Downsides, but hey ........

Today I have hit the first real problem with being a boater. Long story but ...... next Sunday I will be flying out to India! We bought a boat to take the pressure off me having to meet the mortgage payments. Because I am self employed there is always the worry about where the next penny is coming from. However ... since we have lived on the boat, despite my having given up some branches of employment I didn't feel the need to do any more, my work has increased in other areas and all of a sudden I have more work than I need!! I do feel that part of this is to do with my more relaxed attitude to everything - people notice these things! However when  I was asked to go and work in India for a month I was excited and apprehensive in just about equal measure.

Having done some research, making payments by visa in India can be problematic and I was advised to get a mastercard as a back up. Now, no matter how hard up we were in the past, we always paid our way and had a very good credit status. So imagine my frustration when I was refused a credit card this time. I am still not entirely clear why I was refused - the companies I have consulted have not been forthcoming, but I suspect it was because I do not have a 'proper' address. I am so cross!! We sold our house and bought a boat - we have savings for God's sake!! I don't actually need credit I just want an alternative to visa in case I need it!

Part of our problem is that we are totally 'up front' about our situation. A lot of people enjoy living on a boat because they can dodge all sorts of things - television licence. council tax. etc. They simply give an address of a relative as their permanent residence, but we wanted to be totally up front about how we live - we are proud of it! Our marina is a 'leisure' park on which people are only allowed to be for approximately 10 months of the year. In reality there are numerous 'liveaboards' like us and the sooner this is legitimised the better. We are currently applying for 'residential' status which will increase our mooring fees considerably, but we don't care! Maybe we might just be 'credit worthy' then.

Apart from that it has been a lovely day! I am trying to prepare for India - got my next raft of jabs tomorrow, have ordered my deet anti-mosquito spray and am washing all my light summer gear. In the meantime I filled the water tank and put in some purification tablets and I have to say the water coming out of the tap is pretty good, although I still won't make tea with it!!

The cider is coming on really well:

We racked it off today and also treated the cider in the barrel, adding some yeast and sugar. Our neighbours saw us swilling out demijohns and very soon there was a crowd offering advice and comparing notes. This prompted me to bring out some of our damson and sloe Gin to see how it was doing and I have to say it was sensational!! That will all be supped well before Christmas! This prompted J, one of our student boaters (sensible kids living on a boat instead of exhorbitant university accommmodation) to go and get his sloe gin and we all had a taste. The chutney then came out and my blackberry chutney went down well (quite a kick with the chillis!) and someone else produced some apple and date chutney which just begged for cheese, so we all raided our fridges. All in all a great community spirit, and of course another afternoon which just disappeared without much getting done!

I then took Jack for a walk and in the knowledge that I will soon be in arid India, I soaked up the autumn colours - my favourite time of year. Albert Camus, (another one of my heroes) said:

'Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower'    So true!

Here is Jack enjoying his walk on the tow path!

We have booked a mini break at Haweswater, our favourite lake in the Lake District, for some walking on Wednesday and Thursday and I fly to India next Sunday, so I'm not sure how many blogs I will get in now until I go. I will be back mid December when some interesting boating stuff happens so please bear with me and I will be back soon.....

Al :)

Water, water everywhere!

It's been another learning curve today! We decided it was time we changed the water filter as they normally need changing every year and it has been almost exactly a year since we first moved onto the boat full time.

Our builder told us that there is no urgency if we are not drinking the water and I refuse to drink it because it has a strange 'tang' to it and being a discerning tea drinker I don't like it. We fill a 5 litre bottle from the tap on the jetty every day - spoilt I know, but we all have our little quirks and I do like my cup of tea to taste proper!

However, I still brush my teeth using the water from the tank, so it is still very important to me that it is hygenic!

Our filter is under the bed, so we pulled the mattress off, (quite a mean feat in itself given the limited space) and took some of the stuff we had stored out from under the bed. P blames me for what happened next! He just touched the filter and suddenly all hell broke loose. I heard the water pump kick into action plus the sound of water spurting under pressure. P pushed past me screaming 'open a tap up'! so I rushed into the bathroom and turned on the tap, by which time P had turned off the pump at the control centre.

