Spring is here at last!

The weather has been sunny over the last few days and although it is still chilly in the mornings, there is some warmth in the sun as the day draws on.

There are lots of lambs in the fields, which is a clear sign of spring:

I am busy preparing to go overseas tomorrow, for four weeks work, but I did manage to get out for a walk along the towpath the other day. I shall miss the lovely scenery around where I live:

I stopped to talk to some hire boaters who are thinking of buying a boat to live on. We talked for a long time about the pros and cons. They seemed to think that this type of change of lifestyle is becoming more common, but I do think that quite a few people who embark on it, give it up quite quickly when they realise that it is not quite as they imagined. When we were considering it, we were told that only 1 in 100 actually do it and stick at it. Well after 4 years and still loving it, I think we count as one of those 1 in a 100!

This morning we took the opportunity of a lovely day, for me to have a last walk for a while in the English countryside. We disturbed some hares in the field behind the tow path.



















As we walked along the tow path, our local heron was doing a bit of fishing and was not up for moving as we approached him. He is used to people and very tame!

We saw lots of other birds, including many Wrens and this Black Cap, a spring visitor:

Yesterday evening I sat on the roof of the boat, in the evening sunshine with a beer, listening to the birds and watching the world go by and I couldn't have been happier, or more sure that we made the right decision to move to the boat four years ago. It ticks every box for us.

I am looking forward to flying to the Far East tomorrow, but will not be posting until I get back. Once I have completed this spring work stint, we will be taking the boat out of the water for essential repair and maintenance work and that should make for some interesting reading, so please bear with me and I will post again in June.

Al :)

Time flies

I can’t believe that it is nearly a month since I last blogged. The time has gone so quickly. This may be something to do with the fact that I have been very busy. We moved to the boat with a view to winding down, but the opposite seems to have happened.

When we lived in a house and our boys were still at school, I remember being anxious at the start of every academic year, worrying that I would not get enough work to pay the mortgage. Being self-employed, there are no guarantees of work and it is a constant worry to make ends meet. Phil used to always say that I never had a shortage of work, but I always had nagging doubts. I also always ‘played safe’, turning down risky stuff in favour of the regular work which paid the bills. Moving to the boat took the pressure off and enabled me to relax, as we don’t need so much money to live on. Surprisingly I am now busier than ever. I think there are two reasons for this, the first is that I am able to gamble and take on work which is not regular, but pays better and I am so relaxed that I actually do a better job because I am not constantly worried or stressed. I can also be true to myself and say what I think without fear of reprisals or of losing work.

Of course, I talk about being self- employed as being different to employment. In the old days it was considered to be especially insecure and extremely hard work. This was because you had to go the extra mile to secure the work and get a good reputation, working often unsocial and very long hours, usually without breaks, which would not be tolerated by workers with a strong union. Nowadays though, employees also have a very hard and insecure working life with zero hours contracts and the strength of the unions now diluted so much, that employers totally have the upper hand. I’ll not say any more, otherwise I might just get on my soap box, but our society in this country seems to be getting harsher and less compassionate. I will be interested to see what happens at the next general election.

Boaters also seem to be a target at the moment. We personally have had huge problems recently with a number of organisations.  I won't go into details, but we have had to fight our corner to get any kind of decent service and it seems to be because we live on a boat, that we are treated with a complete lack of respect or consideration. It frustrates me no end.

Having said that, the advantages of our life style far outweigh these small irritations. Phil and I go to our local nature reserve regularly and do some bird and wild life watching. I have realised recently that actually we have our own nature reserve on our doorstep. We have seen the Otter in the past few days, in fact, cheekily, it launched itself out of the water into the space under the jetty while we were chatting to our neighbour the other evening in full view of all of us. We have now positioned our camera there in the hope of capturing it again, but of course it hasn’t been back since! Now that the weather is getting warmer, we have decided to clear out our bow deck and put two chairs in there with binoculars and a camera permanently to hand and we are committed to spending an hour each evening in there, (with a glass of wine!). I will keep you posted on what we see.

I have been trying to upload some pictures here of what our night vision camera has captured recently, but am having some difficulty. I am currently going through all the suggestions from 'Google help' to rectify the problem so hopefully I will be able to resolve it soon.

I am due to fly to the Far East again next Sunday for four weeks of work, but will try and post when I get back.

