We ran some Valentine's cruises on the trip boat on both Friday and Saturday evening. These trip departed Norbury at 7pm and went to High Onn and back, collecting the popular Fish and Chips at Gnosall on the outward leg of the journey. It's the first trips that the boat has done this year. Unfortunately the weather was against us on Friday, but was much better last evening. Keep an eye out on our website for our forthcoming trips here http://www.norburywharfltd.co.uk/passenger-trip-boat/

We had an extremely busy day yesterday, it was certainly a case of all hands to the deck and we even had to rope some of the seasonal staff in to work! In total we had Denise in the Tea Room, Ange in the shop, office and chandlery, Mrs. Handbag cleaning and Bernard, Billy, Fred and myself turning the boats round.

We successfully sent out Phantasy, Phoenix, Ember, Sphynx and Pacific. The last three have been hired by our regular customer Laurance who has taken 24 children, it was a great sight, but I must say that I don't envy him. Do give them a wave if you see them.

We have swapped in both docks today, so Pippin will have a bit of tlc on her paintwork this week before she goes out on hire on Friday.

Best regards, David.

No quite back to normal

I am not referring to me in the title, you will be glad to know that I am all recovered from yesterdays little incident! I am however referring to the boat yard still being without power; as we have several boats out this coming weekend, the cottage too and we need to finish painting a roof on a boat in the wet dock we have had to improvise a little, we have two generators running the freezers, one computer and from lunch time we managed to get the phones back on, we have the trip boats inverter running other things in the office, a genny running lights in the dock and the girls cleaning the boats are using the inverters on them to power the hoovers, thank goodness for inverters and our trust generators, we cant however do any cooking, or serve diesel, or do pump outs, but the later probably isn't a bad thing given yesterday episode (Peter is still keeping his head down) as we cant cook anything in the tea room we ended up with a toaster on the wharf plugged in to one of the several extension leads just so we could have some breakfast, and fish and chips were in order from our local chippy for lunch!
We were lucky that after the really bad winds yesterday we have suffered no real damage except we have no power so I am grateful for that, and we have not been flooded like so many!

captured on camera this morning.

WIND,rain, POOH and power cuts

It feels like the end of the world is upon us at Norbury at the moment, this morning saw the most horrendous rain, then the wind came, so coupled with the rain it was just vile, most jobs around the yard continued as normal although we haven't had Bernard,Mick or David in today so there wasn't too much going on, We docked a boat for survey first thing and then I asked Peter to do some pump outs on the hire fleet ready for the weekend, now Peter is new to pump outs and i had previously showed him how to do it, so he popped back into the office and said that he was just about to start doing them at which point the pub opposite rang us to say that"Now I don't know much about boats but it looks like you have a shower of Pooh coming out of the wharf" needless to say I shot out of the door and sure enough there was a shower of something coming from a slit pipe on the wharf, Unfortunately Peter had knocked one of the valves on the machine causing it to blow rather than suck, I ran as fast as I could through the shower to turn the machine off, the wind covered me in the stuff as I ran past the split pipe, once turned off it stopped and the rain was so bad you couldn't see any evidence of the incident except to say that I then smelt like I had just come out of a settling tank in a sewage plant, not too impressed with this I headed off home for a shower and to get changed, upon returning to work Peter was keeping a low profile, the wind had increased to near gale force and whilst talking to a customer on the phone everything went dead, and that was that, a power cut, probably down to a pole down somewhere, We waited for half an hour and decided to call it a day, so we locked up and we all went home.

If you have been trying to get hold of us late this afternoon I am sorry that you couldn't but alls being well we should be back up to speed tomorrow.

I hope you all have a safe evening!

