Dawn colours

I woke up this morning at 5.30am and noticed the light coming through the curtains was quite sensational. I got up and stood on the stern and sure enough it was a cracking sun rise:

We went up to the Lake District today to visit some friends who own the boat next door to us. They use it as a weekend retreat and have a beautiful house with fantastic views over the mountains. They are quite elderly now but related stories over lunch of how they would climb Coniston Old Man on Christmas morning before heading home for lunch. We thought that we were serious walkers, but that shows real committment!!

I am desperate for a walk but Phil has pulled a ligament in his leg and it is taking time to heal. He has promised that as soon as we have a fine day (not had one of those for ages), he will take me somewhere nice and throw me out for a walk while he sits in the pub and waits for me (now there's a hardship!)

We are also planning a trip on the boat in a couple of weeks, spending a few days travelling north where the scenery is supposed to be spectacular, so watch this space!

Al :)

Holidays and Bills

This week I have at last been able to just relax and do very little and it has been fantastic.

We are just about the only boat on the narrow boat jetty here at the basin because so few boats venture down as the locks are hard work. We helped T and Jack back to their mooring at the beginnning of the week. Because the locks are so heavy there is no way one person can operate them, but I absolutely love doing it, it is such a good work out and great fun, even though it did start to rain when we were halfway along and we all got soaked.

We have a superb view of the basin and as I now have time to sit and gaze, I have seen some fantastic wild life. A comorant decided to pay a visit yesterday;

I saw him dive and come up with something ...

On closer inspection it was this large eel!

He had quite a fight with it

But finally managed to swallow it....

Last night I sat out on the back of the boat. The water was like a mill pond and there always seem to be lots of ducks about in the evening:

The starlings were starting to roost:

I watched the sun setting:

And the moon come up ....

..... and it was all so quiet and peaceful, just what I have needed.

Today there was more drama played out on the water as the moorhen who had been nesting on a neighbour's boat had hatched two chicks. She decided to take them straight out for a swim, but one soon became separated and it looked so small and lost out there on its own:

Mum just didn't seem to care and went back to the empty nest and left baby squeaking and swimming around. I was assured that if we left them to their own devices they would find each other, but it was sad to watch.

Having completed the transaction on our little boat, we have some money in the bank ( for a change!), so decided to do a complete financial review this morning. We worked out all of our fuel costs for the year and here is a breakdown which you may find useful:

Diesel -     £310 (for the central heating as well as propulsion)

Coal -        £273

Gas  -        £  52

Electricity £115

This makes a total of £750 for the year, which I don't think is bad in the scheme of things. Add to that our mooring fee which is £2850 and the British Watersways license which is £770 and that grand total of £4370 is pretty much the cost of living on a boat for the year if you own your boat outright. Of course this could change depending on many factors (age and length of boat etc,), but that is what it has cost us for a new, 57ft boat. There are other incidental costs such as toilet fluid for the chemical toilet or pump out fees if you have a waste tank, but these are really just part of normal household costs and I wouldn't put it in with the main utility costs.

One of the other spin offs of living on the boat over the last couple of years has been our fitness levels which have risen considerably. We have always been quite active, but I am really strong now, with all the carrying and lifting and chopping wood etc. and I also feel much better for spending so much more time outdoors in the fresh air.

Now I am going to 'slob out' in front of the telly and watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London - should be a good show :)

Al

Two boats minus one

We have sold our little boat ... we feel quite sad about it really because it is a beautiful boat with much character, but it has gone to a lovely family who we took to immediately and it means money in the bank for us. It wasn't really being used much, son number two has too many other distractions to be out sailing it as he might have done during the first year of his degree course. He is now working at two jobs until he applies for the career job in the Autumn when the big companies do their graduate entry schemes.

The people who bought it were just blown away by the peace of sitting on it and watching the world go by. We then invited them to come and have a cup of tea on our boat in the basin and when they saw the scenery up there I think it sold itself!