It turns out the filter had fractured (probably as a result of me throwing something heavy into the storage space). So until we had managed to go and buy another filter we were without water. Basically without the filter in situ the pump thinks a tap is on so it starts pumping. Unfortunately this happened in the space under our bed leaving a damp pool which we had to clear up. We managed to get to the chandlery which had a pump the size we needed and P spent the afternoon fitting it and trying to stop it from leaking. Finally after a few false starts the water flowed freely without leaking and our water supply suddenly seemed to flow a lot more freely than it had for a long time. We think that the filter had needed changing for a long time and was actually clogging up the system. All we need to do now for a totally pure system is put a couple of disinfecting tablets in the tank which we will do next week.

Water is a bit of a problem at this time of year. All boats have a problem with condensation, especially in cupboards which are near to outside walls. We wake up every morning and have to wipe the windows down with a towel. We hope to get some double glazing done next year, which will solve the problem, but this is low down on our list of priorities, after solar panels and a state of the art generator. The worst problem is in the wardrobes in the bedroom and we get around it by putting silicon crystals in them which soak up the moisture. There also needs to be a lot of air circulation but unfortunately my clothes are jam packed into the wardrobes which P is always complaining about. I really do need to reduce the amount of clothing I own!!

I think it would be useful if I write down the sites of where we get our 'stuff' from for potential boaters, (for example the silicon crystals) and I will try and make this a feature of future blogs.

Have been really busy recently, but hope to post more blogs in the near future - please continue to 'watch this space'!

Al :)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Today I cycled the 6 miles into our nearest town and it was beautiful. The air was crisp and it was raining autumn leafs as I went through the wooded lanes. The autumn colours are really starting to come through and when I went over the little beck which flows under the canal, it was in spate and flowing noisily. It's as though it is making a last statement of the joy of being in the full flush of life before the big freeze of winter stops it in its tracks.

Our county council are really bike friendly and I can cycle for miles without seeing a car. The route into our local town (it's a city actually) is sensational. It starts down country lanes as it winds out of the village, goes through the university campus (where son number two is in his final year), meanders through leafy and wooded lanes and joins the canal on entry to the town centre.

On my return J the whippet had come to see us so I took him for a long walk in the afternoon sunshine.

The frustration of the day was no internet access! Because we don't have a landline, we rely on a dongle and they can be temperamental. We rang our provider who said that because usage is low where we are, we are a low priority and the problem will take several days to fix. Because part of my work relies on internet access we signed up for 3 days of wifi provided by a specialist company who deal with boats, but it is expensive. This is because by definition they deal with occasional and leisure users who only want a few days worth of internet.

'Leisure' is the operative word here. Officially no one is supposed to 'liveaboard'. The understanding is that we all have a home to go to, but there is a huge amount of 'under the radar' living on boats. Personally we would like to have our status as 'liveaboards' recognised, but it is a thorny issue as it brings with it expenses like, council tax, tv licence etc. We would be happy to pay these ourselves but some other people are not so keen. There are processes in place now whereby 'residential' status can be applied for to a local council and our marina is currently doing so, but I think it will mean a lot of boats will leave as a result.

Just one word of caution to would be boaters - if you are moving to a boat for purely financial reasons, think again. To be comfortable you will need some regular income behind you, however small and it can be miserable if you don't have that. Boaters are friendly people and there is a great sense of community, but they are quick to spot economic refugees and they don't take kindly to dirty, unkempt boats turning up whose owners don't have the necessary respect and consideration for others. Everybody knows everybody on the canal and these people soon find themselves isolated. Maybe that seems harsh, but it's the way small communities work, so it's as well to be aware of it.

I am now on holiday for two weeks and P and I are well overdue for a long walk. I tore my knee in the summer, getting off L's boat and it is still giving me problems, so we have hardly done any fell walking recently, which is our favourite pastime! We love the Lake District and normally manage to fit in at least one walk a week. We like to do the high level stuff and challenge ourselves, which is difficult for me because I have a terrible fear of heights, but then they say you should do something that scares you every day. P says it's easy for him because he has to wake up next to me every morning - cheeky!! And on that note another little quote from a book I can highly recommend .......

