Have you ever begun your day pretty much on auto-pilot - just going about your stuff with everything seeming to work pretty much as usual on its own, leaving your mind to wander elsewhere? Then you notice how clumsy you are; how you're not doing things properly. You're getting flustered, cross, annoyed with yourself, yes, but more annoyed with others. That's how today began for me, pootering along the Stainforth and Keadby, and the New Junction canals in the flat fatlands of South Yorkshire.
Maybe it's because my mind began to drift off morbidly, dwelling on the transience of life, especially my own. Or maybe it was because of the buffoon who moored his, or her, boat to the bollards set up for those working the Bramwith swing bridge - that is, in this instance, me. But I think it was something else. I think it was coming into close working contact with those not of the cut. For that I blame the swing and lift bridges that abound in this part of the world.
Because the buffoon forced me to moor a little further from the bridge, thus delaying my return to open it for the waiting traffic, with its tut-tutting drivers, I ran back, apologising to the blank faces behind their steering wheels. No smiles here; no good mornings; no cheery waves. Then, as I came up to each subsequent bridge I was concerned about the hold up I might cause as I stopped the boat, tied up, ran to the bridge, lowered barriers, swung it or lifted it, ran back to the boat, untied it and motored through the bridge hole, stopped, tied it up, ran back, swung or lowered it, opened the barriers and let the traffic through.
I was handling Stealaway badly, not compensating for a gusty crosswind on the wide cut, coming into moor too fast, chucking her full astern in a stupidly vain attempt to stop. But it was not until the fourth bridge that I realised what was happening when, having been forced to pull up after going through the bridge hole out of sight behind an overhanging willow, I ran back to see a suit had got out of his Vectra and was standing pointing to his watch.
Well, that was it. Sod 'em all. Having opened the bridge for them again, I ambled back to the boat, cut the engine, gave myself a bit of a talking to and cooked a bloody good breakfast of eggs, bacon, tomatoes, toast, marmalade, juice and coffee. But I still don't like swing bridges, which is tough considering the amount that face me on my climb over the Pennines. And it was a shame considering how well the last week had gone.
In the last seven days I'd travelled on the oldest canal in England, the Fossdyke, cut by the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago, and the country's most recent canal, the New Junction, opened less than a century ago between the South Yorks and the Aire and Calder navigations. And between them I'd run the ebb on the tidal Trent to within nine miles of its outfall into the Humber estuary.
My German friend Regina joined me in Nottingham for the weekend and we motored down the Trent and Fossdyke to Lincoln where the magnificence of the cathedral, perched high on a rocky island amid the fecund drained alluvial plains surrounding it, stood out like a medieval vision in the bronze of the evening sun as we neared the city.
Later, doing the tourist bit around the seat of the ancient bishopric, I tried to explain to this delightful daughter of Catholic Bavaria how we have two sets of episcopacies, those of the C of Es and those of the RCs, and how the English reformation was essentially political rather than religious. But I felt I was becoming too preachy and put a sock in it so we could enjoy the fantastic structure of the cathedral with one of the finest, most intricate early Gothic west fronts in Europe.
Regina took the train from Lincoln back to London and her research into deafness - what? - while I took Stealaway back to the Trent lock at Torksey. I had been apprehensive about travelling on tidal waters but one of the splendid and hugely helpful band of lock keepers on the river had told me the trip to Torksey 'would be a pussycat of a run'. And so it was, but that didn't stop me from buying a chart from the keeper at the massive Cromwell lock, head of the tideway, and sticking slavishly to the marked channels.
But it was now time for big boys' stuff. The Torksey lockkeeper advised a 10am start to catch the last four hours of the ebb that day (the Trent floods for around three and half hours and ebbs for the rest of the 12 hours between high tides) so I would reach the Keadby lock just as the tide began to flood. On the dot I set off, reaching Gainsborough, with its frontage of empty decaying wharehouses, one of which - a listed building coincidently - had caught fire a couple of days earlier, closing the navigation for 36 hours, in good time.
Indeed, I was ahead of schedule so throttled back a bit, which was probably a mistake. Lock keepers act as a kind of river traffic control and I'd called Keadby when I set off. The keeper told me to report my position as I passed the M180 bridge about two miles from him. When I did, he told me the flood had already started and within minutes I started to feel it. From a cruise on the ebb making about 7mph, I had to really gun the engine to make about 2mph.
Eventually I laboured under the Keadby combined rail and road bridge, passed a couple of rather large coasters unloading gravel, and searched through my binoculars for the lock opening. I knew where it should be but there was no sign of it. Then suddenly I glimpsed the familiar black and white of a British Waterways sign that had been hidden by another coaster. Pulling back on the throttle I slipped under its bows and into the open maw of the lock. Never have I been more happy to enter a lock and punched the air as the doors closed behind me. The keeper smiled forgivingly.
Afterwards, being back on the still waters of a canal was a breeze and I motored on to the hospitable village of Thorne, in the middle of the levels around the Isle of Axholme, drained in the early seventeenth century by Cornelius Vermuyden on the command of James I who felt he like a little more land for hunting around his lodge at nearby Hatfield Chase. So pleasant was the mooring at Thorne that I took a day off dozing in the sun of what must have been the hottest of the year so far.
Now the rich plains are behind me, I begin the climb over the central spine of England on the Leeds and Liverpool canal. I had thought to visit friends in Sheffield but alas they are away or too busy watching the snooker, which is understandable. So eschewing the 50-lock round trip, I've bought myself some time which may be put to good use on the other side of the country. But that as they say is another adventure to come.