Phil got up at 5am this morning to go and do some bird watching and here are some of the pictures he took:

View from the stern of the boat

View from the bow of the boat

Early morning mist

The Estuary

Today was the first reasonably warm and sunny day for a long time. I took the opportunity to do some washing and hang it off the boat - you can buy special drying frames which hook onto the boat. I also had some left over tomatoes, so put them in egg cartons on the roof to dry them. When the sun is really hot, the top of the boat becomes like an oven and you can 'sun dry' tomatoes on it. They are great mixed with a bit of olive oil and chillis.

I enjoyed spending some time sitting on the back in the sun reading, with Jack lying at my feet, (tired after having had a good walk). It was lovely to chill for a bit,but I still have lots of things I need to do, like sorting out our storage which has become a tip and a dumping ground. We also still have some stuff left over from the house which I am going to put on ebay.

 

Al

Bills

I returned from Birmingham (in the rain) at the weekend and am now finally having some time off. I really enjoyed working in Birmingham because it is the absolute centre of the canal network and it felt like home from home. I was able to walk along the canal every evening and chat to other boaters.

Now I am on catch up with chores etc. I think I have finally sorted out the damp problem. I cleared out both wardrobes and have taken a lot of clothes I don't wear very often up to our storage unit, so there is now some breathing space and the cupboards are not jam packed. I have bought loads of damp collecting tubs and have put three in each wardrobe as well as an air freshener in each. If you try to buy the damp collectors at specialist caravan or boating shops, they cost about £5- £6 but our local 'pound' shop stocks them for £1 each and they last several weeks, so it doesn't work out too expensive.

I was again accosted in the town centre today by a gas provider trying to get me to change my supply. He looked quite distraught when I told him I don't use mains gas as I live on a boat. I felt sorry for him, it must be a hard job trying to get people to change to another provider and I bet he only gets paid on a commission basis.

Talking of gas etc. I thought it might be useful to give some sort of breakdown of costs this quarter: -

Our gas comes out of a bottle which we keep in the locker at the front of the boat. We have two bottles in there so if one runs out while we are in mid flow of cooking a meal, we just get a spanner and switch the supply over to the full one! We last got a full bottle about 6 months ago and it cost £26. We checked it the other day and there is still plenty left. I would say that at the very most you would use two bottles a year.

Our electricity bill for this quarter was £25. We have mostly used the wood burner for heating this last few months and have generally used wood, because coal produces too much heat at this time of year. We get our wood free, either by foraging, or from friends. The central heating uses diesel and again we haven't had to buy any recently. We have two jerry cans full which our neighbour gave us to say 'Thankyou' for cooking him so many meals over the last few months. They contain 20 litres each which will see us right for fuel to move around and heating for many months.

As you can see it is a very cheap way of life as far as utility bills goes. However, it isn't so cheap for other costs. We pay £2900  per year for our mooring and £700  per year for our waterways license which entitles us to have a boat on the water ( a bit like car tax). In addition we pay £26 for storage every month. If you own your boat outright that wouldn't be so bad, but we have a small mortgage on ours which puts our rental costs up to the equivalent of renting a very nice flat in town. We know this because we are helping son number two to get a flat with his girl friend and we were in the estate agents yesterday and looking at some very nice properties which were the same or less than we are paying now.

This looking closely at things has partly come about because we are dissatisfied with where we are living. Although it is a nice spot we don't seem to get a lot for our money and as I have intimated before there are problems with some personalities there. For me it is to do with one particular boat whose occupants I consider to be anti-social and there are also problems with people not getting on together and, although we keep out of it, it spills over and affects the general atmosphere of the place.

We have seen lots of lovely Marinas advertised in the boaters magazine 'The Towpath' which seem to offer better value for money and we are considering going onto the main system and moving to another area. I love the boating life and would be unwilling to let it go easily, but I can see the argument that we could live much more easily and peacefully on dry land at the same cost, so ....... are we going to 'swallow the anchor'? I'm really not sure.

At the moment we are in our favourite place and have peace and quiet away from the marina, but we can't stay here forever - watch this space, I will keep you posted ......

