Tuesday 28 June 2011

Ambling along

We've dropped back into ambling mode, with time to kill and boating around on water that's very well known to us. We made a leisurely start this morning, and Sheila steered along the bit of the Coventry that's really still the Birmingham and Fazeley (interestingly, if you're a geek, the map on the Garmin shows it as the B&F), through Hopwas, where we admired Indigo Dream tied up safe and sound, and on past the woods to a really rural stretch by Tamhorn Farm, where we've tied for the day and night.

It was barely enough boating to recharge the batteries (about an hour and a half) and to get the hot water hot in the calorifier. We've sat tight on the towpath since. The change in the weather is quite dramatic, being cloudy, breezy and chilly, so we really didn't fancy doing anything outside. There's been a lot of traffic past, much more than we saw either on the Stratford or the BCN.

We did have a chance to play with the radios, each secured on a nice new lanyard. They perform very well over the short range, certainly; we haven't tried them over longer distances yet. The sound quality is very good, a testament to how far digital signal processing has come in the ten years since we last bought PMRs.

The pair of wrgies known as the Americans* have just boated past, and stopped long enough for a quick natter. They couldn't stay longer, as they need to be in Whaley Bridge on Saturday, which is heavy boating by anyone's standards.

*At their first national camp, somebody said that there were some newbies from Iowa, having misheard what they said. In fact they're from Iver, near Slough, but the name has stuck in true WRG fashion.

2 comments:

Martin said...

Bruce,

You've mentioned your Garmin before. If you mean a walker's GPS device rather than a car satnav, I'd appreciate some details, as I'm thinking of getting one to help track our cruises and to take when we go for walks.

Ta!

Bruce in Sanity said...

Hi

I see it's been a while since I talked about this stuff, so I'll give it a chunk of tonight's blog, rather than trying to get it all into a comment.

Meantime, it's a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx, and I've found it very good for both cruising and walking. It's 2½ years old, now, though, so there may be better units about.

More tonight, as I say.

All the best

Bruce