Pottering at Fradley

As planned, we've been staying put here at Fradley today. Sheila ran a washload, it being Monday, which also meant giving the engine a decent run and getting a goodly amount of charge into the batteries. I try to charge them to a tail current of at least 2% of their capacity, 8 amps or less, every day. It's good too to get them really well charged as often as possible, that is down to a tail current of 2 amps or less, but it takes a long time to get those last few ergs into the bank.

As we're not doing any long days at the moment, it's not going to happen any time soon. On the other hand, we're now seeing a decent amount of sun, so the solar panel carries on adding charge through the day.

While Sheila was looking after the laundry, I turned out the desk drawer which was full of various kinds of cable. It was the most amazing collection of stuff that's accumulated over the last 14 years of living aboard. Some of it looks like it belongs in a museum of IT and there are a lot of charging cables, many for phones we don't have any more.

Then there were the USB cables of various kinds and miscellaneous other stuff, audio, video, FireWire, iPod related and so on. I've sorted out the ones that are likely to be used routinely and bundled the rest up in a set of poly bags and stowed them away under the side berth.

As usual, the problem is you don't dare throw any of them in case you find yourself holding a piece of kit that needs a cable you've just dumped. OK, so maybe not some of the mains cables, those can be offloaded at a recycling tip in due course.

After lunch, we washed and dried the starboard side of the boat. We found a bruise in the cabin paintwork which looks, I fear, as though another boat has clipped it with a bow rubbing strake. There was a bit of bare metal starting to rust, so I've plopped a bit of RustKonverter on it. It will need touching in before we polish that side.

Having done all this work, we treated ourselves to an ice cream at the cafe and then took a leg stretch up to Shade House lock. The actual Shade House is not for sale for once – last time they were asking £750,000 for it, probably a fair reflection of the size of the accommodation, the area of accompanying land and the pleasant location.

It's just a shame about HS2 being routed across the back somewhere nearby...