Exciting so far!

Well, so far sitting still has seen much more excitement than cruising!

I was very happy to tie up near the woods yesterday as the wind had really started to get up. It increased in strength throughout the afternoon, so that by 4pm it was blowing a hooley. I had just taken Bon along the towpath when I saw a hire boat coming round the bend with the crew clearly struggling for control. As I watched, he lost it entirely and, missing my boat by a whisker, ploughed full speed into the Canal and River Trust boat moored behind me. Why CART insist on using nothing but blue string to secure their boats is beyond me but predictably all three strings snapped on impact setting the work boat free. The hire boat was blown into the bank with its stern having unnatural relations with my stern and its bow jammed up the chuff of the work boat.

I returned having watched them struggle for a bit and offered my help which was accepted with alacrity. I tried to steer them off backwards but the wind was too strong, so I eventually managed to manoeuvre their boat so that it was alongside mine and then told them to gun it for all they were worth. It is just as well I am getting my boat blacked on my return as I must have lost several coats of paint along the stern! They shot off like a cork out of a bottle and I turned my attention to the work boat. It didn’t look particularly damaged so I rescued some strands of string and retied the boat to the metal shuttering – a little further away from mine just in case!

The next morning Bonny and I went for our morning walk. With much trepidation I decided on a trust exercise and let her off the lead.

Here she is considering her options…

You can still just about see her as a spot in the distance

Waiting for me to catch up – trust justified!

These are the woods at Hopwas – beautiful even with no leaves yet on the trees…

And here is one of many pill boxes that line the banks of the Tame. Apparently they were worried about Germans using the rivers to invade during the Second World War

Much to my relief Bonny and I returned to the boat together. I made a cuppa and then sat outside while she mooched around the towpath and then settled down to meditate on the rabbits in the field.

All of a sudden her ears and tail shot up and she jumped to her feet. Fortunately I managed to grab her just as she started a bout of hysterical barking. Turning, I saw two horses approaching with riders. There is nothing in this world that Bonny is more scared of and she was beside herself. The horses didn’t look too impressed either, so I bundled her into the boat. Unfortunately she was struggling so much that I missed my footing and fell down the three steps into the boat, landing hard on my ankle. For one heart stopping moment I thought I had broken a second leg! But no, fortunately after the first shock of pain wore off, I found my ankle was just bruised. Bonny didn’t stop screaming with terror until about 15 minutes later!

So, that is the second day of our cruise. The weather is forecast to be wet and windy tomorrow and we are staying put so who knows what could happen!

Happy Boater!

I cast my lines off this morning which is about all the preparation I need to do for a holiday, and went cruising. Predictably as soon as I took hold of the tiller, the warm, sunny, settled weather came to an abrupt end and squally rain blew in. Of course I would prefer sun but still I was grinning like a loon as I worked up the locks.

The forecast is for generally windy weather all week so I have changed my plans. Instead of heading for the Shroppie,  which would mean I would hit the many locks of Penkridge on the wettest and windiest day, I have gone down the Coventry. There are less locks until I reach Atherstone which is helpful when the wind blows the boat around, making getting in and off lock landings hard work. The added bonus is Bonny and I get to moor at one of our favourite places… the woods at Hopwas.
It took us three and a half hours to get here and we arrived windblown and drippy but very happy. I am planning to stay here till Friday as Thursday is supposed to be wet and windy.

Photos to follow but to give a flavour, if I look out of my windows to port (left) there is a long field stretching to a railway line and a line of trees beyond that. To starboard there are the woods covering one of the only hills in the area, not a plantation either but a proper British wood …bliss. Squirrel hunting to follow when both of us are rested up.

It is so lovely to be away. I am so fortunate to have friends who actually want to spend time with me and work mates who are fun to be around but my soul craves solitude and it has been too long since my last retreat. Two weeks of this will sort me out a treat and that is just as well as the wedding season to come means that work will be full on till September.

When it stops raining I'll be out with my camera and share a photo or two.

Cruise Approaching

Sorry about the silence. Partly it has been that the working season has started up again and so I have less free time. Partly it is because I have a new toy – a Google Nexus 7 tablet which now doubles as my dongle and is fantastic fun to play with. As a result I have not been using my laptop and rather forgot about the blog!! The downside of using the tablet as a dongle is that for some reason it won’t let Internet Explorer work on my laptop so I can’t access my emails or any of the internet except for this which is a bit odd.

Anyway, enough computer stuff, there is a two week window in an otherwise pretty packed wedding season and I am grabbing it with both hands as I haven’t had a lone cruise in far too long! I am hoping to return to the Shropshire Union Canal as I loved it last time I was there and perhaps this time it won’t be raining every single day! I start on the 18th of this month.

Talking about rain, several people have asked how we coped through the wettest winter in a zillion years. Well, being on a boat was the answer. Because our canal water level is controlled by locks and by-washes, we had no problem at all; not the same for the poor boaters moored on a river! My only bugbear was the level of mud on every path and having to wash Bonny every time she stepped outside the boat. The upside for us was the mild temperatures. I got pumped out, dieseled up and watered right through the winter without once being iced in. Our hearts went out to all the poor folk living in flooded houses though.

So I shall next write when cruising as I might finally have something to say!

