COWROAST CHRONICLE

Chapter 2-Ouse  Cruise  (1st Installment)

There are five “Ouses” in the United Kingdom; four in England and One in Scotland.

The English “Ouses” are:-

                

The Yorkshire Ouse

The Great Ouse

The Little Ouse

The Sussex Ouse

The one in Scotland is a tidal estuary in northern Shapinsay, part of the  Orkney Islands. If you want to double check you can look it up in “Ouse Who”

The name Ouse is thought to have Celtic origins, meaning ‘water’; so when you say the River Ouse or the Great River Ouse you are actually saying the ‘river water’ or ‘great water river’ which is almost as daft as the River Avon of which there are nine; five River Avons in England, three River Avons in Scotland and one River Avon in Wales,

The name "Avon" is derived from the Common Brittonic “abona” meaning"river". "River Avon", therefore, literally means "river river" As I say marginally dafter than “water river”

Of no interest to anybody “Abona” is also the Roman name for Bristol where the Avon meets the River Severn; thus the River Avon at Bristol means originally the River River at River. We could play this game for hours but life is short and there’s plenty more rubbish to be discussed.

My next floating purchase was “Connie Brown” which  was on the Great Ouse, moored near Huntingdon in what is now called Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire having lost its county status in 1974. Careless.

(Mr Huntingdon: “Mavis! Have you seen our county status? I’m sure it was behind the clock. Have you been cleaning again?”

“No Kevin. Don’t you remember? You insisted on taking it to Cambridge when you went to get your car serviced. You must have lost it there”.)

As the boat was named after the previous owner’s missus and therefore had no significance for me I renamed her Llamedos thinking Sodemall backwards was a witty and original name .

If I had a quid for every boat I’ve subsequently seen called “Llamedos”   I’d be a wealthy man.

She was a small, wooden 3 berth boat (2 in the cabin and one in the cockpit). An outboard engine of some age drove her and the price was right. i.e. cheap. The deal was done and I found a mooring for her at a yard opposite the Old Bridge Inn in Huntingdon.

As I say the outboard was a big old Chrysler of some vintage and after a couple of years of struggling with it I bit the bullet and coughed up for a new one. The temperamental Chrysler, which had the adorable habit of cutting out whenever I got within 20 feet of a fast flowing weir, was a big beast to remove before and re-install after repairs which were frequent and expensive. It had to go; my nervous disposition was such that the safety of my boat and more importantly me was at risk on a river which in the wrong weather i.e. British, could be unforgiving.

                                

The replacement, an Evinrude, straight out of the box, was very reliable without the accompanying heart stopping moments and smoke and rattles of its ageing predecessor.

For the next 5 Summers I cruised the Ouse from Bedford to Denver Sluice. The river had locks but not many, some of the guillotine variety, but much of the cruising was on long stretches of rural waterway, dotted with villages and pubs, of course, and the odd town, village or city including the aforementioned Bedford and Huntingdon , The Heminfords, St Ives and eventually the wonderful City of Ely; its cathedral standing like some  fairytale castle towering over the surrounding Fens.

I say “Summers” because cruising was rarely an option in the Winter months with the river often in flood along much of its length. Come October the boats were taken out of the water and put on hardstanding till the Spring. Even during the Spring or Autumn it was not unusual to find the boat floating over the rosebeds. Just south of Huntingdon near  Godmanchester is Portholme Meadow. At 104 hectares (257 acres) Portholme is probably the largest ancient water meadow in the United Kingdom.

In happier times when a monarch had a bit more executive power to be used when necessary rather than with an eye on the popularity polls the meadow was granted a charter of Common Rights by King John in 1212 and today is protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and is also a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).

King John’s charter (1212) prevented the area being divided, developed or enclosed and also imposed strict rules to its use. Animals were not allowed onto the ground until "Stocking Day", 13th May. I presume this meant cattle and sheep rather than locals donning fishnets and high heeling round Godmanchester.

