Today was Harecastle Tunnel Day. Harecastle is 2,926 yards long. It’s one-way, quite wide, dead straight, pitch black, and gives me the heebie-jeebies. This isn’t anything to do with the skeleton in the alcove about 450 yards from the northern entrance, or that the Kidsgrove Boggart reputedly haunts it – it’s the fans.
There aren’t any ventilation shafts in the tunnel, so when all the boats taking part in a particular passage are safely in and underway they shut the doors behind you and start up the ventilation fans. The closer you are to the southern end, the louder the fans are, it’s like being in front of a jet engine, you can barely hear yourself think. Three things put the wind up me; (no pun intended) tractors, tanks and giant fans.
We survived the trip, neither of us saw the Boggart and no one was blown away, Martyn gave the tunnel wall a tiny nudge, but honours are even because two years ago, I hit the tunnel as we exited. We are now moored up just a mile from the tunnel on the outskirts of Stoke-on-Trent at Westport Lake. I call it Goosepoo Lake because it’s home to hundreds of Canada Geese (or that’s how it seems to me) and we all know how prolific they are with what they leave behind. There’s a visitor centre and a very nice cafe. I’m working tomorrow and if the torrential rain stops perhaps I’ll send Martyn out to investigate.
On the way here we stopped at Middlewich to have some work done to the boat. We had new leisure batteries fitted, which we had planned, and a new bow thruster battery, which we hadn’t. That one battery alone cost over £350 which is painful, especially as we don’t even use the bow thruster that much. It doesn’t mean I’m not glad we have it, but we don’t rely on it in most situations. That got me thinking; one of the questions non-boaters wonder about – and a topic all boaters talk about – is how much it costs to run a boat. So here are our figures for last year:
- Gold CRT licence from 1 July – 31 December – £602 (Gold because we spent a lot of time on the River Thames) plus about £450 from the 2022/23 licence
- Insurance – £495
- Mooring fees £1809 (for our marina and other odd nights in marinas and on the River Thames)
- Diesel – £982 (ouch!)
- Coal, logs and kindling – £323
- Electricity – £150
- Gas – £170 (I cook a lot)
- A couple of engine services and some repairs – about £1000
- The approximate basic cost of our epic 930-mile 2023 journey – £6000
But the value of all that fun, friendship, new experiences and travel – priceless.