'Feel the fear and do it anyway!!'
Susan Jeffers

Al :)

Visiting 'The Smoke'

I've been in London for a few days for work meetings and am just so glad to get back!

I used to live in London about 30 years ago and I loved it then. We used to go out most nights after work as I worked in the centre and I had my bike to get around. I had a great time then, but I have changed now. I'm impressed with how much it has changed, especially the cycle routes which are everywhere, but sitting on the tube this morning I felt quite miserable! Everybody is in a hurry and looks stern and unfriendly.

It was nice to stay with my sister and catch up, and the work stuff was useful and successful, but I couldn't wait to get home.

The minute I got back, I got the sawing frame out and sawed some wood, then I took J for a walk along the towpath and I started to feel the stress disappear.

The traffic on the canal is dying down now, but a hire boat pulled up at the water point as I was passing this afternoon and a chap jumped out and struck up a conversation. He was raving about how lovely our canal is and how wonderful the marina and facilities are. He was from London so I could understand why he was so impressed with our little corner of the world. His parting shot was 'you're so lucky to live here!' and I have to say that I do agree with him!

It is getting colder in the evenings now and we are using coal for the fire to supplement the wood, otherwise we won't have any wood left! I love the smell of the coal burning. We are still running the engine everyday until our new battery charger arrives in the next few days and the smell of the fire mingled with diesel is just lovely!

This time last year we had no idea how to heat the boat properly. We were either too hot or too cold. The wood burner is very efficient and if you pile a load of coal into it, it ends up getting so hot you have to throw open all the boat doors and windows just to cool down! Many a time last year there was snow outside and the canal was frozen, but we had all our windows open! One of the problems is that our burner is at the end of the boat. We would heat the living area really well, but the bedroom would be freezing. Then we discovered the Eco-fan - what a great piece of kit! It is a two or three bladed fan (two blade costs about £90 and three blade about £110), which has a chip in the base which is sensitive to heat. Placed on the burner it starts to spin as soon as the stove heats up and sends the heat all round the boat. If you are going to live on a boat in winter, this is a 'must have' item!

A bag of coal costs around £8 and in the coldest weather you would probably get through about two bags a week. We on the marina have endless debates amongst ourselves about the different varieties and everyone has their favourite brand! What is lovely is that you can pile it on before you go to bed and it will still be burning in the morning.

More on winter and fuel later.

Al :)

Get out of the rat race!

I have had a lovely day today. The sun was shining and I had a bike ride, chopped some wood, filled up with water, did some washing and chatted to my neighbours in the sun. Simple things but so satisfying.

One of my heroes, Henry Thoreau said

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation ..... A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them for this comes after work.

From 'Walden. a life in the woods'

This was me a few years ago, but now work is play and amusement. I just love the boating life!

It might help any prospective boaters out there if I fill you in on how we got to this point:-

I was working long days, at least 6 days a week for about 16 years and although I had a nice job, It could be exhausting and I started to feel burnt out. One Monday morning before leaving for work, at the prospect of another 12 hour day, having had no break at the weekend, I just said to P that I didn't think I could do it for much longer. We have been married for long enough for him to take that comment seriously.

We had often walked along the tow path of our local canal and I was just fascinated by the boats and the lifestyle. P remembered this and over the next few weeks he researched everything to do with boats. One day I got home from work to find a brown envelope on the kitchen table which had written on it 'If you open this be careful - it may change your life!' P had done a complete costing of ingoings and outgoings and the outcome was that I didn't need to work ever again if I didn't want to!

I instantly said 'yes' the speed of which surprised P! But we got straight on with it and have now been living aboard for nearly one year. It was difficult selling the house in the current climate, but we knew what we wanted and set the price probably below what it was worth just to get a sale, which we did quite quickly. I sold loads of stuff on ebay which I found actually really liberating!

And to finish with another little quote ....

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.
Democritus
 

More about the logistics of moving to a boat later ......

Al :)

cider making take 2!

