Autumn Fruits

I am finally back posting again, after a long work stint overseas and a busy summer.

I had meant to post as soon as I arrived back in the UK in July, but have spent the summer mulling over whether to continue with this Blog.

I have found myself repeating myself and started to wonder how useful the Blog is to prospective boaters. I had thought that I had run out of relevant information to offer, but actually I dont think that is the case. In addition I have had some postive comments from readers, who like my photos of our area and the canal.

I realise that it can be disruptive with me going away to work for at least 4 months of the year, but I still seem to get a regular flow of readers, so I'm going to press on for now.

A brief update on the Marina front finds us in a much better postion with our Council Tax, which has now been amalgamated into our Marina fees. We have had a refund of our monthly payments from the Council and have been de-listed as individual residences. As far as we know, we should now be paying a composite fee with the other residents, but as yet the terms and conditions of this have not been worked out. Negotiations are going on between the valuation office nationally and our marina provider who have a number of sites across the UK. So far, it appears that in return for a composite rate, we will be required to move berths several times a year, to demonstrate that we are not a static residency. I will keep this updated, as it potentially affects 'liveaboards' across the entire country in the future.

On a lighter note, we have had a wonderful summer. Our marina is now full and everybody, residents and leisure boaters alike, is absolutely lovely. We have a great cross section of like minded and decent people and so it is a very happy place to live! Everyone looks out for each other, while at the same time respecting privacy. It is a perfect combination!

We have spent some time cruising up and down the canal and have had one or two nights of peaceful bliss, spent out moored up on the towpath in the middle of nowhere.


Here are some pictures of our favourite mooring spot:

The plank was needed as it was shallow here

Autum colours reflect on the canal

Sunset over the fields

Sunset reflecting on the water

 And some pictures of the canal while we were on the move:

I have also had some lovely walks along the canal recently, I love the open countryside where we live:

The spire of an old country church which is attached to one of the many old stately homes around here.

View along the canal from under one of the many bridges

Resident cat on a moored boat

Apart from that, our allotment has been very productive this year so I have spent some time pickling cabbage and beetroot. The autumn fruits have been late, but I have made Sloe Gin, Plum Brandy and Blackcurrant Rum. The blackberries are not ready yet, but I hope to pick some before I go away and make Blackberry Whisky.

I was walking down the jetty the other day when I noticed these:

I realised that we have a very healthy hop bush growing here. Quite how they got here I don't know, but I harvested enough to make quite a few pints of beer!

Unfortunately, I won't have time to wait for the fermentation process, so I made a couple of hop pillows instead. These are reputed to assist with insomnia, but as I don't have any trouble sleeping, I can't vouch for it!

The marina is looking lovely with the autumn colours and here are some pictures of the scenes I will miss while I am away:

,

















I travel overseas next week and Phil and I had our usual trip up to the Lake District before I go. Haweswater is our favourite lake and the weather was kind to us, despite a forecast of rain:

Our favourite Tarn halfway up the fell side

The beck tumbles down the hillside. The Reservoir at the bottom is very low in water though.

I shall be back just before Christmas and will then decide whether to continue to post on a regular basis again, or to finish blogging.

Al :)

Au Revoir until July

I will be travelling overseas on Tuesday for a two month work stint, so this is my last blog for a while.

Phil and I are trying to fit in some time together before I head off  and yesterday we spent the afternoon at our local nature reserve. It is a beautiful place with plenty of wild life. Here are some pictures we took:

Goose hiding in the undergrowth

Proud parents

Cock Pheasant which plagued us for food

Deer in the woods

Gosling Chick exploring

Marsh Harrier looking for food

I have spent the last two weeks catching up with friends and family who I won't see for a while. We are going to spend tomorrow with our two sons and then it is time to focus on work.

There is no further news on the residential status and how it affects payments of council tax. We have complained to our landlords who have robustly defended their position on the lack of progress on this issue, but that doesn't help us who have now paid nearly £3000 in arrears and little reassurance about how much we will have to pay in the future, with 'negotiations' still progressing. It is very frustrating!

