Nobody needs Bad Neighbours

Nobody needs Bad Neighbours when Water Levels are Low

Our time at Wool Road Services kept dragging out. Repairs on the Huddersfield Narrow's feeder reservoir meant water supply is very limited. The CRT padlocked the next lock because the water was too low for anyone to go through. They were arranging to buy in extra from Yorkshire Water but this would take time. When levels were raised, they would escort boats through.

As livaboards we accepted this as an unfortunate part of cruising the underfunded waterways. John from The Rock was not so sanguine. He complained to anyone who would listen and proclaimed he was going to contact his friend at Waterways World magazine to put some pressure on. He'd arrived after us but moored ahead of us, telling the local CRT that if anyone should go first it should be him. We let this slide. If he was stressed we were happy for him to go first.

Days passed and we found out John wasn't the best neighbour. He backed up to within a few yards of our bow to get more solar, then ran his engine loudly in gear so the noise and fumes came into our bedroom through our bow door vents. We get that people need to run their engines but doing it until 21:30 is outside the accepted etiquette of an 8pm cutoff.

John also liked to leave food out on the towpath. Will explained to him that Leo was intolerant to cereal and he saw Leo's aggressive outburst when Will carried him away. The next day there was mouldy fruit and vegetables and the day after that was a mass of rolled oats lying in the mud, making it very difficult for us with Leo.

Usually you can move away from neighbours you don't get on with but right now this wasn't an option.

Little did we know that worse was to come.

On Friday, 6 days after we'd arrived, we set the alarm for 7am to give Tiger her calming medication. The CRT arrived to take John and ourselves up the locks. We let John go first, knowing the lockies would come back for us. Leaving our mooring, we took Rainboat over the other side of the canal to fill with water, planning to stay there until the lockies were ready. This was the last passing place before the lock so it was sensible to wait here in case another boat came down towards us.

Will had just hopped off to pull Rainboat in when another boat, that had moored behind us late the previous day, came up very close behind. The woman had seen Will preparing to set off and he'd explained he was just going to move over to the water point and wait there for the lock booking. Her partner had obviously not been best pleased when he heard this. He began shouting at us to pull the boat over, saying that if we were getting water we weren't waiting for the lock. Vicky started to get upset at the agression and shouted back at him that if he wanted to go fast he shouldn't be on the canals. He shouted at her to 'come here, come here' as if he was about to get physical. Then drove his boat into Rainboat's stern, ramming her into the bank and scraping down her side and the side of the boat moored opposite to squeeze through and moor right in front of the lock gates! Never in our lives has anyone deliberately rammed us!

They waited there for 1hr 45minutes, then told the lockies that they'd booked passage through, not us. The lockies only knew there were two boats booked, but not their names. They couldn't really do much as the canal wasn't wide enough to overtake. It was even more of a blow when they told Will there was only enough water for two boats to go up today and that we'd have to wait until Monday and do the 9 locks and 3 mile tunnel in one day. This would take at least 5 hours and wipe us all out.

Our nice neighbours couldn't believe what they'd witnessed. We explained what had happened to the CRT on the phone and Will talked to Andy, the boss lockie who was around later in the day. Andy knew of the couple, telling Will they'd been on the private Bridgewater Canal up until a few months ago when they'd got their UK wide CRT licence. He'd met them in Manchester where they complained to him a lock wasn't filling fast enough. He pointed out that they'd left the bottom paddles open. They then went ahead and left all the paddles open on all the locks, meaning a massive amount of water was lost and Mick had to go behind and close them. When he heard about what they'd done to us, with backup from our neighbours, he told Will he was going to report them and do his best to get us up the locks the following day so we'd not have to do the flight and tunnel both in the same day.

The vast majority of people we meet are lovely so it was very unusual to encounter someone so insensitive and another person who showed such aggression. We are extremely glad it is such a rare occurrence.Read more