CHERTSEY

BOATS, BRIDGES, BOILERS ... IF IT'S GOT RIVETS, I'M RIVETTED
... feminist, atheist, autistic academic and historic narrowboater ...
Likes snooker, beer, tea, rivets and solitude, and is strangely fascinated by the cinema organ.
And there might be something about railways.
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Thursday 8 July 2010

On the gravel

I have decided to delay posting my photos until tomorrow because this is much more important, and the photos are much better.

While at Braunston I heard tell that Archimedes and Ara, and Victoria (because Mike wanted to see it loaded), were going to go on to load some gravel. It turns out that a total of seven boats were involved in this, the others being GU motors Themis and Callisto, and the more recently built gravel boat Arundel buttied with former Joey Joe.

According to the never-reliable Narrowboat World website (seven star class boats indeed!) the gravel was used to shore up the bank during building work in Paddington Basin, and they've painted themselves into a corner, leaving no way to remove it other than by water (hooray!). It's being taken to Atherstone.

Sadly, I have so far not been able to witness this but others have and the photos are breathtaking. See Alan Fincher's here, and here, and follow reports of their progress on the CWF thread here.

2 comments:

  1. Sarah,

    Thanks for the link to our blog and Wednesday's "gravel boats" photos.

    If you look again now, I couldn't resist a second look, so some further stuff, (including the boat I failed to photograph yesterday) is now available for Thursday.

    Not sure if I can put a link here - trying anyway......

    http://chalicecruises.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-unusual-day-on-grand-union.html

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  2. Spotted it on CWF and added link - then saw your comment. Really sorry I wasn't able to catch them myself.

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