I have spent the last two weekends working in the Midlands where the canal network is extensive and we visited a number of marinas which charge much less than we are paying and the facilities are excellent. One of those also has residential status and they seem to have sorted out the council tax issue very successfully. The problem that we have here is that moorings are at a premium on our small section of canal and so the landlords can call the shots. We don't really want to move to the Midlands as we have all we want here, especially fantastic walking country with the hills of the Trough of Bowland and the Lake District so near. However, there is always a tipping point and that may be reached quite soon..... We will see. I will update when I am back in July and I really hope that by then some sort of decision will have been reached. Mind you I was saying that last November and here we are in May!!

I love going overseas and it is great to have such lovely warm weather, but I miss the Englsh country side so much.

Here are some of the things I will miss the most:

The bridge at our marina

Walks in the woods

All the young Chicks, Goslings and Cygnets

Cruising on our boat

sunsets

Views over the bay

I will be back posting in July, when we hope to travel around a bit on the boat so there will be some good pictures hopefully!

Al :)

Easter Traffic

Another work frenzy is over and we are enjoying relaxing on the boat at our mooring, over Easter.

Now that the weather is getting better, the leisure boaters on the marina are starting to come back and this Easter weekend many have come down who we haven't seen for a while. It has been really great to catch up with them and once again, a whole morning can easily disappear as we make our way along the jetty chatting to people boat by boat!

There is an exceptionally great crowd of people on our Marina at the moment and although we moan about the cost of our moorings and threaten to go elsewhere, I think it is the fantastic community here who hold everyone together and who make that decision to leave so much more difficult. It was not always so and whenever a berth comes free, we all worry about who is going to come in, but so far everyone has been likeminded, with a proper sense of social responsibility and community. Long may that continue!

Out on the cut, things are not so rosy. The season of hire boaters has begun and we collectively groan as they often speed past at such a rate of knots, that we bounce around on our moorings. There are an increasing number of hirers on our small section of canal, as boating holidays become more popular. Not all of the hire companies appear to brief the holiday makers properly, by explaining the etiquette on the canal, so the boats invariably go far too fast causing a disruptive wash. On a number of occasions when we are out cruising we have been hit by hired boats too, when they have been going too fast around corners and are not able to react quickly enough to another boat coming towards them. They also choose our empty berths to turn around in and sometimes even come in and moor up thinking they can stay overnight. They always seem surprised when told that these are private moorings and would they kindly vacate them!

Well, that's my moan out of the way! I know that many people who hire boats are experienced boaters, but we really do have a disproportionate number of hire boats for our 40 mile length of canal and it can become quite congested at times.

Other news is sparse. I keep repositioning the Otter Cam, but so far still haven't managed to get any pictures of it. The kingfishers have now mostly left the canal to return to their breeding grounds. We plan to go to a local spot where they are known to breed and we are going to spend a day there and stake them out. I'm detemined to get a picture of them!

I am now preparing for my next work tour overseas which covers the whole of May and June, so we are trying to make the most of  a free April to catch up with friends and get the boat ready for the summer.

We hope to get out for a cruise before I go away, but must take down our winter canopy before we can do this. I spent a very happy afternoon last week, chopping up all of our remaining wood which I had foraged from the tow path and putting it away to season for next year. We now have two full wood stores and although we are still lighting our wood burner just at night now, I can't see us doing that for much longer as the weather gets warmer.

I will post an update shortly on how the residential status is coming along. The main unresolved issue is the council tax and this has been going on for nearly a year now, with the residential boaters having to pay full council tax as well as an element of it in our mooring fees. We are becoming extremely frustrated and angry as the three parties involved (The Valuation Office, The local council and The company who own the marina), all pass the buck to each other, blaming the others for holding the process up. We are the poor guys in the middle and are just about to blow a fuse about it all....... watch this space!

I will leave you with a picture that I meant to post some weeks ago but was too busy. We had the interesting phenomenum of a partial eclipse of the sun which was captured by Bob, a friend of mine:

We also had hoped to see the Northern lights a few weeks ago, as they had been seen as far south as the Lake District which is only 50 miles north as the crow flies, but we had too much light pollution, including a local football match on the village pitch which had floodlights on!

All for now

Al :)

Spring is in the air

We arrived back from a weeks work in the East of the UK to a very cold boat. It was relatively warm over on the east side of the country, but we had to drive through snow and blizzards over the Pennines on our way home. At least it wasn't snowing on the Marina this time.

We threw all we had at it when we opened up the boat, as it was very cold and damp. We lit the wood burner, put the central heating on, switched on the small panel heater and had the humidifier blasting for about an hour. It didn't take long to get warm and cosy again. We enjoy going away, but are always happy to come back to our lovely home on the boat.

