Summer Holidays!

Finally I have finished a long work stint, travelling all over the UK with very few actual days off, (when I wasn't working I was travelling). I love my job, but it is very intense and I have little time for anything else during those 6-8 weeks periods.

However, once they are over I do get a long period of time off and I'm not due to start work again now until September, so hopefully I shall have time to give regular updates on my boating life.

It was an absolute joy to wake up on my first morning back at the boat to this lovely view from our bedroom window:

Here is the same view with the sun setting behind it:






















I sat out on the stern with a glass of wine the other night until quite late and it was lovely to sit and be so close to nature. The moon was quite magnificent:

Having neglected the boat over the past few weeks, we set to and washed her down on one side and then decided to take her out to the nearest turning point (winding hole) and bring her back in to the mooring the other way, so that we could wash the other side. The weather has been on our side with glorious sunshine every day for two weeks now. We had a difficult job getting the boat off our mooring as the canal is so shallow with all the hot weather that we were stuck to the bottom which is very silted up at the best of times. Dredging the marina and the canal costs money, which in the current economic climate is scarce, so maintenance jobs just get ignored. Consequently everybody who has tried to take their boat out this week, (6 of us in total) have had to enlist the collective muscle on the marina, to manually pull the boats out into the swim. That has not done my back any good at all!

In addition to the problem of the shallowness of the water, we soon realised that we were making very little progress. We are now experienced enough to recognise the cause of many problems and we diagnosed a snarled propeller. As soon as we found a clear stretch of towpath, we moored up and opened up the weed hatch. There, completely clogging the prop, was an old rug that had been on the stern deck which had mysteriously gone missing during the winter gales. I had not believed at the time, that it could possibly have been blown into the canal from inside our canopy, but that is clearly what had happened and it took us a good hour of cutting and pulling to get all the entangled material out and to free up the prop. Having done this, all was so much easier and we cruised up to the winding hole and I did a text book turn, despite there being a boat moored up in the hole which partially blocked my access. This should never happen and I gave the owner a very dirty look! We cruised back and again, smoothly and effortlessly slipped into our mooring, which pleased me because I had made a terrible fist of getting out, due to the snarled prop and had felt the eyes of half the marina and moored up boaters opposite, on me. I could almost feel them thinking 'she doesn't know what she's doing'!

People are starting to complain that it is too hot, but I love it! On some days last week it was too hot to touch the outside of the boat. I put some tomatoes on a baking tray on the roof and by the end of the day they were dried! (Home made sundried tomatoes are the best!).

There has been a proliferation of wild life recently with a moor hen enjoying taking a rest on a weed island in the middle of the canal:

A heron is a regular visitor:

A duck has given birth quite late in the year to a brood of ducklings:

She is a very attentive mother and watches over them all the time:

 

 
 

You may be able to see the chicks underneath her:

 

We had some excitement a few days ago when a cow escaped out of the field opposite and started wandering down the tow path:

I am going to Cologne next week for a short holiday and to meet up with an old friend from Japan, who I was at college with in Detmold. She speaks very little English and I don't speak Japanese, so we meet in Germany because that is a common language in which we can converse.

When I return we are hoping to do a lot of cruising, going north over the Viaduct and up to the furthest corner of the canal and also travelling up to the sea basin, where we love to spend at least a few weeks of the year.

There is also much news on the status of the marina and a great deal of movement of boats coming and going, so more news when I return from my travels in a weeks time.

Al :)