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 :)

A possible end to the boating life

I was going to write this Blog yesterday as promised, but before I could put pen to paper, so to speak, I needed a day to do some sums and consider our options, before I could give an update on our current boating life.

I have occasionally given news of how the Residential status has affected life on the Marina. We were granted this status two years ago and Phil and I really welcomed it. We were very happy to become 'legitimate'. We wanted to pay our way and be officially recognised as living on or boat, rather than skulking under the radar and trying to avoid paying such things as council tax, TV license etc. The main positive about being granted this status is that the empty berths are now full of lovely people, who we really relate to and who have become good friends. Our status has also impacted on how the people in the village react to us. Whereas before, people would often treat the lot of us as social outcasts, we are now treated with friendliness and respect.

However there has been a disproportionate financial impact of this upgraded status, which is hitting us hard.

Our Marina owners have been negotiating a rate of tax with the local council which would reflect the fact that they also pay tax on our behalf and pass the cost down to us in our hugely increased fees, ( we are now paying double what we paid when we first came onto the Marina). These negotiations have dragged on and on and now the council have lost patience and have issued us all with a demand for full council tax for every boat ( the same as an owner of a small house would pay) and have backdated it to the date of the planning application, before Residential status was actually granted. We have had to pay £2600 in arrears to the council.

We have a hearing on this in April, but if we are told after this that we must continue to pay full council tax, while still paying for council services in our Marina fees and an element in our waterways license, then we will move back to dry land.

We have spent this weekend looking at adverts for rented accommodation in the area and we could rent a very nicely appointed flat or house for less than we are paying here.

Our utilities bills are obviously much reduced by living on the boat and I love foraging for wood to keep us warm etc. but things are all starting to turn a bit sour. It seems that these days everyone is after a slice of your money!

I will update on this issue as events unfold. We both love the life and have had five very happy years of boating, but there is a limit to what we are prepared to pay for that privilege.

More news soon and hopefully a more cheerful posting next week!

Al

A Sunday Update

I have been too busy to post recently and I am finding it quite frustrating. I have a concert coming up and the music I have been given to prepare is fiendishly difficult! This has meant that I have been putting in several hours of practice every day, just to learn the notes. That is just one piece, which is a wind and piano quintet and in addition to this I have several accompaniments to learn for the soloists, who don't usually give me the music until a few days before the concert. Add to this the project I am working on with a jazz saxophonist, who wants to do a gig in April and also to put down a CD and my time is fully taken up. Such is the lot of a pianist - everyone wants a bit of you!

I have now been given my work schedule for this year and I will be away overseas in May/June and October/December, I shall be glad to get away for a rest!

I am not happy with the infrequency with which I post my blogs, so I am going to try and post once a week on a Sunday and see how it goes.

On the boating front, much of our time has been taken up with keeping warm in this icy weather. The canal is frozen on most days and looks very beautiful:

The ducks slip and slide across it in search of food:

We have nearly run out of burnable wood, although we have two wood stores full of unseasoned wood. We have spent many an enjoyable hour chopping the wood we have collected along the tow path. There is much tidying up of overhanging trees going on at the moment and every time we hear a chainsaw, we follow the sound and usually are rewarded with a pile of wood kindly left by the Canal and River Trust! Our new chainsaw has proved to be very easy to use and is efficient at cutting through even quite thick trunks, but splitting them down further has been problematic. The axe doesn't always work, so we have bought a log splitting 'grenade' from ebay and will see how that works:

We are now in urgent need of wood we can burn and the best place for that is the estuary, which is only about 2 miles from the canal. One of our fellow boaters on the marina works at the local tip and had an old bike trailer which had been dumped. I bought it off him for £20 and Phil has done a great job of turning it into an attractive wood collecting chariot!! Here are before and after pictures:

On the wildlife front we have heard the otter swimming about between and under the boats on many occasions in the middle of the night but still haven't captured it on camera. I have now moved the camera to the end jetty after we found a half eaten fish there the other day which could only have been left by the otter.