It was raining again just like last time, but the upside was that the equipment was working. We decided that we would set it up on our stern as there is so much more room there than in the cratch. We have a lovely big cover for it which we use during the winter months which gives us an extra indoor room and helps to insulate the boat, but we leave it off in the summer so we can 'sit out.' Also it is easier to cruise without the high cover. We agreed that it was time it went on, so we spent a good half hour struggling with it. Here is the back before the covers go up, with J the whippet inside wondering what is going on:

and here it is afterwards :

We set to with the apple pressing and became quite slick at it between us, with me and T washing the apples while P put them through the pulping machine. Then we all helped with the press. To cut a long story short, we got 10 gallons of juice!!! And call me sad, but I haven't had so much fun in ages!!

The pulper is all set up and ready to go:

Here is the press, in operation:

We decided to ferment 6 gallons in the sherry barrel without any interference. We will put some yeast and sugar in a fermentation tub with another 4 gallons and see how that goes and the rest will go into demijohns for wine. It's a learning curve, but we are sure we will have success somewhere!

This got me thinking ......  Come Christmas most people will go around Asda / Sainsburys / Tesco on Christmas eve banging their trolley into the back of someone else's knees and everyone seems to be bad tempered as they be get their Christmas booze etc. in for the big day. Well I personally don't think that is what it is all about. While we were pressing, a heron floated overhead on the breeze with its wings and legs all akimbo. It looked prehistoric and it made me think about the ancient harvest traditions. At this time of year hundreds of years ago, everyone would be gathering in the fruits of the season and making things which would be ready mid December for a great big bash.

To me that's what it is all about - celebrating the maturity of all that hard work. I am so looking forward to eating the chutney I have made, drinking the sloe gin and cider and maybe next year eating goats cheese and my own home grown turkey or chicken. How many people could kill their own meat? I firmly believe that if you couldn't kill it, you shouldn't eat it and I hold my hand up, I am a complete hypocrite ..... for now, but I am working on it.

On that note I will leave you with an appropriate quote from one of my absolute heros  ....

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Al

I'm a lumberjack and I'm Okay !

The tree has been sitting in the car park for too long! It needs chopping up, so that is my job for the day. I can only do it in small doses, (it's tiring sawing wood!) so I kept popping out to saw a couple of logs while watching the world cup rugby games. Here is my pride and joy, my wood sawing frame.

This was made at one of HM's prisons and it is a great piece of kit. T and I went to the Westmoreland County Show last month and I had seen a lovely pair of earrings in one of the craft tents, but when I saw this I decided to spend my spare cash on it instead, especially as T and I went halves because we do all our wood foraging together.

All in all it has been a productive day despite the continuous drizzle which has meant outdoor work has been limited. I have made blackberry chutney, soup and some shower gel. Here is the recipe for some lovely soft and organic shower gel:-

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INGREDIENTS

 

1 cup herbal shampoo (look for one that is detergent-free; avoid labels that list any variation of “sodium lauryl sulfate”)
1/4 cup water
3/4 teaspoon salt
12 drops Rose essential oil
12 drops Geranium essential oil
1/2 cup aloe vera gel


1. Blend all the ingredients thoroughly, adjusting the amount of water to get the desired consistency.
2. Pour into a bottle or jar.

At lunchtime P said he was bored so we went to our locl garden centre for a bit of a trip out. We bought some yummy chocolate and some candles and then went to the supermarket to get the ingredients for a roast dinner which P was craving. I hate going to the supermarket! Since we have moved to the boat, we try to buy local produce at farmers markets but that isn't always possible. I am hoping that once we get the chickens and allotment going we will be more self sufficient. I am also quite keen to give goats a go. There is quite a bit of land available for rent over the road and I'm sure we could accommodate both chickens and goats. I have some experience because friends of mine have a small holding and I used to go and help them muck out and milk the goats and bring in the hay, before I had kids of my own to look after!

On arriving back, J was determined to get a walk out of me so we had a little run along the tow path. I made the mistake of stopping and chatting to a boater I know who was moored up and an hour later I was still no further! The boating life is like that - laid back !

