The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow

by A. J. Mackinnon

  3. Go to bottom gates and wind paddles up.

  4. Watch water level sink slowly … slowly …

  5. Slowly …

  6. Until level with bottom pound.

  7. Politely agree with horrible tramp that yes, they ought to abolish all the ostriches (…?).

  8. Heave and push and haul and strain against long, slippery black-and-white painted beam to open lower gate.

  9. Notice ‘Wet Paint’ sign.

  10. Attempt to wipe hands and trousers clean of black and white paint.

  11. Wonder where the blazes the lock-keeper is.

  12. Assure tramp somewhat shortly that yes, I know I’ve got paint all over me. No, I don’t want your hanky. Or your meths to remove it, thank you very much.

  13. Return 100 yards to dinghy.

  14. Row dinghy into dank, cavernous lock.

  15. Bash into walls while trying to bring dinghy alongside ladder.

  16. Holding painter in teeth, start climbing slimy ladder to top of lock.

  17. Realise lock is so deep that the painter is not long enough to reach more than halfway up the wall. Damn, damn, damn …

  18. Cleverly tie painter to ladder rung with one hand while clinging on with other hand.

  19. Finish climbing out of lock.

  20. Heave lower gate shut, avoiding paintwork.

  21. Winch open paddles in top gate.

  22. Wait for water to rise.

  23. Wait some more.

  24. Wait some more.

  25. Realise that water is not rising and that I have committed the cardinal sin of lock operation, i.e. not closing bottom paddles before opening top paddles, thus turning the entire length of the Kennet &Avon Canal into a freely flowing river.

  26. Turn to find lock-keeper returned from lunch-break.

  27. Listen to irate lecture from lock-keeper about improper use of locks. Tramp nodding sagely over his shoulder, with occasional ‘I-told-you-so’ headshakes.

  28. Hurry to close bottom paddles, bright red.

  29. Watch water rise.

  30. Quite quickly actually … 31. Suddenly realise that the ladder rung halfway down where my painter is tied is about to vanish under fifteen feet of rising water.

  32. Shin down ladder like steroid-crazed orangutan and struggle to undo knot while water rises.

  33. Finally undo knot when it is a foot under churning brown-scummed water full of dead carp.

  34. Scramble to top of ladder with soggy painter held in teeth and tie it to bollard.

  35. Borrow meths after all to rid mouth of dead-carp taste.

  36. As waters rise level with upper pound, heave open top gates.

  37. Row dinghy out. Moor up again. Close gates and paddles.

  38. Repeat whole process SIX MORE TIMES.

  Of course some of the above steps may be omitted if conditions allow, but Jack and I went through the whole gamut in that first of the Kennet & Avon locks in Bath: tramp, paintwork and all.

  Each lock had its own little surprise to spring on an unwary Crow. Some would allow the prow or gaff to catch under a ladder rung as the dinghy ascended and I would have to make a flying leap to free her before she was dunked under and swamped by the rising waters. Others would fill, not by a steady welling up from below the surface but by a sudden horizontal gush of white water from the top-gates that threatened to fill poor Jack with half a ton of canal water and rotting badger if she ventured too close under the cascade. All in all, the one hundred and six locks of the K & A kept us very much on our toes.

  Sometimes the lock-traversing experience was made delightful by the presence of passers-by and spectators who almost universally wanted to help. This often took the form of well-meant but irritating advice (‘No, no, you’ll strain your back if you do it like that. I had an uncle once …’) but I remember the very smart lady in a wide-brimmed hat, red as poppies, and a suit more fitted for Ascot than the rigours of lock operating, who insisted on performing the entire procedure herself. I simply sat in the boat and called out instructions from below. This lady took me through not one lock, but three in a row, and after each lock produced a box of Belgian chocolates and rewarded me and herself with one each. She also kept up a constant stream of bright chatter about how jolly it all was, and did I regard myself more as a Captain Hornblower or an Arthur Ransome hero. When she finally waved me goodbye with a beautiful hand begrimed after the third lock, her smart suit crumpled, her hat askew, she called out ‘Swallows and Amazons forever!’ Warm-hearted dottiness seems to haunt the waterways of Britain, and my voyage was largely fuelled by the likes of these encounters and kindnesses.

