Filling in the background

In The Beginning........

Running water, streams, brooks, rivers and canals have been a fascination to me since my Prep School days when I was introduced to such things by a young master who started up The Ditchwater Club with the aim of tracing the route of a small channel in the school grounds all the way to its eventual emptying into the North Sea.  Along its course it flowed into ever bigger streams and we learned fluvial terminology such as tributary, confluence, meander, slip off slope and the very popular ox bow lake.  However, the best bit was watching the operation of a lock on the Chelmer and Blackwater canal to allow the progress of a commercial vessel bound for Maldon from the flour mills of Messrs Marriage on the outskirts of Chelmsford.  I was enthralled by the ingenuity yet simplicity of this technological wonder and remember building a scale model of the lock from scraps of wood, chicken wire and plaster of Paris.

From that time on I was always keen to explore and understand more about this form of transport and my love of rivers and waterways was in no small way one of the reasons why I became a teacher of geography; the interaction of the physical and human environments held and still holds endless fascination and intrigue.  My college days were spent in Exeter and I soon discovered the Exeter Ship Canal and, in particular, the Double Locks Hotel which was to be my favourite watering hole throughout my student days.  Train journeys from London to Devon would run alongside the K and A and I would dream of following its course one day although by that time my only experience had been two holidays cruising the Thames from Staines upstream to Tadpole bridge near the village of Bampton well above Oxford.  Indeed it was from a pub at Bablockhythe that I watched the first moon landing back in July 1969.

Sheena and David Wakeling

It was not until the mid 1980's that I, or more accurately, we ventured onto the canals proper, spending a long weekend on board nb Windermere with Sheena's brother and sister in law cruising the South Oxford from Napton to Banbury and return.  That was the turning point and from then on Sheena and I along with our young sons Andrew and Christopher, fell in love with canals and narrowboats, taking every opportunity to be on the cut as often as possible.  To begin with this meant borrowing Windermere but that craft was all too soon sold and we began hiring boats from Brummagem, Calcutt, Viking Afloat and especially Willow Wren.  It was with this last company that we took countless Year 9 school children around the Warwickshire ring for many years until our final trip in 2000 at which time the school put an end to that form of activities week.  They were hard work but the enjoyment and benefit to the pupils was immeasurable.

In the middle of the 1990s our good friends Kelvin and Carol Fenn acquired a concept narrowboat called Evening Standard and Sheena and I had the privilege and experience of taking her on her maiden voyage from Virginia Currer's boatyard at Slough to her first base at Isleham on the River Lark.  This was a great adventure and was followed by many more around the system on board "ES".  It was at that time that we made a promise to ourselves that one day we would own our own boat but it was not until we retired that this became a reality.

Having trawled the internet for ages we came across the Wychwood built 50 foot trad stern Tombeetoo lying at Brinklow Marina.  We had looked at a few other boats but this was by far the best we had found and not only ticked most of the boxes but was also a good price - too good in fact to be ignored and even better when our speculative offer was accepted.  Sheena and I eventually became owners of Tombeetoo at the beginning of 2013 and then the adventure really began.