I came back and finished off sawing and chopping the wood, by which time I was badly in need of a shower! The facilities on the marina include a massive hot power shower which is fantastic. The downside is that you have to walk 100 yards to it, usually in the rain!!! Normally I shower on the boat, which is fine, but there isn't a lot of room to move around or space to get dried in and of course we are always worried about running out of water. However tonight I decided I didn't want to be worrying about how much water I was using, so I had a lovely long hot shower with plenty of room to move around. Bliss!

The only thing I really miss about living in a house is a long hot soak in a bath. I have lovely friends who have offered up their bathrooms!! Unfortunately I was a serial bather when I lived in a house and it would be difficult to replicate that. I'm sure you can imagine the scenario:- glass of wine, several candles, steaming hot tub, full to almost overflowing, expensive bath foam ...... oooooohhhhh I do miss it. Luckily my work involves some travelling at certain times of the year so I do get to have a bath every so often. If you really find your baths are important it is possible (although unusual) to have a bath on a boat. There are two boats on our marina who have baths, but it does mean sacrificing valuable storage space and it uses a lot of water, (obviously!).

On my return from the shower block I started cooking. I have to pass T's boat to get to ours and J often lies in wait for me. This evening he followed me back to our boat - I'm sure that dog is psychic, he must have known I was just about to cook a roast dinner. Anyway, he decided to stay and see what happened.He made himself comfortable on my chair by the fire:

and waited for dinner!! He did get a lovely plate of chicken before being sent back to his mum!!

Cider making tomorrow so an early night!

:)



Manna from Heaven

Somebody up there must love me! Only yesterday I was saying that our log store was getting low and on a walk with J the whippet this morning, on the tow path opposite our boat, a tree had come down in last night's storm!

I made a mental note to get my bow saw and come back and saw it into manageable chunks after the walk, so that I could get it back to the boat. However on the way back there were three lads from British Waterways doing just that. They had just finished and had neatly piled the wood up at the side of the towpath, so I spent a happy half hour taking it back to our boat. It looks quite green but once chopped up and safely stacked in our wood store it should be nicely seasoned in a few months time.

I was just gearing up to get chopping and sawing, fill up with water, pick some more blackberries and put the soup on, when I got a call from friends of ours who were going to be 'passing by' sometime this afternoon.  The problem with living on a boat is that everyone is fascinated by it and just has to visit. That's fine and we are lucky that we have so many lovely friends. The problem is that people say they will come for 'coffee' and they are still here at tea time lapping up the chilled out feel of the lifestyle! They just can't bear to leave. This isn't true of most of our friends but some really do overstay their welcome. This afternoon I was so desperate to get out and do some outside jobs while the weather was fine, but these people stayed all afternoon and showed no inclination to get out of their chairs and even have a look outside! I don't respond well to being indoors when I don't have to be and I started to get figidty round about 5pm which unfortunately didn't go unnoticed and they rather huffily got up and said they'd better be going.

P is going to get up at 6am tomorrow to watch the rugby on the telly, so at least that will give me the opportunity to get some jobs done early. I am just hoping it won't rain over the next couple of days, especially as cider making is planned for Sunday when the equipment (which has been repaired) has been promised.

:)

Little Miss Muffet

Wednesday is always a 'chill out' day for me. I have two really long days working on Monday and Tuesday and although I love my job, it is still tiring.

Poor P also gets woken up very early on those days. I have to get up at 6.30am and we chose the wrong desgin of boat for early starts! The normal narrow boat design is to have the bedroom at the back and sitting room or kitchen at the front with the water tank under the sitting room floor. There is a less usual option of reversing that design and we chose that layout because when friends come for a cruise with us they can sit in the living area and chat to us while we are at the tiller. However the downside is that when I turn the shower on at 6.30am the water pump springs into action under the bed and makes a hell of a racket! Add to that the noise of the 'gulper' shower pump which takes the water out of the tray and into the canal I usually come out of the shower to one very grumpy and wide awake husband!