  Just below Devizes there is a horrible thing known as the Caen Hill Flight. The Flight is a stairway of twenty-nine locks, one after another, stretching over two miles of steady ascent. Narrowboats take about five hours to traverse the flight so must reach the first of the locks by ten o’clock in the morning. After that time, no more vessels are allowed through until the next day. Accordingly, I had carefully set my alarm clock the night before to wake me at 7.30 a.m. This would allow plenty of time to row the few miles to Caen Hill and be there for the ascent. What’s more, there was bound to be a queue of narrowboats – I could slip in with one of them, concentrating on keeping Jack out from beneath the propellers of my leader vessel while her crew did all that tedious paddle-winding and gate-swinging above me. Thus, remora-like, I would batten on an unwitting host and save myself the back-strain.

  It was with a sinking feeling that I woke the next morning with the sun shining brightly on the blue awning, the birds chirruping in a suspiciously mid-morningish sort of way and my alarm clock inexplicably declaring that it was still half past two in the morning. It had stopped.

  Not knowing the true time, I dressed, bundled the awning and mattress away and set off rowing up the canal like a demented windmill only to reach the Caen Hill Flight at five minutes past ten. The last boat had just entered the first lock. Not only was I not allowed through that day, but due to a water shortage the flight wouldn’t be open again until Monday, two whole days away. I would just have to wait, explained the lock-keeper with an apologetic shrug.

  My Herculean feat of overland haulage at the Frankton Locks was not to be considered; not only was the distance just over two miles, but it was also uphill all the way. Unless I had some sort of trailer, I mused. Nearby was a farm, Foxhangers Farm, and off I trotted to see if they had such a thing as a boat trailer which I could borrow for a few hours. They did – and I could – for five pounds (‘Deposit?’ I enquired brightly. ‘No, rental fee,’ they replied flatly). The trailer was mine for the day.

  Even with a pair of wheels, the haulage operation was no picnic. The dinghy had to be de-rigged, de-masted and emptied of its luggage, and even then seemed to weigh a ton; Jack had clearly been putting on weight since Frankton Locks. As I trudged up the long steady incline of the towpath, dragging Jack behind me, bystanders stopped and stared; they glanced from me to the canal beside the path and back to me again, and I could see the thought flitting across their worried brows – Here is a chap on foot pulling a dinghy … NEXT to a canal. I wonder if I ought to point out the obvious?

  No one did, however, so no one received a rabbit chop to the neck, and I continued the long slog uphill, stopping every two minutes as a jellied wreck. But before I was a quarter of the way up the towpath, someone zoomed up on a quad-bike. I recognised him as a man I had encountered the day before, a lock-keeper who had given a very good impersonation of a clinically depressed Kodiak bear with toothache. Your average British Waterways employee, in fact, or such had been my opinion at the time.

  He had clearly had a frontal lobotomy since yesterday.

  ‘Want a hand with that?’ he enquired cheerfully. ‘Go on, hitch her on the back then and I’ll take her to the top for yer, Captain. Lovely day, innit?’

  Off he whizzed and off I went back down the hill to fetch the rigging. In all, the overland route took just fifteen minutes less than the w
atery route; the last canal boat for the day was just chugging through the top gates.

  Devizes was a grey little town, it seemed to me; the skies had clouded over after weeks of bright sunshine. I seem to remember being invited to a fiftieth birthday party for a chap called Ron, but how and why, I have no idea. That evening is lost forever in a bright cider-tinted haze. The following morning I dimly recall trying to install some fenders I had bought the afternoon before – hollow plastic sausages in blue and yellow with loops to be threaded on a length of cord. While I was doing this, I was attacked by a swan.

  I have not said much about swan encounters so far, although from Frankton Locks onwards I had been bailing them up, pursuing them, startling them, beating them off with oars or being hissed at by them every two hundred yards. They had rapidly become my least favourite entry in The Observer’s Book of British Birds. Nobody except me seemed to have noticed, but frankly there were far too many of them. I had been whiling away the hours of rowing by composing in my head a stiff letter to Her Majesty the Queen – who owns every swan in Britain apparently – hinting that a little ruthless swan culling wouldn’t be amiss. Clearly this particular swan had added mind-reading to its arsenal of sinister qualities and decided to silence me before such a letter could be sent.