The kingfisher is also proving elusive and as his favourite perch is currently surrounded by ice, there is not much hope of catching him there and I'm too busy to stake him out at the moment. Here is the empty perch:

There is not much else to report, but I do hope that posting regularly on a Sunday will provide more information on a regular basis. We are about to do a calculation of costs this winter and also hope to have news on our council tax status soon, so that may be interesting and useful for prospective boaters.

All for now. I will leave you with a picture of a beautiful sunset over the marina a few days ago:

Al :)

Kingfishers

Last night was very cold and even though the wood burner was lit all night, we still felt the cold air, despite being warm in bed. Phil has a heavy cold, so I decided to get up early, get the fire up and running properly again, to warm the boat and to get out for a walk in search of a kingfisher.

I had heard that several had been seen south, but for some reason I decided to walk north up the tow path. It was a lovely morning and the colours were beautiful:

The views across to the Trough of Bowland were very special and made me want to get out on the hills for a walk, but Phil is not well enough at the moment.

A few hundred yards later I was rewarded with a flash of bright blue hurtling along the canal and I knew I had found my kingfisher. Unfortunately, he was always too far away to get a decent picture.

 I was pleased to get a shot of him in flight.

I met a dog walker on my way back who told me that she often sees him and she showed me his regular perch, so I resolved to set up camp there one day next week and to lie in wait for him, so that I don't have to chase him along the canal.

When I came back, Phil was up and about and was well enough to do some wood chopping, so we spent a happy hour or two stocking up our wood store with logs from a tree a friend had recently felled and given to us.

All in all, it's been a great day, reinforcing again our reasons for moving to the boat. The closeness to nature and the simplicity of the life is wonderful!

A very happy Al :)

Happy New Year!

I arrived back from a long work stint in India just before Christmas and am now well over the jet lag and tiredness having done two 'back to back' tours with only a few days in between back in the UK. I love India, the country is fascinating and the people are wonderful, optimistic and hospitable.

So far I haven't been booked for any work in 2015 so I'm feeling just a little bit twitchy. Being self employed is hard sometimes. We could just about manage without me working, but it would be a very much 'hand to mouth' existence. However, that is why we moved to the boat, so that I didn't have to constantly worry about getting enough work to pay the mortgage etc. on the house. I met a number of other musicians on my travels this time and it is interesting to see how so many of them work themselves into the ground, just to ensure they can sustain a reasonable lifestyle. I wouldn't recommend that anyone goes into the music profession as a career, it's too insecure.

We are now in our fifth year of living on the boat and I am still absolutely besotted with the lifestyle. This is a common theme on the marina. Everyone I talk to who is moored here, just loves living on a boat. Currently, most of them are like very similar to us in interests and aspirations, so many a happy hour is spent chatting away on the jetty about recent wildlife sightings and fell walks we have done.

I remember the scepticism with which many of our friends greeted our decision to live aboard. Some kind people advised us to at least give it a year before we threw in the towel! I don't think many thought that we would still be so totally content with the lifestyle five years on.

We have learnt a lot in that time mind you and our existence is much more comfortable as a result. Within days of first moving on we had the harshest winter in living memory and it was difficult to keep warm. Now we have double glazing, a curtain at the door, which helps with insulation, canopies at front and back which provide extra space and keep the rain out, a dehumidifier to get on top of the condensation and a wall panel heater which keeps the chill out. We also are now quite expert at keeping a good fire going and keeping it burning all night. All of these things have made a huge difference to our comfort in cold weather.

This winter, the weather has been quite mild. The canal has only frozen over twice and then with only a thin layer of ice:

We have heard the otter splashing about under the boat in the dead of night, but so far we still have no sightings on camera despite having it positioned at the end of our boat. I'm hoping that our patience will one day be rewarded. I'm also planning to capture a kingfisher on film this winter. We have quite a few on the canal and the marina at this time of year, outside of their breeding season.

On the domestic front, most of the fruit gin which has been steeping over the last few months has been decanted. The sloe gin was rather bitter, so I have added more sugar and left it for another few weeks, but the plum brandy, blackberry whisky and cranberry gin all came out well. What was most successful was the raspberry whisky made with raspberries from our allotment. This tastes absolutely gorgeous and I will definitely make more next year.

