A good few months ago, I vividly remember seeing a load of little boats pootling around on the pond next to The Princess of Wales pub, up on the heath. I think it was a weekend, and they were remotely controlled sail boats. Not noisy remote control Gin Palace style boats… These little beauties were genuine tiny sail boats – the remote controls were only used for pulling on the rigging to adjust the positions of the sails relative to the wind – so they were completely silent.
It was a really delightful sight to behold, and they had quite an appreciative little crowd building up around them. And it reminded me of sailing boats across a pond with my dad and his dad a long time ago.
Anyway, a little googling revealed that the most likely candidates were the Blackheath MPBC (which stands for Model Powered Boating Club). So I called their organiser (Phil Abott), to try and find out when they will be there next, so that you could all come and admire them too.
I got a very simple answer. Never.
Or at least, not in the near future. The reason for this is that a sign has been put up next to the pond banning the use of powered boats, and they don’t want to take the risk that their boats will be considered as powered. They used to run some steam powered boats (which also sounds like it would be a lovely sight!), and a small number of powered boats.
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- No powered boats, blackheath bylaw sign
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- Blackheath Model Boat Regatta 1956
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- Blackheath Model Boat Regatta 1952
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- Blackheath Model Boat Club 1928
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- Blackheath Model Boat Club 2008
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- Model boats on the pond in Blackheath in the 1960s
Land management of the heath isn’t run by the council – it is outsourced to a company called Glendale Grounds Management, who have to give their permission for any “event” to take place. They said that the boating could go ahead, but only if the club could stump up £75 for the privilege of sailing their little boats on the pond… I could start banging on about the corporatisation of public spaces, but I suppose I didn’t plan for this to be that sort of blog…
So the people that you might see with their boats on the pond aren’t members of the Blackheath club (Phil said two elderly gents take their boats down there on Sunday mornings). The Blackheath club had been sailing on the pond since 1928, but now they’ll be casting off in Hackney’s Victoria Park instead.
- The black and white photo above is of model boats on the pond in the 1960s – photo by flickr user paolotich.
- The photo at the top shows the Blackheath Model Boat Club Regatta in 1956.
- Blackheath Byelaws Blog.
- Contact details for the model boating club can be found here.
- Googlemap here.
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6 Comments
August 6, 2008 at 10:35 am
How absolutely and utterly ridiculous! What possible excuse can Glendale come up with for this?!
August 8, 2008 at 10:45 am
I agree with Kate, how absolutely and utterly ridiculous. Even if the club stumped up the £75 they would probably then be asked to take out £2million public liability insurance.
On a lighter note, the post did take me back to my early teenage years when we had some amazing boats powered by miniture jet engines, called ‘Jetex’ I think. Incredibly fast and inaccurate they would probably have decapitated an unwary swimmer but never did, as far as I’m aware. Went out of production way back and being potential terrorist material certainly wont make a come back.
August 11, 2008 at 12:02 am
[...] less serene than model boats on the pond, I spotted this YouTube video filmed on Blackheath the other day. I’m less keen on this, but [...]
August 16, 2008 at 11:11 pm
The byelaws blog was one of my attempts at creating an online conversation about how we wanted to have the heath used. As you can see it wasn’t entirely successful, probably because I didn’t do any marketing.
One tiny correction. The Blackheath Joint Working Party is the holders of the keys to events on the heath. Glendales would find it uncomfortable doing anything without their say so. Or at least that was the way it was when I sat on it.
September 26, 2008 at 10:19 am
The byelaw seems to say that “power driven” means anything emitting vapour / fumes:
(3) In byelaw 35(2), “power-driven” means driven by the combustion of petrol vapour or other combustible vapour or other combustible substances.
February 28, 2009 at 10:41 am
[...] they can at the moment, but this does seem a rather depressing little monument to have next to the boating pond. I wonder what the modern equivalent should be to the municipal waterfountain? Some free wifi [...]