I am back for two weeks, but have a big concert to prepare for before I go off again to Cyprus working for four weeks before I can have a good break in the summer. The concert is a ‘biggie’, the singer who I am playing for is well known and the music challenging, so I am just a little nervous, but I love playing for singers, the music she has chosen is sensational and she is amazing, so I hope I can enjoy the playing and support her properly without getting too nervous!

When I get back from Cyprus we have to arrange to have the boat taken out of the water and the bottom cleaned and blacked. We also want to touch up the paint work and do some work on the water tank. We have a decision to make there, in that we would like to just put a lining in, which is an easy solution to keeping it clean and manageable, but it is very expensive. The other solution is to physically get in the tank, scrape it clean, treat it, paint it and flush it out before refilling it, which is a horrible job. I will keep you posted on what we decide and how we go about it.

We are off today to the Lake District for a two day break and some walking, before I fly off to foreign parts. I love travelling and I feel privileged to experience other cultures, but I miss the hills and the unique English landscape and yes, even the weather!

I’ll try and post again before I go.

Al J

 

A spoonful of sugar

I can't say that we have had an especially cold winter. The canal hasn't frozen once in the past few months, unlike our first year when it froze for many weeks within days of us moving on to the boat.

Nevertheless, it has been chilly enough for us to try and keep the fire in over night. We are generally successful, but it can be difficult to get an ailing fire going in the morning, if I am not getting up early for work. Normally, a bit of very dry kindling will kick start the dying embers into life, but sometimes it takes more than that.






This is where Phil's upbringing as a son of a steel worker in the welsh valleys comes to the fore. Life was hard when he was a youngster and he never tires of telling me about the tin bath which hung on the kitchen wall and how his mother had to get it down and put it in front of the fire every Sunday and fill it up with water heated on the stove and how the whole family had to share the shallow water for their weekly wash.







Phil can bring a fire to life from nothing with one simple thing ..... A spoonful of sugar! I have seen a fire with no evidence of life, burst into flames with the application of just one small amount of sugar. It is an amazing sight, so there is a little tip for wood burner novices!







Our wood supply has built up again, thanks to friends supplying fencing which came down in the storms and from trees which also came down at that time. Our neighbour's chainsaw has been serviced and we plan to have a good go at it all in the next few weeks.







However, suddenly I have become really busy. I play for a small music group who give concerts for charity every six weeks or so. We have a major concert at the end of May and I have a lot of accompaniments to learn for the soloists. This is complicated by the fact that I have three weeks work in the UK followed by 4 weeks in Hong Kong, so I'm trying to do loads of practice before I go, so that in the week before the concert I can concentrate on just polishing and rehearsing. It's a juggling act and it can get very busy. Phil keeps telling me that this is not why we moved to the boat. We had meant to wind down, but I don't think musicians ever do really. However, I could do without the stress.






In an attempt to have some R and R and having done about 3 hours practice one morning last week, I suggested that we take a trip up to our nearest Nature Reserve for a bit of birding. It was a lovely day and I got some nice pictures, nothing special, but pleasant all the same. You will always see loads of people there with their massive cameras, but I'm happy to be an amateur taking fun pictures even though some people look down their nose at me!






I have been trying to upload some of them here, but seem to be having some difficulty. As soon as I have sorted the problem out, I will get some lovely bird pictures uploaded. I will also show some of the images which we have captured on the wildlife camera. Unfortunately the Otter seems to have disappeared for now. They travel huge distances in the Spring in search of a mate, so chances are he is off searching now. We will see if he reappears.




Al :)

Storms

This week has been quite extraordinary for weather. We haven't had a 'Red' weather alert in living memory, but on Wednesday night the government issued such a warning, which means there is danger to life.

At around 4pm the wind started getting stronger and stronger. The surface of the canal was being whipped up, so that it looked like a fast flowing river and the boat was rocking alarmingly, with the ropes making horrible creaking noises. Luckily for us, the wind direction changed to an Easterly about an hour later and the wind was now blowing along the boat instead of across it. This meant that we no longer were being battered on the side, we just had to make sure that everything on the roof was secure. The rain was so heavy, that our mushrooms, (air vents on the top of the boat) started leaking. The worst thing was that the wind was blowing the smoke from our fire, back down the chimney into the boat, so to avoid being smoked out, we had to let the fire go out.

We decided to have an early night, hoping to get warm and cosy under the bed covers and sleep through the worst of it. Unfortunately, the howling wind and lashing rain pounding on the roof, kept us awake and quite jittery for most of the night.

