silver Propeller challenge

STERLING JOB

Exploring the far-fl ung reaches of the network just got even more rewarding

Waterways meets the vlogging couple vying to become IWA’s very fi rst Silver Propeller recipients

Peace and quiet – and another point – at Gronwen Bridge winding hole, Maesbury.

“Wanted: A ‘go-anywhere’ boat for a ‘go-everywhere’ couple.” Such might have read the ad Jo and Michael Morehouse would have placed when, reflecting on their futures in 2016, they decided to ditch their ideas of a cabin in Alaska, or an RV road-trip across the States, and instead settle on the English inland waterways to sate their nomadic appetites.

Although both boating novices, by then they had plenty of experience of peripatetic living. The couple (Michael hails from Oklahoma while Jo is British) met in Vietnam while they were separately completing round-the-world solo trips. In December 2012, Michael had quit his job in Los Angeles and headed west, while Jo’s trip, kicking off in May 2014, was east-bound. After what she describes as a “very memorable conversation” in Phong Nah, the pair decided to meet up a few weeks later, spending ten days together in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Michael picks up the story: “Eventually, when Jo finished her trip, we met again in Los Angeles where I was working, and that’s when we became a couple. I subsequently had a job offer from New Zealand, so we moved there. But after a year-and-a-half I had another job offer back in LA, so we returned in 2015.”

The move was to be short-lived. Having spent so long on the road, city life often felt stifling, compounded by Michael’s increasing dissatisfaction at work. There were other complications, not least the realisation in New Zealand that having a passport in common would make life a lot easier. The couple were faced with the options of staying in the US or Canada on Michael’s papers, or giving UK life a shot.

'Cool life'

It was mid-deliberation that Michael recalled a memory from a trip to London some years earlier. “I was in Camden, standing on a bridge and watching a guy take his boat through a lock. Before that point I’d never heard of a narrowboat and I didn’t even know there were canals in England. But the sight made a real impression and I remember thinking at the time: ‘Wow, that would be a really cool life.’ It was January, it was very cold, all the other moored boats had their fires going. It just all looked quite pleasant.”

He recounted the story to Jo and jokingly suggested they get a narrowboat themselves. “And then I headed off to work. But when I came home that evening Jo had already waded through about 150 YouTube videos on the canals – everything from ‘Cruising the Cut’ and Daniel Brown’s ‘Sort of Interesting’ vlogs, to clips from Timothy West and Prunella Scales’ TV series.

“I watched a few and I was sold,” says Michael. “We started looking for boats. When the Brexit referendum happened it dropped the price of craft by 30% in 24 hours for us, because of the exchange rate plummeting. All of a sudden my savings were worth a lot more – that was incentivising. And then Donald Trump got elected… We were already getting my UK visa by that stage, but that was the tipping point – the moment we really wanted to get moving fast.”

Fanatical

It was another few months before they bought Perseverance, the 57-footer that has taken them around more than half of the canal network in the subsequent two years. “Michael’s aim was always to go everywhere,” Jo explains. “He’d never be happy going up and down the same stretches. He’s quite fanatical when it comes to travel.”

“Yeah, I’m weird like that,” he concedes. “If you put me on a road, I need to go all the way to the end of it. And then back to the intersection and down the next one. For me it’s a philosophical thing, and it now extends to our canal cruising too.”

Perseverance picked up its 19th Silver Propeller point at Liverpool Docks.

Hest Bank, on the Lancaster Canal, was a highlight of the couple’s Silver Propeller journey… …while the trip to Walsall Town Basin ranks among their worst.

However, the idea of channelling their boating towards a formal ‘goal’ didn’t cross their minds until much later. To begin with, they were simply content with exploring the system exhaustively and documenting their travels on a vlog to keep Michael’s mum back in the States up-to-date. But when their videos started gaining traction among the wider boating community, a recurring online comment set the wheels in motion for a slightly different approach. Jo explains: “People kept telling us that the more obscure places we were visiting were Silver Propeller locations, and that we should sign up for the challenge. Neither Michael nor I had any idea, at that stage, what the Silver Propeller was. It was only when we saw this suggestion for something like the fifteenth time that we decided to look it up.”