  To be attacked by a furious swan when one is balancing low down in a dinghy, one’s hands full of fenders and string, and suffering a throbbing, cider-induced hangover, is not an experience I wish to repeat. It is all a nightmare of hissing and huge wings, a nasty orange bill and mad little eyes – a little like being mugged by an enraged archangel. It was only when I managed to grab an oar and take a swipe at it that the wretched bird retired steaming and ruffled to the other bank. Pity poor Leda. I didn’t hang around – the fenders could wait. I took off and rowed east as fast as my oars could take me.

  Out of Devizes the canal enters a quiet empty land of fields and flat pastures. Sedges and bulrushes throng the banks and crowd even into the middle of the canal in places, making the rowing warm work. The grey skies have cleared once more. Nothing stirs in the hot afternoon glare but small flocks of birds – sparrows, chaffinches and a party of long-tailed tits that flitter from hawthorn bush to hawthorn bush in chirruping excitement, or gorge themselves on the blackberries that hang in rich clusters along the bank.

  So drowsy is the afternoon and so bountiful the brambles that I spend a happy hour picking blackberries from my dinghy pulled in close to the bank opposite the towpath. Here the crop has remained unharvested by passing picnickers, and the fruit hangs bright and heavy and ripe for the plucking. Soon my pith helmet is full to the brim and my fingers are stained with the sweet purple ink; my bare sun-browned arms too bear the evidence of blackberry picking, the odd white scratch or smear of blood from a thorn that has gone deep. It strikes me with an almost physical blow how lucky I am to be here. The rest of England is at work, pinched into suits and smart shoes in city offices or serving burgers in stifling motorway eateries; bathed in the pallid green glow of computer screens, or directing traffic in a haze of hot exhaust, or sitting in sweltering classrooms trying to lure back 3B’s attention from the bright world beyond the window to the dates of the Armada in front of them. And I? I am standing in my shirtsleeves in the hot September sunshine, balancing aboard a buttercup-yellow dinghy, picking blackberries. I am Tom Sawyer playing hookey; Laurie Lee in his rich Slad valley; the boy Arthur in the Forest Sauvage, dreaming of giants. I am Sandy Mackinnon, in fact, aged twelve, picking blackberries in my own beloved valley above Adelaide and the holidays stretching away to the horizon.

  The Kennet & Avon Canal rises in a series of four more locks from the village of Wootton Rivers. At the first of these I found a narrow-boat moored alongside, also waiting for the go-ahead to proceed. Her name was Diana and on board lived John and Di, who within ten minutes of chatting had taken out adoption papers, got me to sign and adopted me as the son they had always wanted.

  John was a shortish middle-aged chap with a capable manner and quiet eyes – and selective moments of deafness to Di’s steady stream of Cockney badinage. Di herself was a woman with ‘landlady’ written right across her broad bosom, hair the peroxide tint of barmaids everywhere, and the sharpness and boldness of wit to match.

  Their offer to tow me through the first lock extended to the next three – then ‘Why not the tunnel, luv, and since yore ’ere, yoo’l join us for sangwidges, wont ’e, John. John? JOHN? Gor blimey, ’e’s switched right orf again, I dunno, ’e’ll forget ’is own ’ead one day …’

  Over thick, succulent tuna sandwiches eaten on a sunny lock-side and followed by homemade coffee cake and mugs of tea, Di expounded on Life. ‘It’s funny, Sandy, innit, but wot I fink is yer got to make time, ain’tcha, uvverwise wots it all abaht, eh?’ Here she handed me a mug the size of a small barrel. ‘I mean, take king-fishers. I see kingfishers, yoo see kingfishers, even John ’ere sees kingfishers. But John’s sister, now she dahn’t see ’em, does she, does she, John, even when there’s one right under ’er nose? There’s one, I says, right there, but she can’t never see ’em cos, like, I don’t fink she’s got inner peace, if yoo know wot I mean.’

  She paused to let out a long sigh. ‘I fink inner peace is somefing yer got or somefing yer ain’t – yoo got to be special to see kingfishers … sort of all quiet, like.’ Three seconds of inner peace would follow, and then we’d be off onto the next topic: Water Voles and the Art of Give-and-Take, for example. She was marvellous.

