Mission 'Poo Pump'

Well the wheezily, asthmatic British summer breathed it's last gasp this weekend. Seeing fit to belatedly bless us with some much needed aseasonal sunshine after one of the wettest Augusts on record. So we made the most of it by joining our mate Cyndi on her 48 foot narrow boat 'Louise' for an important mission along the Regent's Canal - Operation 'Poo Pump'. With the septic tank worryingly and hazardously full this was a time dependent but still slow travelling cruise. Our destination was the servicing facilities in the Limehouse Basin...and most crucially access to that all important pump.

London's canals are serene, green arteries that wind their way through the city's sprawl, largely far from the madding crowd. Despite the depressing slew of rubbish that stacks up around each weir, the canal water was surprisingly clear...OK, you probably wouldn't want to quaff a pint of the stuff, but the coots, ducks and moorhens that paddled and dabbled amongst the reeds and weed seemed pretty content. The apparently exhuberantly optimistic fishermen dangling floated lines into the water were further evidence of either a recovering ecology or the simple triumph of hope over reality.

Once we'd secured Cyndi's cat Parsley inside the boat (adverse to and unnerved by the sound of the engine, cutely known as 'Thelma' - do you see what Cyndi's done there?! - Parsley has to be shut inside to prevent him doing a runner the instant Thelma rumbles into life) we set off at a distinctly un-Clarkson style pace of a little under 6 miles per hour...brisk pedestrians and joggers on the towpath easily leaving us in their wake. The sedate speed alone almost compelled us to wind down and relax and our progress was unhurried in the warm sun. The experience was made more amenable still by a drop or two of vino and some crackly tunes from a pirate radio station on Cyndi's wind-up tranny.

We had to traverse a series of five locks as we descended to the level of Limehouse, where a final set of gates were all that separated us from the loopy currents of the Thames and the potential for an Arthur Ransome-esque adventure - 'We didn't mean to go to sea!'. Each time we cranked the sluices on the heavy gates, unleashing swirling, frothing torrents of water into or out of the locks, we attracted a small, curious crowd of onlookers; children peering mesmerised into the churning foam with anxious parents lurking behind, or lovers pausing to share a little of the romance of it all.

Amongst the Gin Palaces of Limehouse, the floating embodiment of the fact that money really cannot buy you good taste...or even a half decent looking boat, we got down to the job in hand - pumping the poo. A slightly less than ideal aperitif before lunch, the suction pipe clamped itself into the boat's drainage socket and a useful if disconcerting window in the nozzle revealed that the vacuum thus created was doing it's job and drawing an unsavoury looking brown soup from the vessel. A few minutes later and the septic tank was empty and after a picnic on the wharf amidst the weirdly silent and devoid of life modernist architecture of London's Docklands we were off back to Cyndi's preferred mooring in Victoria Park.

It was 7.30pm by the time we tied up again, following a round trip of ten locks, forty swung gates and umpteen cranked sluices that had taken us the best part of six hours. Our purpose had been the ten minute shit-suck, but that wasn't really the point as the pleasure was all in the journey - sometimes it really is the reward (unless you're a coprophiliac!).