Missed opportunities

The challenge, which IWA launched at the start of 2018, aims to encourage boaters to visit 20 or more lesser-explored waterways. Participants can find a full list of all the locations (which include many on the unconnected network that are only accessible by local, portable or trailable craft) on the association’s website, which is how Michael and Jo discovered they’d ticked off eight or nine already without even realising it. “After that it was an easy decision to commit,” says Michael. “We had set out to go everywhere you can on the connected system anyway, so it didn’t really affect our future cruising plans. What was frustrating, however, was realising there were about three destinations we’d got tantalisingly close to, but due to lack of effort or obstructions in the channel, hadn’t made it all the way. Most of these were while we were on the BCN last winter. If we’d only known about the Silver Propeller at the time, we would have made sure we boated them and would probably have completed the challenge by now.”

As Waterways went to press, Jo and Michael were just one shy of the full 20 points, with both Standedge Tunnel and the Springs Branch of the Leeds & Liverpool within their sights to complete the challenge. They’ll be the first boaters to do it, although plenty of others are hot on their heels (including the Windlasses, who featured in our Summer issue). Not that they’ll be resting on their laurels after receiving the coveted plaque, however, for Michael is determined to visit all the other places on IWA’s list too. “The only problem with doing so is that it’ll entail going over old ground – and going miles out of our way. We could dot off those few we missed on the BCN with three to four weeks’ travelling, but to get back to the Basingstoke (King John’s Castle, Odiham) is a bigger commitment. Perhaps a better idea might be to rent a boat for a day just to tick it off. To date, we’ve reached all the Silver Propeller locations in our own craft, but the Basingstoke might be one where hiring makes sense.”

Ethos

As well as satisfying Michael’s compulsive travel quirk, the couple also appreciate the Silver Propeller Challenge’s cruise-it-or-lose-it ethos. “IWA is right,” says Michael. “If these canals don’t get visited they’ll get lost. Several of the ones we’ve been to are already problematic enough to navigate. The Dee Branch off the Shropshire Union, for example – we couldn’t progress much further than the first lock. The Slough Arm was another headache. It was difficult to boat and there’s no real impetus to as there’s no ‘destination’ at the end. It was mainly garbage.” There’s no love lost for Walsall Town Basin either – not because the city centre moorings were substandard, but because the journey to reach them was fraught with dodging “bits of cars, washing machines and kids throwing rocks”.

Thankfully the pay-off at other destinations has been worth the odd struggle elsewhere. The Ashby and the end of the Montgomery (“especially after the over-boated Llangollen”) are Michael’s highlights so far, while Jo loved the novelty of cruising with a view over the Irish Sea on the Lancaster Canal at Hest Bank. These unexpected surprises, plus the gratification of knowing their ongoing vlogs are encouraging other people to follow in their wake, is enough to make the couple glad they stumbled upon the Silver Propeller in the first place. Their next challenge? “Wouldn’t it be great if IWA introduced a Gold Propeller?” suggests Jo. “Because we definitely plan to keep on cruising these routes.”

Don’t rain on their parade: reaching Winsford Bridge on the River Weaver.

The couple struggled to make much progress on the River Dee Branch in June.

Find out more

You can follow Michael and Jo’s progress via their YouTube vlogs at youtube.com/ MinimalList. For more information about IWA’s Silver Propeller Challenge visit waterways.org. uk/silverpropeller.

SEPTEMBER 2019

Lancaster Canal, Tewitfi eld Marina “Despite the M6 being so close, Tewitfi eld is really nice, and the Lancaster Canal itself is lovely to boat on.”