Boats and Bores

I am writing this from the Wyndham Arms Hotel in Clearwell, in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire - a pub / hotel to be recommended, especially for its food and dog friendliness. Stan and I have come to stay for a few days to view the Severn Bore. It was reported that today's bore would be the highest of the year. I'm afraid it didn't live up to expectations! The problem was there was just too much water. Instead of the wave humping up, it spread out across the landscape, which, while impressive in a floody sort of way, wasn't quite the surfing phenomena we had expected. Never mind, we are going to try again tomorrow - watching that is, not surfing.

Talking about Stan, he is selling his narrowboat. It is just not used enough to warrant keeping it. Here is a pic...

 

It is a 2007 50 foot tug style narrowboat with a very sexy sounding Gardner engine. It would be ideal as a leisure boat rather than a live aboard. He is asking £55,000 which is a cracking deal considering the age and lack of wear. It can sleep four and has the usual galley, saloon and berths. In short it is a proper boat! Anyone interested? leave me a message.

challenging pump out

We are facing the start of stoppages on the canal shortly, for maintenance work to be done to various locks. Each stoppage will last around 3 weeks and affects where I turn round at Alrewas and also means I can't reach Kings Bromley Marina where I usually fill up with diesel and pump out my poo!
So I decided to make the trip between Christmas and New Year. The weather was forecast good on Boxing Day so I decided to go up the flight and moor in the woods for a couple of nights to recover from being very sociable this month! The marina was opening just for 3 hours on the 28th so that fitted in beautifully. It also meant I could stay put on the 27th when a storm was forecast.

Well, the forecast was spot on and weather wise it worked out beautifully; sunny days with not too much wind when I needed to move and gales when I was sheltered in the woods. However other challenges awaited me. The first occurred half way up the lock flight when I suddenly lost all forward momentum. My first thought was that my propeller had been fouled by all the foliage floating in the canal. But even when I cleared my prop, I still had no power beyond 'tickover'. I managed to reach the top of the flight and tied up on visitors moorings. My friend Stan, who is very knowledgeable in things mechanical and had been helping work the locks with me, had a look. The bad news was my drive cable had snapped, the extremely lucky news was that the previous wonderful owners of Don't Panic had left a spare cable on board!  Stan fitted it for me and decided to come to Woodend Lock with me just to make sure all was well - and it was just as well he did.

Dredging is a key part of keeping the canals navigable but unfortunately CRT seem more keen on spending money on pointless exercises like replacing perfectly serviceable water taps or painting anything that moves, rather than removing silt from the canals. When I reached Woodend I discovered that there was about 6" of clear water and the rest was a mixture of silt, fallen leaves and branches. I ended up having to use my pole to punt the boat into the lock, with Stan helping. Then as I climbed out of the boat onto the lockside I slipped on wet leaves and had Stan not grabbed my arm I may well have ended up falling down between boat and lock wall.

After a restorative glass of wine, Stan left me to go home and I carried on into the woods to moor. Bonny had been so good during all the delays so, when I was mooring, I let her mooch about on the towpath with no tether. Unfortunately she got bored waiting for me and attached herself to a passing family out for a walk. Half an hour later I persuaded her to return with me!

Huge winds kept us stationary the next day which was lovely as I caught up with a bit of cleaning and a lot of resting. The next day I got pumped out and dieseled up and returned to near the top of the flight where I planned to spend a further night. Getting there took much longer than I had expected. Thanks to the storm there was loads of debris floating in the water and I had to stop several times to clear my prop and could really only travel at tickover speed to avoid big logs which could do real damage to the boat. Then I had to tackle Woodend again, this time on my own. Once I had fished a load of branches out of the lock, all went reasonably smoothly and I managed to get clear of the lock with a minimum of poling.

That night I decided to cook a chicken and have a good dinner. Half way through cooking the gas went out! So there I was, in the pitch dark with a torch, wrench and hammer, changing my gas bottles over. It took 20 minutes of unladylike language and bashing my wrench with a lump hammer to release the nut on the gas tank. By that time the chicken was only half cooked and cold so I had to start cooking again.

I got back to my mooring at lunch time today in the most glorious sunshine. It is good to be back for  a rest! Also to be safely moored before yet another storm hits us tomorrow. Well, even a 'housekeeping' trip can be exciting and this one was! Happy 2014 to all my readers.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all my readers!

We are having an amazingly mild winter so far. No ice, little frost - easy living! Long may it continue. I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas, whether afloat or bank side. And may 2014 be the year you see all your hopes and dreams come true.

Whether the weather...

Well, the storm passed us by. In fact I have heard more wind coming out of my dog than I heard that night! We were very lucky though as many other parts of the country suffered badly. Lynda, I note what you said about your part of the country - very sad. I felt a little silly though after putting an extra mooring rope on and hiding my planters, but you know what they say, better safe...

The next item on my things to worry about list is the winter. Radio 4 keep banging on about how incredibly cold it is going to be and others have pointed to the profusion of berries on all the trees and bushes around here as a sure sign of a harsh winter (could be an old wife's tale - not sure). Then someone on the TV said that this winter will make 2010 seem like spring! Here is a reminder of that winter...

Ah well, at least I've got my home owning friend Stan to help out this year. he has already provided me with free wood and has offered his tap if the water should freeze and his bath if I can't waste water on showers. He is a good friend. And if it's a harsh winter, it makes spring that much sweeter!