I took the card out of our wildlife camera in the hope of seeing something, but all it had captured was a blackbird and some ducks. A fellow boater said that he had seen the kingfisher a few days ago, sitting on the chair above where the camera is positioned, which is typical! We seem doomed to never get pictures of the Otter or kingfisher, but I will keep trying.

There are signs of Spring on the way with the song Thrush becoming more persistent and frequent in his singing, in his efforts to attract a mate. The Mallards are starting to smarten their plumage up and our resident swan has found herself a mate. I'm hoping to enjoy some Spring walks when this latest work stint is over. I have April free before I go overseas again in May and it would be lovely if the Bluebells are out by then.

Whenever we go away in the UK, I seek out the local canal, as you are never far from an inland waterway. Last week I had a walk along the Grantham canal, which is sadly only partially navigable. Next week I am in South Wales again, so hope to discover more of the Neath canal. Here are some pictures of the Grantham canal:

April sees further developments on our residential status, with hopefully the issue of council tax finally being resolved. We have been offered some incentives in our new contract too, such as one free laundry token per week and it all helps, so if we can resolve the council tax, I will start to feel a lot happier about staying put..... watch this space.

Al

A Trip to Wales

We have spent the last week in Wales, visiting Phil's brother, sister and other relatives and friends.

I love going to Wales because the people in South Wales where Phil comes from, are so warm and friendly and the scenery is spectacular.

On the way down we stopped at Gigrin Farm to see the Red Kites being fed. The hides are really close to the feeding ground, so I was able to get some quite close up pictures:

We managed to get a couple of walks in, between visiting relatives and we explored the Neath and Tennant canals, which are now not really navigable, but are very pretty:

Welsh for 'Canal'

On one of our walks, we came across this sight in a puddle:

We wondered what it was ....

Closer inspection revealed Toad/Frog Spawn, strange that it was in a puddle, which could easily disappear!

After a lovely few days relaxing and catching up with people we hadn't seen in a while, we returned home to discover the Marina covered in snow!

It's a bit late in the year for snow, but it makes everything look pretty! The boat was very cold, but we soon had the fire lit and it warmed up quickly. We are now warm and cosy despite being surrounded by snow!

All for now

Al :)

Sploshing Otters

The weather over the last few days has been wet, windy and miserable and put paid to our hopes of Spring on the way. However, there are still some signs of Spring despite the cold, with the Song Thrush opposite our boat beginning to tentatively practice his repertoire and many Crocuses and Snow drops coming out.

I went to a rehearsal yesterday at a friend's house, to practice for our next concert. This time we have quite an ambitious program, which includes a Piano Quintet by Mozart and I have to play many very fast passages. It was here that the contrast between a draughty house and our cosy boat was most marked. Although they had the heating on, my hands were still cold enough to hamper my playing. It was lovely to return to the boat and our wood burning stove, which was throwing out heat throughout the boat.

A number of leisure boaters are returning to the Marina now that Spring is on its way and it is nice to have some company and to catch up with them. There were only three of us residential boaters (liveaboards) on the Marina over winter and it can feel a bit lonely and bleak at times.

On the wildlife front, I have been too busy practising the piano and preparing for my next work stint in March to stake out the Kingfisher, but I did move the otter camera to a position at the end of the jetty pointing at the water, because we hear it very regularly splashing around and swimming under our boats, especially at night. The latest images are inconclusive, but the camera has definitely captured something:

This is the water with no disturbance

There seems to be quite a bit of disturbance under the surface here

I think I can see a rough otter shape and maybe an eye?

Again I feel there is some shape here

 I may be mistaken, but there is hope that we can capture something, as I think we are now training the camera on one of his favourite spots. What we really want, is for him to pop his head above the water. I must also remember to reset the date and time on the camera, so we have an accurate recording of when he appears.


On the subject of wildlife, this is the theme for this years village photography competition, so I am starting to sort out some photos. here are a few possible entries:

Bottle Nosed Dolphins near Inverness

Cormorant Catching an Eel

Grebes doing their courting dance

Moorhen Chick

Barn Owl Hunting

Hopefully, one of these might be in with a chance of winning a prize.

I  hope that we can get more otter pictures for the next time, watch this space!

Al :)