Simon

this and that

hi all, theres not an awful lot to report today but i will do my best.
we docked sphinx this morning for survey and then she was out we docked pacific which is the new boat going into the fleet this year. fred has pressure washed her today ready for peter to black her tomorrow and paint the counter bands then when she comes out we have to clean her ready for this coming weekend.
denise and i have been quite busy in the tea room today, at one stage the shop was full of customers :-)
david has been putting lights on the trip boat ready for this coming friday and saturdays valentines fish and chip supper....yes, we are running 2 three hour trips, one on friday and one on saturday, departing here at 7pm and picking the fish and chips up in gnosall on the way down to high onn. fridays trip has the full 42 passengers on and we have a couple of places left for saturday, so if you fancy a valentines evening with your loved one for £29.99 give us a call on 01785 284292. 
mick has been cracking on with gas checks on the boat and there has been quite a lot of people looking at brokerage boats.
well thats it from me until next time, sorry for the short post (they will get longer, honest)....byeee ange.

Titford Pump House 06/02/2014

Last Thursday evening saw me heading over to Oldbury to attend a talk presented by Malcolm Braine in the Titford Pump House. This lovely building stands proud adjacent to the top lock of the six that lead off of the Wolverhampton level at Oldbury Junction and is at the highest point of the Birmingham Canals.

Titford Pump House

The evening had been organised by the Birmingham Canal Navigations Society (BCNS) http://bcnsociety.com/ and was extremely well supported with in excess of 80 people turning out on a rather damp February evening.

Malcolm talked us through an incredible number of photographs from his first experiences on the canals, his introduction to the boatyards that maintained and repaired the boats and to his days spent at Norton Canes on the Cannock Extension Canal where he operated his own successful boatyard (rebuilding and maintaining old boats and building new boats). He begun at 7.30pm and concluded at 10.45pm with a short break in the middle.

Malcolm Braine, October 2013 at Weston.

Pouring canal water over the Cactus, celebrating his 50th year of ownership!

I always enjoy talking to Malcolm, but I must say that I came home on Thursday evening in ore of the experiences that he encountered on a canal system that is somewhat different these days and extremely enthused. 

Best regards,

David.

It's been a gorgeous day here today. The sun was shining when I came to work this morning and is still shining as a write this blog. Although the sun has been shining it has still been cold.

We had three dayboats go out this morning, one of which has already returned. They went south to High Onn, turned round and had Sunday lunch in the Navigation at Gnosall, which comes highly recommend. The other two boats have gone north to The Wharf Tavern at Goldstone.

We were inundated with customers at lunchtime. We had over 20 scooters turn up from the Stoke on Trent Scooter club. That kept Denise and Ange out of mischief in the kitchen for a couple of hours, and there was lots of washing up to be done when they departed. Here's a picture of some of the scooters on the car park.

Bernard has been busy finishing off a service and one of the engines over on one of the boats that is out next weekend.

That's it from me for today.

Until next week...

Best regards, David.

bit late

morning everyone, i was supposed to write this blog last night but had problems with my internet so apologies for that.
we had 1 day boat go out, it's a good job the weather was better as it has been absolutely foul here the last few days, freezing cold and very windy.
phoenix returned to us with very happy people aboard, they had a very relaxing week cruising to market drayton and back.
pippin went out on friday for a week with returning customers of ours and phoenix today also with returning customers, it is nice to see people return, we must be doing something right :-)
i have been in the office and tea room for most of the day today as david has been outside working on day boats and internal checks on the hire fleet and denise has been out cleaning boats and wharf cottage. i did a couple of holiday bookings and a couple of day boat bookings, i even had to do a bit of cooking. denise moans at me when i have been cooking as i make such a mess, she walked into the kitchen and thought i had been making breakfasts all day as it was such a mess in there and i had only cooked 2 bacon and egg sandwiches ;-)....sorry den, that will teach you to leave me on my own.
bernard has been servicing engines and mick is still wading through the gas checks on the hire fleet.
sorry for the short post but there is not much to report at this time of the year....roll on the summer, until next time, byeeeeeeeeeeeee, ange.