The willow tree
overhanging the water at one end of our current mooring makes it very difficult
for passing boaters to navigate. The
foliage hangs down so far that they cannot see where they are going as they
pass the tree.
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This is what the steerer
sees heading past Cropredy wharf
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An upside to this has been
that boats tend to go very slowly past us.
Even so, we have been hit several times by boats who don’t want to give
way or slow down. It’s a bit sad really
but the three people who have hit us didn’t automatically call out, “Sorry”. One guy did after I challenged him, another
ignored me and the third said it wasn’t his fault as it was someone else going
too fast! I know the boats are steel and
no real damage is done other than some scraped paintwork but I really feel
people should automatically call out that they are sorry.
As the tree is on Mike and
Lesley’s property we decided to take advantage of having the boat moored there
and cut some of the foliage down. We
left it until Monday afternoon as that is the quieter time boat-wise and we needed to get the boat into mid-channel thus blocking any other boats coming along. Fortunately, we only had to reverse the boat out of the way once for a passing boat and got the job done in peace although we had a lot of interested spectators on the towpath.
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A before shot: It doesn’t look
too bad from here but the leaves hanging down between the two boats are touching the water and do make it
difficult to see
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Mike controlled the boat
from the towpath with a couple of lines and a barge pole whilst I stood on the
roof and used short croppers and Lesley used long loppers standing on the rear
deck.
It actually made a big
difference but the pictures don’t really show it.
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After
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Of course, Karen’s
immediate reaction when getting home from work and seeing the pictures was, “My poor plants!”. But we had been really careful and no damage
had been done.
The first boat that came
past hardly slowed down but called out that at last someone had cut the
foliage. I felt like responding, “That doesn’t
mean you can go faster”. I was wrong –
nearly every boat that came through was going far too fast considering they
were going past moored boats. So that’s
what I mean about the double-edged sword.
Re-reading this it sounds
like I’m becoming a grumpy old man. I
can assure you I’m not, it’s just that it seems more people are in a hurry
these days and I find it sad that they and their crews are probably missing the
tranquillity of travelling slowly and instead are getting stressed about
reaching their next destination.
By the way, if you read
Mike’s blog as well as this one, let me assure you we are not having blog
wars! We are just sharing some
experiences and pictures whilst we are moored at Cropredy 😊
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