So on Wednesdays we have a lie in, a cup of tea in bed and generally relax. This Wednesday we were due to take our other little boat to it's mooring. This was a boat that this time last year was a rusting hulk in the basin, (see pic).

A fellow boater bought it for very little and took it out of the water to black the bottom, get the holes welded and the outside painted. It was starting to look nice and we needed somewhere for son number two to live in the holidays when his houseshare student friends went home, so to cut a long story short, we bought it, (also at a good price). We have spent the summer with it moored in an empty berth next to us, doing it up. We put a shower in where there was previously a cupboard, some nice blinds up at the windows and a new wood burner and it now looks lovely. We have been out in it a few times and it has attracted quite a bit of attention as it is such a sweet little boat.

What an improvement and son number two looks very happy with his acquisition!

Strangely enough I seem to be the only one capable of steering it!! It doesn't have a tiller, but has an outboard and a steering wheel as it's only 24 foot. This does make it quite awkward to keep straight and whenever P or L take the wheel we proceed to weave our way down the canal tacking from bank to bank as though sailing a dinghy in a head wind!!

So yesterday, it fell to me to steer it the 100 yards to its proper berth. All was going well as I reversed it out smoothly into the cut. It was very windy and this is a major problem when steering a boat, because if the wind 'takes you' you will have a heck of a job getting back in control. The significance of the wind is why the turning places in the canal are called 'winding holes'. A skilled boater will take the boat into a turning place in such a way that he uses the wind direction to help to bring the boat round. We decided with our little boat that the best policy would be to put it on full throttle and head as fast as we could into the wind and towards our mooring.

I was just starting to feel smug at how well she was handling, when something small and hairy swung into my line of vision with all 8 legs wriggling just a few centimeters from my face. Most people look at me in utter disbelief when I explain my fear of spiders, as a boat is probably the last place someone like me should be living. They are all around us in very close proximity. But I love the boating life so much that I am prepared to live with my phobia and I actually do just about manage it.

However, when taken by surprise I don't cope particularly well. I didn't scream or anything but I grabbed a tea cloth that happened to be on the seat next to me and was wildly trying to flick it away and in that instant of lost concentration the wind took us and we started hurtling sideways down the canal towards some moored boats. Luckily a couple of dog walkers on the tow path shouted at us to throw them a rope, which P did and they pulled us over just before we crashed into a beautiful new shiny boat moored up a few yards away!! They gave us one of those looks that said 'you don't know what you're doing' and we sheepishly muttered something about the wind! Having recovered my composure and flicked the offending monster overboard,  P got off, gave the boat an almighty shove and ran around to the jetty. Once again in control, I manoeuvred her beautifully into the berth, but of course by then the dog walkers had disappeared!

Having two boats is a bit of a luxury really and this brings me to the issue of mooring fees. Many people think that living on a boat is nearly cost free. To a certain extent this can be true. If you don't have a mooring, you can just buy a British Waterways licence for about £700 a year and moor up alongside the tow path. However this is on the understanding that you are exploring the inland waterways network and are therefore always on the move (continuously cruising). It can be quite a hard life as you always get moved on if you have overstayed at a tow path mooring, so you are never  able to settle anywhere. You also don't have access to an electric hook up so everything has to run at 12 volts and you have to run your engine at least once a day to charge the batteries. Since our battery charger blew up, we have had to run the engine every day in order to get our lighting, fridge and everything else which runs on 12 volts and it can be a pain.

Our marina is quite posh in that it includes a facilities block (showers, toilets and a laundry) as well as electric hook up, water points and a secure car park, but for that we pay over £2500 per year which many boaters feel is too much. Some people continuously cruise in the summer and just apply for winter moorings. There are many options available and some private house owners who have small moorings at the end of their gardens will sometimes allow people to moor for a small fee.

Today I was hijacked by J the Whippet for a walk, as he knows I'm a soft touch. We had a lovely walk down the tow path and I found some more blackberries and I ended up with about 2lb of them. More chutney to be made, or should I make a crumble?

Tomorrow we will need to chop more wood. We have got through loads today as it's been cold and miserable outside. I'm also going to make some lovely warming red pepper and sweet potato soup for our lunch. If I time it right, I can get it in the slow cooker and run the engine, so we get the batteries charged, hot water and a meal cooked all just for a bit of red diesel!! A result!!