On a more positive note we had a nice day yesterday when T came up to join us and we helped her through the locks. We are looking after Jack next week while she is on holiday, so it made sense to have her boat up here with us so that he can feel at home if he needs to.



The Lock gates are heavy!



Time for a tea break!



Coming into the basin







Moving towards our boat to moor up

The basin has fantastic wild life and the swans ambush us every time we open the duck hatch:





a Grebe



The Tufted Duck has had babies

....   and the sunsets are amazing:

My next priority has been to weed the allottment, it is looking good but is quite overgrown

We have already had some produce from it - 2 cabbages, some raspberries and gooseberries!

So all in all I am very happy with my life style - we do need to sort out the wrinkles though - keep watching this space for what happens!

Al

Weather!

I am now on the final stretch of my long work stint. Phil calculated that I have had only 4 days off in the last 8 weeks!

I am just off to Birmingham for the week and I must admit I am really tired. Last week I had a horrendous journey from Glasgow to York. I was on the train from Edinburgh to Newcastle when a landslide caused by flash floods happened at Berwick. It washed away all the ballast from under the track and it was a very wierd sensation sitting on the train which felt like it was floating. They managed to reverse back up the line and chucked us all off onto the platform. From then on complete chaos ensued! Eventually they put most people on a train back to Edinburgh, but I was determined to get to York somehow as I had to be working there the next day.

British Rail said that they couldn't put a bus on as all the roads were blocked due to floods because the rain had been so heavy. I must admit it felt like Armageddon with thunder and lightening all around and the rain coming down in sheets. Myself and three others managed to persuade a taxi to take us beyond the blockage into Newcastle, but it was a long and tedious journey with the taxi having to turn around and take different routes on many occasions due to flooded roads. It was an unbelieveable sight with some floods several feet deep and many roads being transformed into rivers.

I got to Newcastle to find no trains were running there either and every hotel was booked. The roads were gridlocked with traffic and people were fighting with each other trying to get into taxis. The price of getting from A to B was going up by the minute!

To cut a long story short, I sat it out and eventually got on a specially laid on train in the early hours of the morning and arrived at York in time to grab a couple of hours sleep before starting work at 9am.

I am so tired now but buoyed up by the fact that I only have one more week before I can have a break and the news that son number two has achieved a First Class Honours in his degree.

As soon as I got back on the boat I noticed that smell of damp again. It has been so wet this summer that I suppose it is inevitable, but it is seriously starting to bug me. Before I left last week I put new damp collectors in every drawer and the wardrobes and they are all now full of water. Onto my next strategy ...... I think I am filling the drawers too full, so I am going to half empty them and take a lot of clothes up to our storage and will keep you posted on how I eventually get on top of this problem.

It was so cold last night that we lit the fire - I just don't know what is happening to our weather. I have never known anything like it!

When I finish next week I am going to get on to some boaty things, such as working out how much it has cost us since we moved onto the boat and will try and calculate everyday costs and outgoings. I am also going to really address the damp problem and come uup with some radical solutions, so watch this space!

Al

Briefly back home

Another hard but interesting work tour, with Phil with me which makes all the difference.

It was a hard slog driving up to the highlands of Scotland but so worth it. We were passing the famous Cairngorm Mountain range so had to pay them a visit. I ended up yomping up Cairngorm mountain - Phil has pulled a tendon so had to make do with taking the ski lift up and waiting for me in the cafe.



Near the summit



The summit cairn

We then carried on to Inverness where the bottle nosed dolphins are renowned for popping up to say hello! I had long days of work there, but it stays light until quite late so far north, so Phil picked me up one evening from work and took me straight to where they are to be found. It was an hours drive and when we arrived we were told we had just missed them, but we wandered along the beach anyway and just as we got to the bay they appeared. There were about ten of them and they seemed to be performing just for us!! It was magical - they leapt and dived while I took 'photos. We were completely bowled over by it:

Mother and Baby

Following Inverness, we fetched up in Fort William. We have both always wanted to climb 'The Ben' but haven't managed to get the opportunity yet and as we were only passing through and I had an afternoons work, it wasn't to be. We will be back though ....

