with Caitlin in some of the finish line photos)
- rolling up to a staircase lock on a day without volunteers and having a case were a few too many âbossesâ were scratching their heads of the proper way to do things, not always agreeing and not always coming up with the most efficient solutions.
- an abundance of horse flies on several days which didnât slow us down, but were annoying as hell! đ
Even my phone began acting cattywampus the day we picked up the boat. It now (and throughout the trip) makes a hilarious crackling sound every time I go to use the camera and mostly takes pictures that look like this . . .
Yet, despite the pile up of issues this time around, we do still really love narrow boating and marvel at the uniqueness, ingenuity and history of it. We also had many highlights including . . . .
- One of the first boats we passed by had fellow Canadians travelling with their British friends. The Canucks had brought numerous small flags and handed one to us after we got to chatting (we wished we would have thought of bringing one with us!) It hung proudly on Caitlin for the trip sparking many conversations, some cheers, occasional apologies, and generally provided an important distinction at this particular time.
- Some magical sections on a canal we hadnât been on before
- Deciding the Wolverhampton Locks (a flight of 21) would be our mid-way and turn around point simply so we could go up them one day and down them again the next.
- Remembering, on our journey back to return Caitlin, being told by numerous people over the past years about the Montgomery canal (often called the âMontyâ) which requires you to book lock passage ahead of time, only allows a certain amount of boats in at a time and is in the process of being restored. Celebrating that we actually had a window of time to do this!
- Having numerous chats with fellow boaters, volunteer lock operators and with someone who may have my dream job (the lock keeper at the entrance of the Monty canal who spends all day operating locks while his puppy happily bounds around nearby)
- Being surrounded by nature always. I could watch the baby ducks and moorhens that we passed by all day! We also had herons that flew in front of us and a cormorant that spent a good chuck of time fishing along side us which felt extra special
- Simply slowing down and enjoying all that we were surrounded by
It wasnât the smoothest canal trip weâve done, the weather wasnât always great, we constantly cursed the black flies, and we often wished we were in Mabel. But despite things feeling cattywampus a good portion of the time, we are still HUGE fans of these canals, these boats and experiencing this pace of life. I wonder which one of the canals weâll tackle next!
Back to Land
After spending the majority of time on a boat, we wanted to explore a spot on land before heading back home. We didnât have to return Caitlin back until the afternoon, so we first walked over to Chirk castle using some public foot paths through amazing huge Oaks.
After dropping off Caitlin, we headed to the city of Chester to stay for a few days. I donât really remember how I decided on this particular destination, as I had never really heard of Chester before. Possibly it was simply because it is also on the canal system, I had read that it was a cool place to wander and I filed it in the back of my mind. Whatever the reason, it IS a cool city!
Chester has the most complete surviving roman walls with many of the medieval towers also in tact. The only thing I had on my must do list was to walk the complete 2 mile circuit of these wall and wander around the historic centre. For me, it was one of those places where history can be seen and felt EVERYWHERE. And thatâs basically all we did . . . . wander, feel the history, and go wherever we were drawn.
At one point while walking along the wall, we looked down to see a pub that looked interesting, so we stopped in for a pint and dinner. The Albion Inn with its wartime theme, intimate atmosphere and the most friendly people, ended up being one of our memorable experiences in the city.
Thank you Chester and thank you UK! I know weâll see you again sometime soon! đŹđ§â¤ď¸