On emerging for work early on Thursday morning, I was greeted with signs of absolute devastation. Many trees were down and in the seaside town where I work, many shops on the promenade had had windows blown in and there was sand and debris all over the road.

But .... there is always a silver lining! Our wood supply has been getting very low. In fact below is the last basket of seasoned wood we own.

 

 

On Friday morning I awoke to the dulcet tones of a chain saw being used close by. I looked out of the window and a tree was being felled in the lane opposite the marina.

 

 

As soon as they had finished and left, I rushed over, only to find that someone had got there before me. However, he only wanted the really big stuff and was loading massive trunks into his estate car. I was more interested in the smaller branches of which there were plenty. I loaded up three wheelbarrow loads and our wood store is now full again.





I also noticed that a tree had come down on a patch of land owned by one of our friends on the Allotments. He always lets us have any wood and there is loads there, so I don't think we will struggle for wood for a very long time.

 

Of course we will have to wait a year for it to be properly seasoned, but other casualties of the strong winds were fence panels belonging to friends of ours and these can be chopped up and burnt immediately.

 

With the weather being so severe, we have taken down our infra red camera. The otter has been active recently making a lot of noise around and under our boats, but has been frustratingly elusive when we have tried to capture him on film.

 

We have had some success with the kingfisher though, although again the fixed camera failed to take any pictures of him. On Monday, which was a beautiful day, I saw him four times. Once when he landed on the cleat at the front of our boat as I was standing in the bedroom. He was no more than two feet away and I saw him in all his glory. It was a wonderful sight as their colouring is so beautiful. However he saw me and quickly flew away. Later on I decided to go for a short walk as the weather was so lovely. I was crossing the bridge and saw him sitting on the end of next doors boat, just above our camera!! It was almost as if he knew the camera was there and was avoiding it. Here is the shot I took from the bridge. It's not very clear because of the distance, but you can see our camera set up under the bench.



 

The weather is still very unsettled and we are expecting more wind and rain. We are just so thankful to live on a boat as so many people in the south have been severely flooded. We saw a house on the news last night which was submerged up to the top of the front door. I have never seen such deep flooding.

Home owners on the Somerset levels were interviewed and were saying how they have had enough now after weeks of being under water. The Government didn't seem to show much interest and certainly those poor people have had very little assistance. Strange how now that the Home Counties have been flooded, the Government have been galvanised into action. Call me a cynic, but it smacks of helping out their rich cronies, while leaving the poor people in Somerset to suffer.

Hopefully the weather will improve soon. Last Monday was a gorgeous day and as I was cycling back from town along the tow path I heard a song thrush which is always a sign of hope.

Al

Stinking Minks and Pottering Otters

We have had a number of disturbances on the marina in recent weeks. Many boaters have commented on loud sploshing noises near the jetty and splashing under the boats late at night. It has to be something big.

We have a friend who is a wild life field worker, so I texted her for advice. We have seen both Mink and Otters here last year, but we only got a glimpse and just once for each animal. Whatever we have now is a regular visitor, or could even be resident. Our friend has told us to look for black thin scat in which case it will be Mink, as they are apparently dirty compared to Otters.

This morning I heard a loud splosh down the jetty and went to investigate. In an empty berth between two boats, I saw the tell tale signs of an Otter, a line of bubbles on the surface. I stood very still and was rewarded a minute later by a brief sighting of an Otter head which just poked up out of the water for about a second before disappearing again.

Because it is quiet on a Sunday morning I suppose there is more likelihood of seeing it and a couple of other boaters saw it a few minutes later further down the Marina. We are determined to capture it on film, so Phil and I have bought an infra red motion camera and have positioned it at the end of the Jetty overnight. We will see what we get.....

In the meantime, I am determined to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and stake it out with my camera.

Another boater says that the kingfisher's favourite fishing spot is from the boat next to him and he sees it every day, so again I'm going to stake it out.

Watch this space ...... Hoping to post photos in the near future!

Al

Cider with Sloesie (with apologies to Laurie Lee)

I arrived back after two months of working overseas on 22nd December and have spent the last few weeks acclimatising to the cold, wet dreary British weather.

One of the first things I did, was to decant all the Fruit that had been steeping in alcohol for the last three months. I made Raspberry Vodka, Damson and Sloe Gin, Blackberry Whiskey and Plum Brandy, all from organic fruit either off our allotment or foraged from the local hedgerows.