When the Fenland rivers and dykes can’t cope with the flooding, water is passed down the line to Portholme flooding the moorings at Huntingdon on the way. The boatyard was run by a lovely bloke called Terry and he was not always given sufficient notice of the inundation meaning occasionally he had to get up in the middle of the night to take an axe to boat ropes to stop them being dragged under.

My reference in the first chapter to boatyard owners being compared to horse thieves of yore certainly did not apply to Terry. An eccentric affable man who enjoyed a libation, the yard was run in a very relaxed manner with boat owners having access to his tool shed with invaluable, free and frequent use of a battery charger. No additional charges were imposed for such use, a far cry from other yards and marinas I have used where the simple act of breaking wind without a licence would incur an invoice plus VAT.

On a couple of occasions I had to remind the landlord, Terry,  that I hadn’t had the annual bill for the mooring fees; I never took advantage of his relaxed attitude but I suspect some might.

I was woken one Sunday morning quite early. Terry lived on the site in a big house which for some reason always reminded me of Bates Motel which sported a couple of large old style loudspeakers-the trumpet shaped type. From these speakers blared the rousing Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles whilst Terry marched in full German uniform up and down the mooring.

I asked what was happening. “It’s Hitler’s birthday” Terry replied adding somewhat sorrowfully and very pissedly  “even Hitler can have a birthday”

I doubt I shall ever meet another boatyard/marina owner of his ilk but one thing of which I am sure. If the roles had been reversed Hitler would never have given Terry Kelly’s birthday a single thought.

Terry’s favourite drinking hole was the Victoria in the backstreets of Huntingdon (sadly no longer with us) and The Landlord (likewise) and he plus others went on a boating holiday on the Caledonian Canal. The story according to the Landlord was that one evening, having rowed ashore, this worthy crew was ensconced in a local hotel where the owner proudly displayed all his top shelf whiskies which were many in number. They decided that whilst there were far too many for each crew member to sample them all, they could by diligent application try them all between them; a feat which was achieved with, no doubt, accompanying beers. Needless to say they were slaughtered by the time they had to return to their boat. Once aboard a nightcap seemed in order to accompany a spag bol. After a while Terry excused himself and hurried outside to the stern where he could be heard enthusiastically praising God or so it sounded. After a while it was thought sage to check on his post prayer condition. He was found crying gently and advising all that he thought he had the D Ts. His reason was that whilst he had chundered copiously over the side on peering into the water there was no evidence of spag bol or anything else. A mystery indeed.

This was resolved when in the moonlight they spied a very disgruntled swan removing bits of pasta from his plumage having been in the line of fire when Terry found God. Oh how they laughed. Well, not the swan obviously.

On a recent visit to Huntingdon I saw the yard no longer existed but was a prime site for something tasteless I’m sure.

On the opposite side of the river was the Old Bridge Hotel. The “bridge” of medieval stone  reminds me of a tale from the Antonia Fraser book “Cromwell”

Upstream from Huntingdon is St Ives  the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell, always referred to by my Irish mother as the “bad ole baste”. Lady Antonia Fraser tells how, when he was a child, Cromwell, whose family lived on the banks of the river, got into difficulty near the bank and had to be saved from drowning by a young curate who was visiting Ollie’s parents.  Some years later, during the Civil War, Cromwell was leading his troops across Huntingdon Bridge when he saw the curate, now an older priest waiting to cross the other way.  Reigning in his horse he asked ”Do you remember me?” to which the  priest, who would have got on well with my mum, replied “I do Sir and I  wish I had put you back”    Nobody knows what happened to him after that but even without his  warts Cromwell was a nasty piece of work so I fear the worst. Anyway it was a story I recalled each time I crossed the bridge at Huntingdon between my mooring and the Old Bridge Hotel opposite

 

Posh by my standards The Old Bridge fulfilled a need and was always a welcome pint after the Friday evening drive up to Huntingdon. It was also the place I discovered one of my more embarrassing cock-ups.