And on that note a little quote about happiness and frugality! -

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.
Nikos Kazantzakis

Al :)

cider making

It's apple pressing day and it's chucking it down! Typical. We only have the equipment for one day, so onto plan B. P, being an ex civil service manager organised us with military precision. We will do the pulping operation in the cratch (bow deck) of our boat and T and I will operate the press in the barbeque area under a bit of tarpaulin for shelter!

We have collected about 60 kilos of apples between us. T's daughter has supplied a load from her garden, my hairdresser in the village stripped her trees for us, in exchange for some home made chutney and I collected a pile on my cycling trips.

So we were all ready to go. The sherry barrel we got for a tenner off ebay was brought out as our fermenting cask

The pulper was set up in the cratch

and we had started getting the apples out ready for pulping

All was going well, when P discovered that the pulper wasn't working. It seems the person who had hired it before us had burnt out the motor and not said anything. It seemed like everything had conspired against us and we weren't meant to make our cider today. We hope to arrange another session for mid week, by which time the pulper should be repaired hopefully. I'm working for the next two days and we have a lot of apples rapidly going bad, so it really needs to be Wednesday or not at all!

P is very long suffering with me and T (the owner of J the whippet). She and I have become good friends as we both arrived on the marina about the same time and found that we were kindred spirits, with all sorts of ideas on how to 'live the good life'. P says he goes pale when he sees us in deep conversation as he never knows what mad scheme we are going to come up with next. So far, we have got our names on the list for an allotment in the village and are currently researching chickens with a view to hiring some land over the road and getting some rescue battery hens. He sighed heavily when he saw us stockpiling apples and looking on ebay for equipment etc. but he always comes round and gets into the spirit of things and he was as disappointed as T and I when the machine wouldn't work.

Although my blogs seem to mention the demon drink a lot, I do try to control the amount I drink! However it's good to remember the words of William Blake in this context  'The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom'.
So onto plan C for the day. I am going to cook us a really special meal tonight. Cooking is one of my hobbies which I couldn't indulge in my old existence because I didn't have time - I was working 6 days a week often up to 8.30 pm, so eating was purely functional and usually food was prepared by P. Now I am in my element, I work two long days a week and one short one and do all the cooking.

Thanks to our fantastic boat builder we have a superb kitchen, (or should I say galley?)

We may have sacrificed more space than usual, but it is the most important room for me and it is a joy to cook in, plenty of cupboards and surfaces to work on and really well designed for moving freely around.The only anxiety I have now is whether the gas bottle is going to run out half way through cooking a meal. We have no way of judging how full it is apart from lifting it up to see how heavy it is, (very low tech). Also we brought the boat in backwards yesterday so that we could have a change of scene, (bedroom facing the towpath instead of sitting room) and our gas locker is at the front beyond the end of the jetty so it is pretty much inaccessible. Still we should be fairly safe as we have only used 2 bottles so far, in the space of a year at a total cost of £50 !!

That reminds me of a satisfying encounter I had in Sainsburys last year. You know those people who accost you in the aisles as you are trying to do your shopping and promise that they can save you hundreds on your energy bills? Well this lad just would not leave me alone one day. I kept telling him he couldn't save me any money and when he asked me how much I paid last year and I told him what we had been paying in our house, I saw this smug grin spread across his face as he declared he could definitely save me a considerable sum! He then asked me who my gas provider was and when I explained it came out of a bottle in the bow deck of my boat I actually felt quite sorry for him, because he looked so crestfallen!!

Our last electricity bill from our 'hook up' was £34.10 for the quarter and apart from the diesel which runs our central heating system and of course the engine and a small amount of coal to supplement the wood in the wood burner, we spend a fraction of what we spent when living in a house. it's very satifying as it's so ecologically friendly as well.

For those who may be thinking of moving to a boat, I will post more financial information on future blogs.