I hate wasting food, so I then had to decide what to do with the left over fruit. It is easy to use the damsons and Plums, I simply melt dark chocolate in a pan and dip them in it, coating them and leave them to cool. They make gorgeous chocolates. The raspberries were soon whisked up with some cream to make an alcoholic raspberry fool. Sloes though, are very bitter, even after sitting in spirits and sugar for many weeks. I was talking to a fellow boater who said he had heard that they go very well with cider and add a unique flavour if left for a couple of weeks. I needed no encouragement and they are currently steeping in small bottles of cider which I decanted. You can see them amongst the other fruit gins here:

We are now on our forth winter on the boat and a lot has changed in the way we go about things, as a result of what we have learnt. Our first winter was a 'baptism of fire', since the canal froze and we were iced in, after only four weeks of living afloat. That was a harsh winter and we struggled to keep warm and also had issues of damp and condensation. We have learnt so much through trial and error since then and now cope very well with whatever the weather throws at us. We have had a lot of rain this winter and I feel so sorry for the huge numbers of people whose homes have been flooded all over the country. Friends often email us to check that we are okay in such extreme weather, but of course, the higher the water gets, the higher we float, so we are not affected at all by heavy rain.

There are many things we have done to improve our winter living. Probably the most effective was the double glazing which Phil installed himself just by cutting and fitting acetate sheets and draft excluders to the windows. This has kept drafts out and the heat in. The other problem we have fixed, is the condensation and damp, the dehumidifier was an inspired buy. We check the humidity about twice a day on our 'weather station' which came with it and put it on for an hour or two if it gets above 70. It is amazing how full the tank gets and to know that all that water would have been hanging in the atmosphere and clinging to our clothes in the wardrobes. The other item which has proved useful is a small panel heater, which we have on twice a day, morning and evening and this just keeps the chill off the boat until we get the fire lit. We did worry about the expense of running these electrical gadgets, but with our most recent electricity bill coming to £41 for the coldest quarter of the year, we are no longer fretting about expense!

We are also much more efficient with our log burner. You can usually spot the new boaters in winter because they have all their doors open whatever the weather. It is very easy to overcook the fire and the boat can become unbearably hot even when it is freezing outside. We now use a mixture of coal and wood to keep it ticking over.

Our wood supply is holding up. A number of our friends live in Blackpool, where the notoriously strong winter winds often take out panels of their garden fencing. These are more often than not beyond repair once they have been blown about a bit, so we get invited to chop them up and take them away and they make perfect kindling. Another friend is a builder and always has a plentiful supply of pallets for soft wood and our log store of foraged wood provides the rest. We have used about 3/4 of our wood so far and I haven't had the opportunity to replenish it this year. This is partly due to the fact that Jack the Whippet is no longer with us and on our walks I would often to be one of the first to spot tow path tree felling. I rarely walk along the tow path now. We heard on the grapevine of a massive tree felling exercise up by the motorway at the weekend. An entire wood was being cleared to make way for the new motorway link. We drove up there yesterday with the chainsaw and some bags, only to find that the locals had got there first and the place was completely cleared! Ah well, such is life!

I hope to post a bit more frequently now that I am back and have caught up, so watch this space!

Al :)



 

Preparing for Winter and other news

I haven't posted for a long time for a number of reasons, one of which is that I have been busy preparing to travel overseas next week for a seven week work commitment.

The other reason is that I have been rather low of spirits recently. The lovely Jack the Whippet died a few weeks ago and even though he wasn't my dog, it hit me very hard. I miss him dreadfully, not least because I no longer have an excuse to get out and have refreshing walks along the tow path any more. I went out last week in search of Sloes to make my usual sloe gin, but I felt quite lonely without Jack to talk to or interact with. He was such a character and he had a very special place in my heart and always will do. RIP Jack the Whippet.

Recent weeks have been full of activity as I want to make sure everything is 'shipshape' before I go away. The weather has been very variable recently and we have been meaning to take the boat out to turn her around so that the stern entrance is adjacent to the end of the jetty for easy access. However there has always been something that has prevented us from doing it. Ideally I wanted to tie it in with a night out on the tow path, but we have been too busy to even think about that. I did manage to have my usual few days away in the middle of nowhere though, as a treat before I travel far away. This time, we couldn't book in at our usual place, but found somewhere equally comfortable where we could have some great walks and also which had a great red squirrel population in the grounds.

