Haskayne

Here I am Rune

Distance 7.5 miles

Total 1144 Locks 62 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1636.3miles

Perhaps I’m becoming a grouch or maybe it is just the fact that the weather hasn’t really got anywhere near ‘summery’ yet but another moan today. Set off OK from just east of Glovers Swing Bridge although due to bad timing two other boats passed me whilst I was casting off so crew did the bridge work for them for which they were appreciative. The start of the complaint came as we got to the end of the Rufford Arm where my map shows a sanitary station, it is still there but has been closed and locked since 2007 so having lugged my suitcase full of sh*t to the elsan point I had to lug it back again.

 On to Burscough where the next sanitary station is located. As I approach the moorings there is a boat on there who is untying so my thought was I’ll get past him and moor so that I’m out of his way. Turns out that the guy in charge of the boat is a real tosser! As I begin to pass him he starts to shout, “Didn’t you see me reversing, I need to get on there to get some water”. Since he was pulling the boat with his centre rope it is impossible to see when approaching that he was just moving his boat back a boat length rather than moving off. I replied, “No I thought you were going”. He then began some rant about how he had moored there last night (the maximum time on the mooring is 1 hour!) and hadn’t been able to get water so had to go to bed filthy (it looked like his standard condition to me) and now that he wanted to fill with water I was going to ‘steal’ his place. Had I intended to fill with water my attitude would have been “Tough, you’ll have to wait” but since all I was doing was emptying the elsan I decided there was no real issue in reversing back and mooring behind him. No particular thanks from him although I was hardly surprised. I would have to say that it is tossers like this that give the Traveller boaters a bad name. He had turned up on a limited services mooring and stayed the night dumping a whole load of crap from his boat across the towpath. Then becomes abusive when someone else comes along with a genuine purpose for mooring there as though he is in some sort of rush when he clearly isn’t. The final icing on the cake was when he had to ask me to open the water point for him since he didn’t have a key for it(obviously the reason he had been unable to get water the previous night).  If he doesn’t know how to live on the water properly perhaps he’d be better off getting himself a tent. Second day’s rant over!

Tomorrow it will be the leg to Aintree racecourse where we get picked up by CRT on Friday morning and taken into Liverpool Docks, the only downside is that the weather again isn’t looking too clever.