Questions

Walk-ups fill the cratch board on fine days, so the answer is usually yes, seat by the urn. Booked seats board first; that is the whole difference.

Forty-one miles from Kesselford to Bridgmoor Basin, twenty-seven locks, one summit. The yard clerk says forty-two in wet weather, which is a joke with a footnote.

Canalware tradition, Martha Marlow, and a standing house rule from 1911: a dull boat on the Bridgmoor is nobody's fault but ours.

Visiting boats are welcome Tuesday to Saturday. Book a dock week ahead; the 1911 pump likes notice and the yard clerk insists on it.

Once a year at the festival, the Nell & Ivy pair is worked by horse for one weekend. Islay's meadow still receives its hay monthly, which the firm considers a pension.

There is. It holds Martha's enamel orders from 1902 and is opened exactly once a year, by Nesta, over the shop standard review. It is fictional, but it is very real in the fiction.

A person who stands on bridges watching boats work locks, fondly. The firm's records show gongoozlers have watched Hesketh & Marlow boats since 1903, which we count as seniority.

You don't. The Lock 14 tea room bakers hold it the way the compound dipper holds batch 31-C, except they will actually tell you: it is not the recipe, it is the oven.