We finally managed to get time to turn the boat around yesterday, but didn't even get a chance to have a trip down the canal. We just steered her out into the cut, turned around and came straight back in again. However, we are now nicely set up for winter, with the back canopy on and an extra room to boot!

Here she is as she was....

Now turned around .......

.......... and now with the canopy on









We have an extra room ....

This brings me to the endless problem of damp. Over the last three years, since we moved to the boat, it has been a constant battle for us. When we first moved onto the boat, we used to have to wipe down all windows every cold morning as they were soaking wet. Then we installed our own 'Heath Robinson' style of double glazing which has worked really well. This did not prevent the wardrobes getting damp and, although everyone told me that my clothes did not smell, I was very aware of the musty damp smell and in deep winter also the sooty smell from the wood burner. The real test of this was when we went away and we stayed in a hotel. The smell of my clothes really came into sharp relief then. The great news is that I have been away several times this last month staying in hotels and my clothes did not smell at all. This is entirely due to the dehumidifier we bought last year. It is definitely the best item a boater can ever invest in, it costs about 10p an hour to run and as ours came with a 'weather station' it tells us the precise humidity of the room it is in. There are times when the humidity is as high as 90 (virtually raining!) and we do use it a lot, but it is worth it's weight in gold and has kept the boat and our wardrobes dry and warm.

Now 10p an hour may seem like a lot, but with energy bills hitting the news recently, we couldn't help but feel very happy with our situation on the boat. We were paying huge amounts each month to the energy companies for our gas and electricity when we lived in a house and many people are struggling with this now. There are estimates that people will die this winter from the cold, because they cannot afford the heating bills. I believe this will happen and I am also shocked at the number of working people who are now having to use food banks in our country, because they cannot afford to feed their families. This is the state we are in, with the rich - poor divide getting bigger. I don't wish to get all political in this blog, but I have to say that it sickens me! I see a wide range of life now and there are definitely people who are playing the system and not willing to pay their way, I have lived near to people like that and I find it frustrating to witness. However, I also see the other side, where very rich people are grasping, arrogant and equally selfish. Both are wrong, but there are a lot of people in the middle who are genuinely struggling and I don't have any answers for them. We are lucky, in that we have a wood store full of foraged wood which will keep us warm for the winter, we use gas from a bottle which costs very little and our electricity use again is minimal as we use very few appliances which warrant it

There are now an increasing number of people who visit our marina with a clear view to living as cheaply as possible. A number of times in the past few weeks, we have had people turning up asking if there are boats for sale, because they have been told that living on a boat is cheap. Not on this marina it isn't!!

Our marina is definitely the most expensive on this canal and probably the most expensive in the whole of the north of England and the facilities are very very limited. Why do we stay then, you may well ask? Well many people have left, voting with their feet ( or should I say engine). The one thing that our landlords have as a lever, is that local councils are becoming more aware of people living on their boats when they shouldn't be and they are evicting them with very little notice. This is correct and is probably an effective scare tactic. Boat owners like ourselves are looking for legitimacy and security and we support residential status. However many other boaters are happy to take their chances and our marina has been emptying as a result, despite our marina manager confidently stating that there is a waiting list to fill the empty spaces.

The problem is that the prices are high, (probably more than you would pay for a well appointed rented property) and the facilities are not good. Our toilet and shower block are in good working order but are primitive compared with the kind of facility offered by, for instance the caravan and camping sites these days. We were promised that the marina would be dredged this summer since it is completely silted up with many boats sitting on a bed of mud - it hasn't happened to date. Some of our post occasionally arrives soaking wet because the main post box leaks - this has been reported for the best part of a year but no effective action has been taken to rectify it. We feel that we are paying a lot of money just to be within the law and that the money is definitely not being reinvested in enhanced facilities, apart from a few new storage boxes. However, other private marinas are slow to follow suit by offering official approved residential status.We can't wait for that to happen because it will open up the market and add some competition and maybe our current landlords will be forced to review their prices as a result.

So .... I will not be posting for a while as I will be on the other side of the world. In the meantime I will miss the beauty of where I live:

I'm hoping to see these roses at the end of our jetty bloom before I go .......

I will be back on Christmas Eve and will post again in the new year, so stick with me for more winter views on boating life!

Al :)