  That evening at Little Bedwyn we moored up on a peaceful grassy bank where white geese grazed in a meadow. As I was setting up the awning for the night, Di came down the towpath and fixed me with a beady eye. ‘Now look ’ere, Sandy. I’m not doing this out of charity like – and it’s no good saying no ’cos I won’t ’ear of it – but yore coming for supper tonight on board and yer’ll eat wot yer given, and there’s the shower there also to use as yer like, orlright? And ’ere’s a glass of white to be getting on wiv, okay?’

  Well, I’m a timid sort and hardly dared refuse. Of course, I’d have preferred to wander off to a pub in the dark, spend an outrageous sum on a microwaved Chicken Kiev with French Fries and spend the evening reading beer mats – but one must make sac-rifices at times. One mustn’t be selfish. So I forced myself to have a scaldingly blissful hot shower aboard and ended up choking down Di’s honey roast ham, the pease pudding, hot green beans and onion sauce, the chocolate sponge and the selection of fine liqueurs afterwards before deciding that I had been dutiful enough and retired to my little floating bed.

  Coming awake on Jack de Crow was always lovely – to watch the golden-green reflections of reeds and morning sunshine rippling just half a yard from my feet through the open triangle of tent; to see the faint mist curling off the water and smell wet grass and water mint crushed between Jack’s hull and the spiderwebbed bank an arm’s length away – these are faint previsions of Heaven. But when on this particular morning it was supplemented by John standing barefooted on the dewy grass in his pyjamas and holding a breakfast tray, it was beyond the dreams of angels. There was a mug of aromatic coffee; buttered toast with scrambled eggs, light as a cloud and sprinkled with black pepper; slices of toast with thick, dark marmalade – and a silver knife and fork winking in the bright sun, wrapped in a flowery napkin. And a note: ‘Bon appetit. Get your skates on. We sail in an hour. Di.’

  I don’t remember exactly how many days Jack and I remained firmly attached as adopted waifs to Diana’s motherly wing. From the sheer volume of information I learnt about John and Di’s life history and philosophies and the amount of superb food pressed on me at every opportunity, I would guess six months, but my diaries seem to indicate two days at most. Meanwhile, on we glided, leaving the wide skies of Wiltshire and down into the thatched-cottage, chocolate-box villages of Berkshire.

  And so we draw near to the end of the Kennet & Avon Canal where it joins the mighty Thames at Reading. Several days passed in sunny innocence, days in which
I rowed beneath a warm sun through a gentle landscape, one feature of which was the little concrete pillboxes every mile or so along the northern bank of the canal – a relic of the Napoleonic War but revived in the Second World War to act as a line of defence against any invasion from the south. It seemed odd at first to think of this quiet pastoral wiggle of water being any sort of military Maginot Line – why, it looked narrow enough to leap across – but I soon realised that to an advancing enemy it would certainly create an obstacle, especially when covered by firepower from these sturdy pillboxes. Nowadays each one is half covered in brambles and periwinkle and used to store fertiliser bags by local farmers, or for less reputable purposes by the young folk of the area.

  It was along one such section of the canal that I decided to go bath ing. Here the River Kennet ran in and out of the canal at intervals so the water had largely lost its murky dead-rabbit colour and was relatively clean. It was a solitary spot, so I decided that a bit of skinny-dipping would not go amiss. I enjoyed a happy ten seconds snorting and wallowing in the canal before deciding that in the interests of preserving my extremities, I would leave this sort of sub-zero bathing to the Finns. Just as I was hauling myself out of the depths, however, there came a rustle from the hedgerow and out stepped an elderly gentleman with a brace of charming beagles at his side. Clenching my teeth, I lowered myself back into the frigid waters.

  Mr Beagle did not seem perturbed by the sight of a blueish torso rising from the canal waters; in fact, he was inclined to chat. After some genial questions, he told me of the annual rowing race that takes place in these parts, the longest of its type in the world. It runs from Devizes to Westminster along the canal with all its locks and then onto the Thames and down to London. The only stipulation is that the boats must be light enough to be carried over the locks, British Waterways not being geared up to cope with the sudden heated rush of a hundred or so excitable contestants. My beagle man went on to explain that many years before, when he had been working at the nearby paper mills, he and some colleagues had constructed a rowing boat out of corrugated cardboard. The resulting vessel had proven to be so portable and light that it had won the celebrated prize … and then had promptly sunk below the Houses of Parliament after being holed by a piece of driftwood the size of a matchbox.