The allotment is mostly dug over now until the spring, although we still have some leeks growing for making soup.

On the negative side, Phil has been diagnosed recently with an immune deficiency illness which affects his thyroid and makes him quite weak and weary. He has to have vitamin B12 injections every few weeks which perk him up a bit, but he is finding it increasingly difficult to do the heavy work which is part and parcel of living on a boat. I am very happy to chop wood, empty the toilet etc, when I am here, so for now we can overcome that obstacle, but we are not completely sure how much longer we will be fit enough to sustain the lifestyle.

In addition we are finding it disproportionately expensive at the moment, with the mooring fees probably the most expensive in the country. This is because we have residential status, but our local council has jumped on the band wagon and is charging us full council tax and has back dated it to when the planning permission for residential status was first agreed. Currently they are taking £330 per month from us. Don't get me wrong, we don't mind paying an element of council tax, but when the marina owners are paying business rates and we are also paying them council tax within our mooring fee, it would seem that we are paying twice.

For the moment though, we are battling on and hope to spend at least a few more years living our dream.

I'll leave you with some lovely sunset pictures I have taken over the last few days. The light at this time of year is very special:

It just remains to wish you all a very happy New Year!

Al :)

Off to sunnier climes for a while

The weather has suddenly become cold and raw and we have lit the fire for the first time in ages. It is currently sending a warm glow through the boat as I write this, which is very comforting and cosy.

One of the main questions which people ask us, is how we cope in the cold weather. Everyone assumes that it will be hard to keep the boat warm. In fact we are warmer on the boat than we ever were in a house, which was often draughty and expensive to heat because of the high ceilings, typical of a Victorian terraced house.

We have three sources of heat on the boat so we know we will always be warm if one of those should fail. We have an electric panel heater which gives out a very low heat and is very cheap to run. Our central heating, which goes on for an hour in the morning, also provides hot water for the morning chores. This uses a small amount of diesel. We light the wood burner in the evenings, which is completely free, because we forage all our wood. It is also really cosy and cheering to sit in front of.

Shortly, we will also be fitting our back canopy onto the stern. This provides an extra room in winter and protects the stern deck from the elements. It enables us to kick off muddy shoes and also adds another layer of insulation. We always wait until we know that we are not going to go out cruising again until the spring, because the boat is very difficult to sail with the canopy up, especially when going under bridges. Many boaters do, but they are much more experienced and confident than us.

I have come to the conclusion that we are perhaps a little over cautious. We won't go out in windy weather, we won't cruise with the canopy on and we hate sailing in the rain, even if we wear full waterproofs. Maybe we are rightly protective of the boat because we live on it, but there are times when I do think we are a bit too careful. Unfortunately this impacted on the Saxophone project. We had a very good dry run, but on all of the days put aside for the real thing the weather was wet and windy. There was one small window of opportunity, when the sun was supposed to come out and the wind drop for a couple of hours in the afternoon, but we would have had to cruise up to the meeting point in pouring rain and stiff winds, so we decided to back out.

I did feel bad, but the chap managed to find another boat on the day, so did successfully record, although I don't think it went quite as well as he had wanted.

Tomorrow I am flying to India for five weeks work. I then return to the UK for a week of other work commitments. I will hardly be over the jet lag before flying back to another part of India for two more weeks work. This is the way my work pattern is, weeks of intense work and then long periods off. It works well for us, but it is draining when I am in work mode. The people in India are wonderful, I get well looked after and it is an amazing country, I feel very lucky and privileged to have the opportunity to go there.

Last week we spent a couple of days in the Lake District, having some 'us' time which was lovely. The weather was poor, but it didn't dampen our spirits and we managed to get out for a bit of a walk.

Here are some pictures from our walk:

That only leaves me to bid you all goodbye for a while. I will be posting when I get back in December and hope to display the results of the fruit gin, which is currently steeping away under the bed.

Bye for now ...

Al :)