Recently appointed as Civic Centre Manager at Harrow I was responsible for security of the complex which of course included the system for issuing and retrieving keys to offices and areas that warranted locking, usually overnight. One such area was the Office Suite of the Chief Executive. In the brief period since my appointment I was aware of the discipline necessary to ensure keys were returned when no longer needed and had underscored this in my meetings with Security Staff.

At this time there were moves to oust the Chief Executive for reasons I can’t recall but eventually he got the big pay off and departed one Friday afternoon.. I was instructed to check and lock his office when he left. That evening, sat in the Old Bridge Hotel pint in hand looking across the river at my boat bobbing I reached in my pocket for my cigarettes and, you’ve guessed it, pulled out the keys to the Chief Exec’s Office. In my keenness to get to Huntingdon I’d failed to return the bunch to the Security Office. Maximum embarrassment. Both in having to phone the Night Security staff and tell them-they of course had been searching for the keys unable to believe that the new Civic Centre Manager would be such an arse as to not return them. Even greater embarrassment on the Monday morning walking into the office with the keys. For some reason the room was full of security staff and others all there, I assumed, to witness the degradation of a man with his tail so firmly between his legs that walking was very awkward. I never made that mistake again. And of course it took the pleasure out of that weekend.

But there were many other weekends and I fell in love with the Ouse and its waterside towns and villages, their history and of course their pubs.

Let’s start at the attractively named Denver Sluice which is as far as you can cruise north on the Great Ouse without hitting salt water.

Designed originally in 1651 by Cornelius (later Sir Cornelius) Vermyden to bar tidal water from the low fen areas and to improve navigation. Denver lock is the main navigation structure linking the south Level River system to the tidal river and then to the middle level or the sea. North of Denver Sluice is Kings Lynn and The Wash taking you into the North Sea.

Earlier attempts (going back to the Romans) to drain the Fens had not been hugely successful.

Real progress did not come until the expertise of the abovementioned Sir Cornelius Vermuyden was employed. The first known activities of Vermuyden (born in Holland in 1595) in England were on the Thames, repairing a sea wall at Dagenham and the reclamation of Canvey Island, Essex, between 1621 and 1623, financed by the Dutch haberdasher Joas Croppenburg a relation by marriage though presumably not his wife.

This, or perhaps other work at Windsor, brought him to the notice of Charles I, who commissioned him in 1626 to drain Hatfield Chase in the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire, as the King was Lord of the four principal manors there: Hatfield, Epworth, Crowle and Misterton, as well as 13 of the adjacent manors.  (I assumed that this might be one of the reasons Cromwell didn’t like him but in fact Ollie was born into one of the county’s wealthier families albeit what we would now call cash starved).

The Fens  project financed by thirteen 'Adventurers' (the venture capitalists of the time) as well as the Fourth Earl of Bedford, began in 1634 with the successful obtaining of a charter from Parliament allowing them to drain the peat part of the Fens, the Bedford Level. Vermuyden, being the most eminent drainage expert, and disputing criticism by rival engineers such as Jan Barents Westerdyke, drained the Bedford Level under an arrangement by which he would receive about 38,500 ha of the drained lands. During the 1630s nine major drainage cuts were built, ranging in distance from 2 to 21 miles. Vermuyden drained the area twice since dykes were broken by Parliament in 1642 during the Civil War in order to stop a Royalist advance.

Despite the initial success of the reclamation, the drying of the land caused the peat to shrink greatly thus lowering the land below the height of the drainage channels and rivers, and the reclaimed farmland became susceptible to flooding once again. By the end of the 17th century, much of the reclaimed land was sporadically underwater, and would remain so until the advent of steam-powered pumps in the early 19th century. An excellent example of this fall in land can be seen at the pumps near Ramsey Forty Foot, where animal-powered pumps, steam pumps and now fossil-fuel pumps are all co-located, at different heights, giving an example of both the development of technology and the fall in land levels.

