Tuesday 5th August 2024 Bath to Bristol

It all started with a slab of toffee, my tale for today.  At the family holiday house by the sea,  children are encouraged to look for toffee coloured stones because in the night the toffee fairy turns them into toffee! R was delighted to find some half price,  short dated,  slabs of toffee (how toffee,  with its high sugar content can go off is beyond me. And does anyone have it in the house long enough!) to help the fairy out.  However,  when we got back to the boat and I looked at the receipt I realised we’d been charged the full amount for the toffee.  It was a good excuse for me to go back into the city yesterday morning and peruse a few shops without a hovering presence wondering how long this shopping malarkey would go on!

Walking back,  along the riverside,  enjoying the beautiful sunny day,  I was slightly surprised to see two, fairly old men, swimming in the river. What I had missed was the fact that they had just jumped off the bridge into the water to get an adrenaline rush,  in addition to the alcohol they had already consumed! Their mate,  who happened to be walking along the towpath, was trying to coax them out of the water.  Unable to swim himself and aware of the fact that one of the men in the river couldn’t swim either,  he jumped into a moored boat and threw two life rings into the water.  Infact, the man who could swim, G,  was able to pull the non swimmer to the edge of the boat. Being a fairly big man,  it was no easy task hauling him back onto the boat and more than once he sank under water and nearly slipped away altogether as his energy had flagged and he was slow to respond.  Fortunately, there was another boat close by with a ladder on the back of its stern and somehow, the drowning man found the energy to climb up it with plenty of help from G in the water. Once the guy was safely ashore,  I then looked for G and realised he was swimming after the life rings that were going downstream.  He went beyond the bridge and from the towpath I and another lady tried to encourage him to get out, but he kept saying he was a strong swimmer and there was nothing to worry about.  The other lady was trying to get hold of the emergency services.  Meanwhile, the mate on dry land came running towards me,  hopped over a railing and got onto a small jetty, from where he coaxed G back to the side.  G had managed to pick up the two life saving rings,  so they helped to support him,  but he was in no fit state to swim against the current.  I heaved a sigh of relief when he eventually hauled himself to safety.  He still had to scale the railing and once he was abreast of me,  he thanked me for my concern,  in a very gentlemanly fashion.  I was just so relieved neither man drowned and that,  as it was a relatively warm day,  they shouldn’t get hypothermia,  which is apparently what happened the last time they jumped in!

Wednesday night was an experience.  We were returning to Bath,  having had the solar panels fitted to the roof and with me trying my hardest to understand ampage and wattage and charging times etc. Seems like electricity is a big mathematical equation to me.  All I ask is for the fridge to work through the night and day so there’s enough ice for my G&T! Spence at the Boatyard was super helpful,  even if I nodded more than understood what he was trying to explain to me.  We returned along the Cut and went down the Bradford on Avon lock, looking for a mooring spot.  Mooring near to a boater we had engaged with last week,  we took him up on his offer of watching a film with him and some other boaters on an outside large tv screen he had rigged to the side of his boat.  It was an uncut version of Quadrophenia, made more poignant by all the scenes of riots, based upon the Brighton riots of the early 1970’s. To then read of the current Southport riots and subsequent unrest that now seems to be all over the UK, the film had a too realistic edge to it. I sat next to a rather intimidating looking giant of a man,  covered in tattoos from head to foot, who had worked for a decade in New York as a tattoo artist,  and has returned to the UK to care for his ageing parents.  He was a really gentle and engaging man and brought sharply into focus my preconceived ideas of the outward appearance of somebody compared to their inner heart.

A couple of restful days in Bath, seeing family and friends,  and exploring the city,  although far too many tourists for my liking. I need to come back out of the holiday season! Then yesterday the big push on to Bristol,  where we now are,  ready to explore the city from the central mooring of Bristol floating dockyard. We almost didn’t make it.  On Saturday we spoke to a canal official who told us two of the lock gates were impossible to move with just two people and the likelihood of us not getting through was a high probability.  One lock had taken a boater two hours to operate.  Knowing the average time from Bath to Bristol by boat is 7hrs, I recalculated our timings and said to R we should leave by 8am to build in plenty of slack. As I looked out of the window at 0730 a narrowboat,  with a solo young man was just turning around in our direction. Immediately I jumped into action and went outside to ask if he was going to Bristol. It was like our guardian angel had sent him,  although later in the day he said the same of us.  It was a mutual support group! Being alot younger he gave us the added energy that was needed and we even met other boats (which was a miracle because they were few and far between) at the difficult locks,  meaning we had plenty of manpower with the heavy gates.  One such boat I recognised as a (stag?) group who had passed our boat on Friday evening as we were tucked up for the night between the pounds of Bath locks. They were going to Bristol through the night,  fortified by a few beers. Very intrepid, or foolish, depending on your point of view. They had all survived and were just the help we needed,  as they retraced their steps homeward after a full on weekend!

Amazingly, we arrived by 1415hrs and were welcomed ashore by our lovely boater friends who are continuous cruisers and Waterways Chaplains.  They had come from Sharpness with a pilot on the Severn and we have had one evening of overlap before they head off to Bath. We first met them in the Midlands three years ago and it is so exciting when you find yourselves in the same place at the same.  time on the Cut years later.  With over 2000 miles of navigable waterways,  it is not a given! They gave us supper,  which after 7hours of standing at the tiller, was very welcome and we put the world to rights over a nicely chilled rosè!

As an aside,  the journey was beautiful with the riverside verdant with colour and wildlife.  I saw two kingfishers,  their flash of blue twinkling briefly in amongst the branches and more than one heron. They were different sizes so I know it wasn’t the same one following our path!