Then it was on to Skye. WOW what a place! The Cuillin Hills looked spectacular:

 

 

But they are mountaineers hills, not for us, we could only walk up to The Old Man of Storr:

Being in Scotland and having stayed in Stirling (William Wallace country), passed through Glen Coe and Glen Shiels, (both scenes of dreadful massacres) and having been on the Isle of Skye (escape route for Bonnie Prince Charlie) made me think about being an English Protestant and how much devastation William of Orange and his wife Mary caused to our History. Having also visited India last year and witnessed how negatively the British Empire impacted on their lifestyle, has made me feel quite ashamed to be English.

Thank goodness my next work stints are in Birmingham and  ........ Yorkshire ...... Oh No I come from Lancashire and I'm going to Yorkshire ! I think the Wars of the Roses could be an issue .............

We arrived back at the boat this afternoon and were pleased that when we opened the hatch we were greeted by a pleasant smell! There were no sooty, damp smells which characterise the boat sometimes in the winter. However when I opened the wardrobes in the bedroom it was the same dampness I have become accustomed to. I examined all the damp collecters and they were full of water. I was amazed - I know we have had the wettest June this century but this was ridiculous! I need to get some more of these, as clearly they are working. They are not expensive so it is fine to just keep replacing them. I spoke to our neighbours who own the yacht at the end of the jetty and they said that the rain had been unbelievable at the weekend - they had never seen so much. This explained why my school records which I had left in the bow deck, as there was no room on the boat, were soaking wet. We have a sturdy waterproof cover covering the deck, but even this had not kept the rain out and protected my bag with the paper work in, it was all soaking. I had to get it all out and lay it in the sun to dry.

Luckily it has been sunny today and in fact it is a beautiful evening. I cooked a meal which was so good as we have been living off hotel food for the past few weeks and then I took a glass of wine and sat on the roof. It is magical up here, because we are the only narrow boat on the jetty and are a long way from anyone - I love that solitude. The basin was like a mill pond and I sat in the warm sun and just chilled! It has been a strenuous work stint and I have a couple more weeks to go (I travel back up to Scotland tomorrow before going to Yorkshire and Birmingham) and I needed the peace of the boat. I can't explain just how important it is to have this little haven to come back to. I love it and everything about it despite the odd problem (damp etc) and long may it continue! 

Al :)

God Save Our Queen

We had fantastic news this morning - my brother has been awarded an MBE in the Queen's birthday honours list. I am so proud! I am not really into the Monarchy but I am prepared to make an exception in this case to say 'Thank you Ma'am' !!

I have spent the day finalising plans for the next work 'slog'. I am just about there now and just have to pack for our long drive up to Scotland tomorrow.

We did something rash today!! We have always said that we needed a second car, because Phil is stuck when I am working at school or away, especially when we are moored in remote places. I mentioned a small smart car like T's. It is cheap on petrol and tax and is ideal as a runabout.

Never mind that ... Phil had seen a nice sports car for sale in our area a few weeks ago and has been dropping it into conversation persistently over the last few weeks. I have been pretending to be deaf or thick and have ignored the hints! Today he couldn't stand it any longer and since we have been married for so many years, he knew exactly when to go in for the kill !! Taking advantage of my elation at my brother's news he stopped at the garage on our way to the supermarket and showed me the car with the explanation that 'it seemed a shame not to as we were passing' - crafty ......

It is a sporty number and he said 'just right for an attractive blonde like you' !! Even more subtle blackmail as a chap on the marina who owns a big yacht had described me as such only this week and it had made me feel very puffed up !!!  Oh yes..... flattery gets him everywhere. He was on a roll and he knew it so we ended up buying it - a Mercedes 230 SLK with a retractable hard top.

Well, I suppose that is why we bought the boat - to allow us to indulge and not worry about money, but I bet I don't get to drive the sports car very often, I think he bought it for himself really!!

I am away now for a few weeks, but will try and post when I can.

Al :)