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Braunston Historic Narrowboat Rally 26th-27th June

David Schweizer

By David Schweizer
in General Boating

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Catrin Proficient

Catrin

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I've just updated our blog for our visit to the Rally yesterday. It includes some of the photos we took, perhaps Alan can add some more to this thread later. Great to see everyone, and particularly thanks to Jim and Sue on Owl.

Cheers

Cath

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alan_fincher Veteran II

alan_fincher

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Posted (edited)
I've just updated our blog for our visit to the Rally yesterday. It includes some of the photos we took, perhaps Alan can add some more to this thread later.

 

I found having an active young dog in tow, or being perched in the engine hole door with a Kelvin exhaust in my ear didn't make for the best photography......

 

Here is a small selection not in the blog, I think....

 

The excellent Chertsey, with Black Ibis, Fade to Scarlet & Paddington Bear.

 

IMG_0079.jpg

 

Towcester - still one of my favourites. Julia Cook always makes handling one of these look so easy, whatever the load on board.

 

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Assistance on the rope from from Matt of Sickle, (though not on Sickle here!)

 

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Daniel's car - Liam's Boat - Strange lot, forum owners and moderators, it seems! Great line up of Stewarts & LLoyds tugs behind.

 

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Jim steers Owl past another of my favourites - butty Angel, formerly owned by my late brother Pete.

 

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Several of the boats had good loads on, including Roach

 

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Mostly Grand Union and former Blue Line boats in the arm.

 

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Some of the tugs and other shorter boats, 5 abreast

 

IMG_0160.jpg

Edited by alan_fincher
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stagedamager Experienced

stagedamager

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Thanks a lot for your photos, Dan, Cath and Alan, they've given me a small view of the w.e. I sadly enough had to miss.

 

Peter.

no problem at all, glad we could bring a bit of our sunshine to you!!! i'm sure over the next few day there will be many more!

Regards

Dan

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Tim Lewis Veteran

Tim Lewis

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Had a very pleasant time at Braunston yesterday and managed to put faces to names of a few forum members. Here are a few photographs - there are more on

Braunston2010013.jpg

General View from the ladder bridge

 

That's me standing on Fulbourne's top plank!

 

Tim

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bargemast Influencer

bargemast

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What a nice series of photographs Gary, thanks to all of you that are giving me the chance to see what went on, I feel less sorry for myself not to have been there, it's only too bad that there's no sound of some old engines with them.

 

Peter.

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jeannette smith harrison Proficient

jeannette smith harrison

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Myself and "Capricorn" will be going up on Friday and will be in the marina arm if I can find any space by then.

 

Come and say hello - and admire my brasses at probably the only time this year when they'll be proper shiney.

 

Paul H

just leg pulling your brasses looked great

jeannette

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Guest

Guest

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Indeed a great set of pictures......

 

.....and a great set of names for the boats too... just where did...

 

Cedar, Ara, Adamant, Aquila, Pisces, get their evocative names from....

 

so much better than some of the 'trite' names modern boats get......including ours......

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alan_fincher Veteran II

alan_fincher

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Indeed a great set of pictures......

 

.....and a great set of names for the boats too... just where did...

 

Cedar, Ara, Adamant, Aquila, Pisces, get their evocative names from....

 

so much better than some of the 'trite' names modern boats get......including ours......

Well working boats often boats belonged to "classes", and were named to a theme.

 

The vast majority of, for example, the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company's fleet, built in the 1930s belonged to either the "Town" or the "Star" classes.

 

(Before the purists jump in, each of these were actually multiple "sub-classes" to the extent that they had different builders, and some were even wooden, but still they ended up mostly as either "towns" or "stars", with "towns" being deeper hulled than the "stars", and generally having lower cabin sides as a result).

 

In practice the "Stars" were not just named after stars, but also constellations, planets, moons & all-sorts, but most were at least "celestial bodies". Ara, (and it's motor Archimedes), Aquila, Pisces, and many more of the boats present were "Star" class.