Bye for now

:)

the trip back 'home'

We woke up this morning feeling a little the worse for wear. Having had lunch at the pub we were hijacked by son number two who is at Uni here and who got wind of the fact we were moored near his favourite pub. That lad can relieve you of a tenner as he goes past without breaking step! But he is a good boy and he brought his lovely girlfriend down so we spent some time with them - at the pub. Then some friends of ours texted suggesting a 'quick' drink so we told them where we were and right on cue they turned up shortly after we had got back from said pub. Luckily it was only 50 yards away from where we were moored so back we went and several pints later were feeling no pain!!

Unfortunately at 7am the next morning we were feeling plenty, so after a quick breakfast we set off to try and clear our heads in the lovely fresh morning air and with a cup of tea and both of us standing on the stern taking it in turns at the tiller, all was soon well with the world.

We saw plenty of wild life:- a woodpecker, some pheasants, a heron who followed us down the cut and some joggers!

Oh and I've never been this close to a bull before!!

It was an uneventful trip and we didn't meet any boats probably due to the early hour but we seemed to be getting slower and slower as we progressed and I needed to be at the doctors by 10.30. What should have been a 2 and a half hour trip was turning into 4 hours!

Here's where our inexperience showed once again. We were both aware that the engine wasn't handling properly but looking over the back there was a good wash and everything seemed to be Ok. However we instinctively we knew it wasn't right, we thought something was wrong with the prop but dismissed it. It took us until we were nearly back at the marina and the boat was virtually not moving to decide to moor up and look in the weed hatch.

By this time I was late for my appointment so I jumped off the boat, threw a mooring pin in, tied up and legged it over the nearest bridge for the doctors. I felt such a fraud when I turned up all hot and sweaty having obviously jogged it and had my jab amongst all those pensioners who'd arrived on mobility vehicles! I would like to pay a tribute to modern medicine that my asthma is kept under such good control that I can lead such an active life. (I mean that seriously by the way and when I do get ill I do suffer really badly with my breathing).

I got back to the boat to find P extracting a pile of string which had wrapped itself around the prop.... why didn't we stop earlier?! However it enabled us to carry on with increased confidence and we managed to get into our berth really smoothly, what a good team we are!

Several jobs were then divied up, P gets the technical ones which include 'hooking up' to shore power and reconnecting sky so he can get his sport on the telly. I get the domestic ones such as emptying the toilet. If you are considering buying a boat, you have two options for waste disposal, you can either have a 'pump out' which is a tank underneath the floor, which has quite a big capacity and which you have to pay about £10 every few months to plug into a canal side pump which evacuates it, or .... you can have a cassette which is a manual tank which you pull out from under the toilet and empty yourself into a sluice. There are arguments for and against but without going into too much scatalogical detail .... in the summer months you can smell the boats with pump outs. I would always go for a cassette, which needs changing every other day usually. The downside is that they are heavy when full. Our sluice is about 100 yards away at the top of the car park, but I see it is my weight lifting session!! I cycle a lot, so my legs are strong but my upper body had been really weak until we moved onto the boat. Now I get the chance to tone my arm muscles every day, either chopping and sawing wood or carrying the cassette. Boating is basically free gym membership!!

I will move off this distasteful subject now, but it only requires me to say that when you have been married for the decades that P and I have been, it is fine to sort this out, but bearing in mind that what goes in has to be swiiled out, I do try to persuade visitors to use the toilet block on the marina for obvious reasons!

Shortly after we got back we were treated to a lovely welcome from J the whippet who we look after for a fellow boater on the marina when she is at college. He is a great dog and we have become very attached. He bounded down the jetty to greet us and T, his owner who is a good friend of ours said he had tried to come and see us last night when we were out but she kept trying to explain to him that all he would find would be an empty jetty.

When we got back we kept asking ourselves why we hadn't gone out more often this summer. It is a joy to get out 'on the water' it is a different back garden every day. We made the excuse that we have been busy with other things, but that is no excuse! So to use a nautical quote.... here is my first quote of my blog.I intend to sign off with a litte quote every time I write from now on .......


Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Thomas Firbank from 'I bought a Mountain'  (A cracking book by the way !!!)

Al :)