Summer Saturday in Whittington

No surprises; we had a brilliant evening with Des and Gill last night, good food, good wine, great conversation. It was quite late before we got to bed so a lazy start this morning, especially as we weren't going anywhere.

I got a paper from the shop after breakfast, then a bit later we visited the monthly craft and food market in the Bell Inn car park. Here we got sausages, a piece of pork fillet and a couple of home made mini quiches to have with salad tonight.

Back at the boat we did some constructive loafing and reading and I spent a bit of time wrestling with the Yahoo website's way of handling photos. Like everything else about Yaboo, this used to be straightforward and intuitive but is now a dysfunctional nightmare.

Thanks to Des's expert input we should have something better in a while in the form of a proper Owners' Group website.

After lunch we took a walk down the towpath to Whittington bridge and then into the village and so back to the boat. I used the Garmin GPS to find that distance-wise, there's very little to choose between the two routes into the village. As mooring by Whittington bridge should be quieter being further from the railway, and it is on a wider bit of canal, we'll make a habit of stopping there in future.

Tomorrow, a lazy start and then on to Fradley and a rendezvous with Elanor and Sally.

Seriously summery

It's been the best day of the year, weatherwise, warm, mostly sunny and with only occasional gusts of wind this afternoon as the convection clouds built up their fluffy cumuli from time to time.

We ran the engine for a little before setting off at half eight, so that the bulk charge phase was soon done and the alternator output was available to run the washing machine. We've only come on to Whittington, two hours or so from Sutton Road Bridge.

Sheila was steering and took it easy along one of her favourite bits of canal on such a glorious day. We arrived just on half ten and found ourselves alone on the moorings by Bridge 80. I'd made coffee on the way, so only had to stop long enough to help Sheila rig the whirligig dryer before walking to the shop for the paper.

It's been a lazy afternoon, conserving our energy for tonight's socialising. I've had no response from The Independent about my dissatisfaction with the iPad app, which is even more disappointing.

There's a food and craft market in the car park of the Bell tomorrow, so we'll stop here for the day, probably. We weren't planning to go far anyway, as Ownashare are having a show at Fradley and we almost certainly wouldn't get a mooring.

To Whittington in the sun

There's a definite pleasure in boating a familiar route. You know what to expect from the navigation but still look out for those minor changes that keep things interesting. It was my turn to steer so Sheila got to do the locks and chat to the gongoozlers at Fradley. She also took over at noon to let me get some lunch.

I was back in charge as we passed the Lichfield Cruising Club at Huddlesford Junction. As we approached our destination for the day, I fell into a reverie about the place:

"Whittington, a village whose seemingly serene surface masks a sinister seething underworld of hoodie-wearing silver surfers and gangs of baseball bat bearing grim grannies, quite capable of bombarding you with a cacophony of concerted campanology if they decide they don't like the way you're looking at them."

Of course, it's not like that at all, really - some of our best friends live here. I'm really beginning to worry about these drugs...

/blur

Beyond Huddlesford

It's been a very good couple of days boating, cool and cloudy at first each time, but getting very warm indeed in the afternoon. We had a pleasant run to Whittington, though Sheila, who was steering, found the amount of traffic a bit stressful, what with the narrow bridge holes and the overgrowth on the offside.

No matter, there was a nice mooring at Bridge 80, handy for walking into the village to the Co-op before lunch and later for going to visit Des and Gill for a brilliant evening of good wine, merry talk and brilliant food. Thanks both, it was great.

Two downsides about that mooring, however – lots of train noise from the West Coast Main Line and very poor mobile signal reception. Apparently there's an O2 mast nearby, but all the other signals are either only just useable outside the boat or non-existent.

We decided to move on a bit to Huddlesford today, then changed our minds whilst underway. It was such a pleasant day for pottering along that I didn't want to stop when we got there, so we've come on to just beyond the entrance to the new Kings Orchard marina, just before you get to Streethay going this way.

The new marina is due to open on Monday, with the first boat in arriving tomorrow. About half the pontoons are ready for use and the service block looks finished from the outside. The contractors are very busy working there as I type this, so hopefully they'll have got round to putting some mooring rings on the pontoons by tomorrow…

We walked back to Huddlesford this afternoon to look for a couple of geocaches, but weren't successful with either this time. One was a nano cache (hadn't realised that when we set out or we wouldn't have bothered) and the other was in an area absolutely solid with bramble and nettle. It's the first time I've worn shorts all day this year, and I'm regretting it now.

Ouch.

