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St Ives has to be one of the prettiest Market towns I’ve visited. Steeped in history and very quaint. But our visit to this picturesque little town wasn’t all it seemed.

We spent a few days getting here. There are a lot of locks in this area. It is to do with the watermills from days gone by (most of them are pubs now, so it’s not all bad…). But that makes it harder to navigate. And very energetic! We lost a windlass (the handle that you use to open the paddles on lock gates), which makes navigating quite hard! We knew that there was a good chandlery in St Ives, so managed by using a big adjustable spanner on the locks, which is very fiddly!

We spent a night at a mooring near a lovely quaint pub, Brampton Mill. There is a nice long stretch of moorings, and there were no other boats. We needed to use our mooring pins (like very big tent pegs- you hammer them into the ground and tie the boat ropes to them when there isn’t anything else to tie to). As Mr BBB was bashing the mooring pins in, I could see flies milling around near the ground. Then Mr BBB noticed a wasp on his sleeve- they were not flies, we were hammering into a wasps nest! I saw the multitude of wasps swarming around, so put my hood up and covered my hands with my sleeves to protect myself while I went to remove the mooring pin from the nest. As I pulled the pin out of the ground (feeling rather brave) my head started to hurt. It turned out that I had trapped a wasp in my hood! Wasp stings on the head are incredibly painful! I tried antihistamine cream, which was very hard to apply, under my hair. I tried ice. Nothing made all that much difference, so we went to the pub and I treated the sting with white wine, which worked, a bit. At least- I didn’t care that it hurt as much after the wine!

We navigated to St Ives and moored up in a mooring next to the Dolphin Hotel. Well, we tried to… The water levels were quite low, so we beached (I believe that technically we ‘bottomed out) so we then had to spend some time moving the boat off of the bottom of the river bed! The moorings outside the hotel were deeper, so we moored there for the night.

St Ives is beautiful. Its crown is the town bridge, which dates from the 15th century. It was partially destroyed during the English Civil War and replaced with a drawbridge. The drawbridge section was rebuilt in the mid 16th century, and the arches are different styles on the newer and older sections. It has a tiny chapel on the bridge, which was built with the bridge in the 15th century. It was used as a residential dwelling (what a house!) until the early 20th century. Visitors can have a look around by collecting a key from the Norris Museum or the Town Hall.

The riverfront in St Ives is beautiful. There are restaurants, cafes, and parkland. There are plenty of old buildings, it is a shame to walk around without looking up- you would miss so much of the charm of the older buildings!

All of this old world charm has a cost, though.

St Ives is a practical place- it doesn’t make the mistake a lot of small towns do of looking lovely but being impractical without many shops or facilities- it has a practical shopping centre, community events and reasonable public transport links. Until you look a bit deeper. The beautiful bridge is low, a lot of boats can’t get under it, especially when the river is full. The bridge is not parallel to the river, which makes navigating through its one navigable arch quite a challenge. The pretty moorings on the town quay are a pain when you try to get off the boat. The mooring outside the Dolphin is between two trees which meant that the solar panels didn’t get any light, and the boat was covered in bird droppings.

We moved the boat to The Waits, which was a challenge! In true St Ives style, The Waits looks beautiful. It has Holt Island on one side. This is a nature reserve with some lovely wildlife- kingfishers, pipistrelle bats, butterflies, dragonflies… On the opposite side is a road with some old buildings and a lovely church. The moorings are adjacent to the Norris Museum, which is an interesting place to visit. The Waits is a good mooring for a short boat, but for most narrowboats, it is too narrow. We have to either reverse in and go out forwards or vice versa. Narrowboats are not always great at reversing. They often have their own opinion on which way they should go! The mooring has an area described as ‘Disabled Mooring’. At first, I was intrigued about disabled mooring- why is it different. Then, when I tried to get off the boat I realised. There was a 3 feet climb to get off the boat!

After I had clambered off the boat I looked at the front canopy and noticed that it had rubbed along the concrete and now had a hole. Duct tape to the rescue!

Once I had clambered off the boat, I hadn’t considered that I would have to clamber back on again! I’m surprised no one videoed me and put it on YouTube! I am very proud to report that I didn’t injure myself at all! Or land in the river!

All things considered, St Ives is a lovely place and I would be keen to visit again. But I would be prepared! Take a ladder (or maybe just a step), cover the canopy and be neurotic about wasps!

 

I was worried about how we would manage with illnesses on the boat. Would it be harder than in a house? There’s less space and the boat needs ‘managing’ more than a house. We have to make sure there is water and that the batteries aren’t too low. Would there be enough room to have somewhere for an ill person? Would we all get annoyed with each other?

We found out this week! All 3 of us have been under the weather. Mr Big Blue Boat has been the worse affected, I think. He has been unwell all week. He has a viral thing and has been in bed for a day or two and is still not right. Me and Younger Mr Blue Boat haven’t been as ill. We were both quite tired and struggled to do much. I felt like I had run a marathon- all achy and tired and I couldn’t do anything.

When I woke up today, I felt better! The aches have gone, I have energy and can think straight (well, as straight as I normally think).  I’m back to blogging and can assess how we coped with illness while on board.

When I could see that Mr BBB was not well, I made sure we had water, which has kept us going fine. When we were all ill we watched easy films on the sofa and slept, just as we would have done in a house. Checking the batteries only involves flicking a switch, and if they were low we just had to put the engine on to charge them. So I think it isn’t much harder to be ill on a boat than in a house.

Unless it’s a tummy bug…hopefully we won’t experience one of those anytime soon!

As I sit here to type, I am looking around for a cushion to sit on. I have a very sore bottom. A painful posterior. Discomfort in the derriere.

‘Why are you in pain, Rachel’ I hear you all shouting! Well, it started with Ade getting a very painful head. Then me. And then a few other sore bits.

This morning, Ade got up and popped the engine on so we had hot water. (We can heat water through the engine, using the heating or with the immersion. The immersion only works when we are plugged into electricity at a marina; it was not cold enough to need the heating and the batteries needed a charge, so the engine was the best option.) He opened the doors to the stern but didn’t open the hatch because he wasn’t planning on keeping the doors open. Then a few minutes later he popped back to the stern to get some washing that was drying overnight on the stern. Forgetting that the stern hatch was still shut he walked straight into it. He came back into the boat looking very foggy, holding his head with a very large lump developing. I got him some ice and went the get the aforementioned washing. Guess what I did? Yup, I walked straight into the unopened hatch. It was such a hard thud it disorientated me and I fell down the steps, landing on my bum against a cupboard! We shared ice packs on our lumpy painful heads for quite a while before we could do anything!

I have been finding parts of me that hurt for the last few hours. My left shoulder. My lower back, my bottom. Which is why I am sitting on a cushion.

Someone said that the definition of stupidity is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results. Like walking into a hatch, straight after someone else has walked into it! That really did knock some sense into me!