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lindy@DeeTV

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  • Posts

    3
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Profile Information

  • Gender
    Female
  • Location
    BERKHAMSTED
  • Occupation
    Community TV station, director
  • Boat Name
    Berkhamsted
  • Boat Location
    Berkhamsted

lindy@DeeTV's Achievements

Gongoozler

Gongoozler (1/12)

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  1. Just to put the record straight. When my late ex husband Mike sold Bridgewater Boatyard for residential development, I moved heaven and earth to stop it loosing it’s link with the waterway. We really wanted to make it into a community boatyard offering apprenticeships in traditional waterway crafts including steel boatbuilding. There had been a noisy working boatyard there since 1799 so complaining neighbours would not have stood an earthly. Many years of hard work at least ensured that an acceptable development was built, a workshop rebuilt, and the slipway retained as a planning condition. I also achieved a condition that it should be a ”working boatyard” but DBC currently are not fulfilling their duty in ensuring that! Hundreds of waterways movers and shakers helped me in the campaign, without them we would not have got as far as we did, to them I am eternally grateful. David Hilling worked with me on the eight desks through Berkhamsted, recording our waterways history. Phil Speight ‘bless him’ painted the five wonderful signs we have. We also produced a leaflet of the waterways in the area which all helped influence the inspector. I made the web site for Save our Wharf on Iweb so it no longer exists, but I have found our previous rather amateur site which shows how the fight progressed. See … http://websfor.org/saveourwharf/home/home.asp In retrospect I suppose a community boatyard was pie in the sky, but it would have been great if we had achieved it - we did make sure the development was not totally residential - and it is visually acceptable with a waterway feel about it. Those of us who love and care for our waterways did our best - it was not quite good enough! But we put hours and hours into trying.
  2. I was in the kitchen one day when I saw a flash of red (our ginger cat) and a flash of blue, I immediately rushed outside and rescued the kingfisher from the cat's mouth, held it in my hand just for a few minutes to check it was alright and then opened my hand for it to fly away, fortunately Mike had a camera at hand - so yes it is a really picture. If someone will tell me how to put a picture up on this site I will add a photo!
  3. Yes, we did own 1511. We bought it from the Birmingham Salvage Department in July 1965. I still have the receipt. We had £100 wedding present from one set of parents and £20 from the other, we had £5 of our own. We tendered £121 but for number 1511 only. We had been and looked at the whole fleet, which was being sold by Birmingham Council, and 1511 was the only one without sore knees. When we picked it up, it still had quite a lot of Birmingham Salvage in the hold, so that was the first job to clean it!!! We brought it down south with a 2hp seagull on the rudder, and nothing but a bicycle lamp to get us through both tunnels. I remember it took a whole day to get through Framers Bridge by the time we got all the detritus out of the locks so that we could get through. The intention had been to take it down to Kensal Green, but when we moored overnight in Berkhamsted, Charlie and Madge who were the land lords of the Crystal Palace, were so warm and lovely to us we never moved on. Locals kept us going, dropping food into the bow cockpit from the local allotments, our neighbours helped with the conversion. We started by living in the day cabin on the boat, which was tiny, but it had a dead mans stove to keep us warm. Rosie Bray even made us bacon rolly polies (one of her specialties – she even invited me into her cabin to show me how she did it!). Bill Whitlock painted roses for us in the cabin; we still have the cabin stool and buckby can he did for us. Some day I will write up the six years living on 1511, and the passion that led us to starting Bridgewater Boats in 1971. Building and running the fleet, which started with just one boat, was very hard work, often 17 hours a day, always 7 days a week, but never regretted and still a great memory. Lindy
  4. ... cont what I would like from anyone who has them would be any pics or footage of them on boats during their working lives. I have their personal photo's but it is working ones I am looking for - any help would be much appreciated - do call me the phone number is on the DeeTV web site.

  5. Hi Laurence, Lindy here - Bridgewater Boats - IWAAC - Berkhamsted etc. As you may already know Gladys Horn died - the funeral was last week. About a year ago I filmed here talking about her life on the boats - all the boats she and Sam had worked on - and the people they had worked with - I have over an hours footage which I am about to edit in Final Cut and I will put it up on www.deetv.tv

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