OCTOBER 2019

Leeds & Liverpool Canal, Liverpool Docks

June 2019

Shropshire Union Canal, River Dee Branch “You can’t get far up it at all. The Dee Branch has already e ectively been lost to navigation.”

AUGUST 2019

River Weaver, Winsford Bridge

May 2019

Montgomery Canal, Gronwen Bridge winding hole, Maesbury

December 2018

BCN Dudley No 1 Canal, southern portal of the Dudley Tunnel “We went to the northern portal hoping to travel through, but our boat was too tall. A erwards we headed to the southern portal instead, but were deterred by the three locks in our way. We ended up walking it instead, which doesn’t count.”

preston

manchester

liverpool

chester

stoke-ontrent

December 2018

BCN Dudley No 2 Canal, Coombeswood Basin “A lovely place to visit, very iendly and good prices on fuel. Don’t try to turn on a windy day though!”

February 2019

BCN, Walsall Canal, Walsall Town Basin “The least said about our trip to Walsall Town Basin, the be er!”

worcester birmingham

December 2018

BCN, Titford Canal, Titford Pools “It was great up there, with a nice li le avian sanctuary. You do need to be careful of water levels but we were lucky and it was all good.”

November 2018

River Avon (Warwickshire), Alveston Weir “We didn’t know it was part of the challenge at the time, but we were still curious about going up there.”

October 2018

Gloucester & Sharpness Canal, Saul Junction “In fact, we went beyond Saul Junction, so passed through it twice.”

gloucester

FebRUARY 2019

bristol bristol BCN, Wednesbury Oak Loop, Bradley “This one was really ustrating. We got halfway but a loose boat was blocking the channel. Because it was a CRT workboat we weren’t sure if it was there in an ‘o cial’ capaci , to show that the canal was closed. We also ran into silt. We rang CRT, which subsequently moved the boat, but by then it was too late.”

york

kingstonupon-hull

April 2018

Erewash Canal, Langley Mill Basin

“We loved it here.”

FebRUARY 2019

Cannock Extension Canal, Norton Canes “We made it as far as we could before backing up because of the silt.”

December 2018

Stourbridge Canal, Fens Branch “This is a really annoying ‘near-miss’. We wanted to do it, we were intent on doing it, but when we actually got there we were so tired. There were a bunch of locks ahead of us, some decrepit buildings, and then you just turn around and come back. So we made the (with hindsight, stupid) decision not to do it.”

March 2018

Ashby Canal, limit of navigation beyond Snarestone Wharf

nottingham lincoln

leicester

peterborough

northampton JULY 2019

Caldon Canal, Leek Arm canal terminus “This is a beautiful canal and really worth visiting but it hasn’t been dredged in a considerable amount of time. As it’s already narrow and quite shallow we’re not sure how it can remain navigable long-term without investment.”

cambridge AUGUST 2019

Caldon Canal, U oxeter Basin, Froghall “Froghall Tunnel is stupidly, dangerously low and you don’t know if your boat will fi t until the last second.”

July 2018

Grand Union Canal, Wendover Arm, current limit of navigation at Li le Tring “This was an adventurous one – we got shot at! There were pellets pinging o the boat!”

August 2018

Grand Union, Slough Arm, Slough Basin “We were probably the only boat that had been there for a while and we went right to the end – where there is absolutely nothing. We totally support any future development as being surrounded solely by fences and gravel isn’t great.”

oxford

reading

london August 2018

Lee & Stort (Bow Back Rivers), Carpenters Road Lock, Queen Elizabeth Park

June 2017

Basingstoke Canal, King John’s Castle, Odiham “Unfortunately this didn’t count as it was a) before the Silver Propeller Challenge was o cially launched and b) we couldn’t reach the limit of navigation because there’d been a landslip and the entire canal was shut beyond Fleet.”

September 2018

River Thames, Inglesham, junction with the Thames & Severn Canal