 

The "Towns" are also a strange breed, as the selection of town names includes many that were canal served, but many many more having no canal connection. There is a theory that railway and underground maps resulted in the naming of many of the boats.

 

Chertsey is one of many named around what appear to be Southern Railway stations, and you can follow some lines where many station names got used, despite being minor suburban towns.

 

My brothers boat "Angel" features in the pictures - this is not a celestial reference, as you might possibly think, but actual as in "Angel, Islington", so actually a Town class boat, (not that you'd think of "Angel" as a town). Several of the boats were misnamed, or at least wrongly spelt, and my other brother's Town class boat was "Bilster". Bilster is not a town - the assumption is they meant Bilston.

 

Where a wrong naming or spelling was used, the error has remained uncorrected since.

 

To cover two further boats present, the GUCCCo and it's predecessor also had an even deeper hulled class, built before the Towns and Stars known as the Royalty class. Both the original prototype George, and Mike Askin's boat Victoria are Royalty boats - having massively menacing bows that dominate even the other working boats.

 

Other companies had themed classes too, so for example some Fellows Morton & Clayton boats might be (say) the "Fish" class, and several boats present had fish names. Owl, Kestrel, Plover, (all present) are also FMC boats, but you can probably guess they are not "Fish" class. :lol:

 

Note this is a "lay-mans" version of events - I'll probably get a very hard time over my gross over-simplification of different working boat types!

 

EDITED: Because after complaining about the GUCCCo's spelling, I got Aquila wwrong!

Edited by alan_fincher
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Sue1946 Collaborator

Sue1946

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Alan -

I just replied to your PM. I am carp at pooters, but you may add my reply (with maybe small edits?).

I had a fabulous time today!!

 

 

Typical! Alan just went. Liam, however has arrived!

Ok new besssy - how did Dan get the car off again?

There are just not enough pics!!

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alan_fincher Veteran II

alan_fincher

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Alan -

I just replied to your PM. I am carp at pooters, but you may add my reply (with maybe small edits?).

I had a fabulous time today!!

I'll not post Sue's PM to me in full, but I'm sure she will not mind me saying that she was a bit nervous about going to one of these big events on her own, and trying to pick out all the Canal World folks when she had not met that many of them before.

 

Unfortunately we couldn't help, as we ended up going on different days, but from her message to me, I can see that Sue managed to meet with quite a few of you, and enjoyed herself a lot.

 

It is difficult, isn't it! Without some strong visual clues, you have to be quite brave to bound up to a stranger and say "excuse me, but are you......".

 

That's my excuse anyway as towhy I did not actually introduce myself to Derek_R, even though enjoying a conversation with other's on his boat Tycho that I did know. I assumed the man in the hat must be Derek, but didn't want to look a pillock if he wasn't. A polite word with Ian Tyler later on confirmed it was the man himself, but after that I never got the chance to say hello properly. So if you are reading, Derek, and you saw a couple with a red Cocker Spaniel chatting to Ian, Chris & Daphne, that was us. :lol:

 

It's funny how you get mental images of what someone must look like. I finally got to meet Carrie, who used to be on these forums a long while back, and I had a lot of time for. But she was introduced to me such that my poor hearing couldn't pick out a name, and sufficiently different from my idea of her, (and I don't mean that badly!), that I was totally thrown when I did fall in. So Carrie, in the unlikely event you are reading this, I genuinely do still follow what you are up to, and I'm sorry I was such a poor conversationalist yesterday. Hopefully there will be a chance to put it right in the future.

 

We also had the inevitable "which family can do themselves the most self-injury" conversation with the Alnwicks too. All 4 of us have had at least one attempt at getting maimed in the last few months, and I think the jury is still out on who are the most accident prone! (Nice crutches you have had handed down from Jane, Graham - far nicer than the set Cath and I shared!).

 

A great day out - didn't get half what I wanted to do done yesterday, and would have loved to be there again today.

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