The present structure was built in 1834 by Sir John Rennie, before being enlarged in the 1920s. The sluice forms part of the flood defence system that protects the Fens from flooding.
Over time, four more sluices have been built nearby re-directing water . The whole site is named the "Denver Complex". None of the five sluices are geographically within the Ouse Washes, but they are major players in the operation and management of the Washes and are all controlled by Environmental Agency staff based at the Complex.

I can’t say that Denver Sluice is pretty. Looking functional with sluices and gates and railings it can seem very bleak on a November morn, or indeed, any morn.

However there are moorings nearby which are pretty and a decent pub called the Jenyns Arms which does food and accommodation.

 I visited the pub annually for the three years before 2020  pandemic and on each occasion my visit coincided with a very jolly lunch of some 30 ladies all wearing red hats; these are, unsurprisingly, the  Red Hat Ladies.

 A few years ago, an English poet named Jenny Joseph (1932-2018) wrote a poem called “Warning”. This poem starts off with:

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me”
spurring a whole generation, and more, of women to confront getting older with gusto and not be grey and invisible and giving the idea of forming the Red Hat Ladies.

Their website tells us that wherever you go, you may now see ladies around town sporting their purple outfits and their fabulous red hats, taking inspiration from the poem which is about embracing life and fun, rather than being held back by age, and what everyone expects an old lady to be and do.

The idea quickly spread and now there are chapters all over the world - including the UK, Europe, Australia, Canada, as well as the United States...  There are certainly plenty of Chapters round Denver Sluice; here are just five to be going on with

• Sluice Women in Downham Market, Norfolk (I suspect they might have been the jolly crowd I encountered)
• Downham Divas in Denver, Downham Market, Downham Market 
• Fiery Fillies in King's Lynn, Norfolk 
• The Wacky Women of Wisbech in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire 
• The Purple Pashminas in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire 

I think the whole poem should be shown-

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Acknowledgement:
© Jenny Joseph, SELECTED POEMS, Bloodaxe 1992.

 

A 1996 survey by the BBC identified this poem as the UK’s most popular post-war one, beating Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night.” 

As I’ve already said the Red Hat, unsuitably worn with purple clothes, finally gave the name to the Red Hat Society

The poet, who in fact thoroughly disliked the colour purple, greeted this success with a mixture of astonishment, pleasure and weary frustration. Warning was, after all, just one poem in a considerable and wide-ranging body of work of which most of its readers remained unaware. Joseph issued denials: the piece was not autobiographical and she did not plan to fulfil its outrageous promises (“I shall ... pick the flowers in other people’s gardens/ And learn to spit”). But they went unheeded. People expected her to come and read to audiences as the self portrayed in the poem.

Jenny was born in Birmingham, where her father, Louis, was an  antiques dealer whose knowledge and enterprise quickly brought a family move to a new home in Buckinghamshire, from where he ran a successful shop in Knightsbridge, London. Jenny attended Badminton school and won a scholarship to study English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, in 1950.

After graduating, she had worked variously as a teacher of English as a foreign language, a cleaner (in hard times) and a reporter for local newspapers such as the Oxford Mail; she also worked in South Africa for a radical publishing enterprise, Drum, just as apartheid was coming into full force with the election of the early Nationalist governments. She was in effect expelled from the country for her views, though she was reticent about her life and work during that period.

Returning to Britain, in 1961 she married Charles Coles and raised three children while working with her husband as proprietors of the Greyhound, a west London pub. Despite all the effort that required, she went on to produce Persephone (1985), a modern retelling of the myth of rape mingling poetry and prose, Led By the Nose (2002), a calendar of a year in her Cotswold garden with its distinctive scents, and volumes of poetry at regular, if long, intervals.

As I write this I see with sadness that the Jenyns Arms is currently closed-something to do with an outstanding subsidence insurance claim-and I do sincerely hope that they reopen soon and the Sluice Women again have a base for their colourful and joyful lunches and passing boaters can slake their thirst.