Gales

We were woken in the night to hear the wind howling and the life belt which we keep on our roof skidding about. The boat was swaying but was still quite secure in its mooring. We lay in bed chatting as it was impossible to sleep. Suddenly without any warning there was a huge hail storm and the sound of the hail stones hitting the roof drowned out our conversation.

Nature is so much nearer when you live on a boat! People who live in houses are much more cushioned from the weather, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I used to love camping in the rain with the sound of the rain hitting the tent. The downside was that if it rained really hard, there was a danger that it would flood the tent. When we lived in a house on the sea front we regularly used to lose tiles from our roof in high winds and that was an expensive business. Now the worst that can happen is that we lose our life belt or canoe paddle. Even those are retrievable as they don't go far once they get in the water.

The amount of rain we have had this year is unbelievable! I have never known it rain so much. It makes me glad I live on a boat! Many houses in the village were flooded in the summer because the river which flows through it burst its banks.

We wrapped up warm this afternoon and chopped up some wood. The marina is having work done and materials are arriving on wooden pallets which are discarded once the stuff is inloaded. In exchange for a tray of beer they have let us have all the pallets which amount to about 20 so far. We have an alligator (a sort of safe chain saw) and it takes us about 30 minutes to break up one pallet and that provides enough wood for us and our neigbour for about 5 days. Added to that we have many friends who have garages full of bits of wood and off cuts they don't want, so we are sorted with free fuel for the winter.

Of course wood on its own is not enough to heat the boat in this weather but it is a great supplement to the coal we use and enables us to reduce our coal usage to about 2 bags a week costing about £13 in all. We have just had our electricity bill for the quarter and it was £30! Recently there have been a number of news articles about 'fuel poor' people in this country who have to make decisions between eating or heating. They should move to a boat!

We have had some new visitors this holiday who all expressed surprise at how warm and cosy the boat is! People seem to have many misconceptions about life on a boat and these are what I hope to dispel with this blog!

So .... from a warm and toasty Al - Goodnight!