We'll stay put tomorrow; Elanor and Sally are coming to see us, parking at Huddlesford and walking the towpath to find us.

And finally, welcome to anyone who's reading this for the first time as a result of the plug Damian Kemp gave me on the CRT Facebook page. In case you hadn't realised, the aim of this blog is to give a sense of what living aboard is like for us, both the highs and the lows (not that there's many of the latter) with an admixture of barminess from time to time, especially when Sally takes over my brain.

Woof!

Slow connection today

We're moored by B80 at Whittington, lovely sunny day, gave the boat a bit of a wash, almost no data signal.

I'll blog properly tomorrow from Huddlesford, hopefully.

Damian, I'm trying to reply to your email, but it may have to wait until tomorrow too.

To Whittington

As forecast, it was an early start this morning, though we weren't the only ones on the move by any means. By half seven, we were breakfasted and ready to go, locking down Bagnall, winding and locking back up again in twenty minutes. Sheila made a good job of the winding; I think I've said before that the winding hole in Alrewas is deceptive. Thanks to the curve of the towpath, there's only just room to get 70' round.

By nine, were up the Fradley Locks, and sitting on the water point on the Coventry. The pressure was no better than usual, so we settled for three quarters of a tank, and will do a proper fill at Fazeley the day after tomorrow.

As we left, we passed Dolce Far Niente on the visitor moorings, and, it being ten to ten by now, gave them a blast on the klaxon. We were rewarded in due course by the appearance of two tousled heads in the cratch; sorry if we woke you up, guys!

/blush

Although it rained on and off (mostly on) I did a fair bit of lookout from the well deck on the tricky bit through Streethay, where we spotted Tilly May on the service wharf.

Arriving at Whittington at ten to twelve, I just had time to nip into the village for a paper before lunch. The weather has now improved, but we've been chilling out in the cabin, watching a DVD and reading, mostly.

Surprise!

Unless you are reading this via a newsfeed (RSS, Atom or whatever), you'll have noticed that I've changed the design. This is partly because I like a change from time to time, but mainly because I'm starting to take advantage of an added feature of Blogger, namely the permanent pages, and the old template didn't let me put the extra pages as a set of tabs across the top.

I've put up one about the Braidbar Owners' Group, and I'll add others as they occur to me. The one about the BOG was originally on my static website, and I was prompted to transfer it here by the latest post on Shell Bell. Thanks for the mention, Norwyn and Sheila, and for the picture of Sanity.

Since there's not a lot to say about our boating today (lazy start, stopped at Whittington for a loaf of bread, not much choice in the Whittington Co-op, came on to Huddlesford, plenty of room here), I thought I'd talk about the Garmin, as Martin was asking about it in a comment yesterday.

I got mine for my birthday two and a half years ago. After much research, I settled on a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx. At the time, Garmin didn't support Macs as well as they do now, so I bought the mapping for it on a micro SD memory card (the x in the model name means that the GPS has a slot for one of these).

It's a high accuracy beast with a colour screen, but no altimeter or proper compass. It cost about the mid range, and has been generally satisfactory. We use it for walking, especially in areas new to us, for geocaching, and for keeping track of where we are when boating. It means that we have an accurate measure of how long we're moving each day (useful if you are using Sheila's diesel calculator), and although there's not much risk of taking a wrong turn on the canal, it still has its uses.

This is because I've added key features like locks, winding holes and boatyards as additional waypoints as we've gone along, so that when we come back that way, you can check just how far it is to the next such item.

Downsides:

• Garmin maps are quite expensive (over £50 for the southern UK, for example)
• The sealing band round the unit can start to unstick in hot weather
• The colour screen, whilst perfectly readable, is quite small if you are used to an in car type satnav.

As I say, I'm perfectly happy with it, but nowadays would be tempted by the Dakota series of touch screen units, which have a larger screen as a result of not needing space for buttons.

Lazy in the heat

After a quiet night at Huddlesford, we ambled on to Whittington, with the plan of pausing there to get a paper, before carrying on to Hopwas. We had originally thought to go to the Sutton Road Bridge mooring at Tamworth, but a) we're trying to lose time, and b) mooring there on a sunny Easter Saturday night might not be so good.

The first part of this went off without a problem, Sheila steering gently along the Coventry to find an easy mooring on the outskirts of Whittington. We tied, and I popped off to go to the Co-op to get the paper and a further supply of salady stuff.

The Chairman of the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust lives just by the bridge there, and the signs were up for a coffee morning in aid of the restoration. It didn't seem too much to ask to hang about a further half hour to give them our patronage, so we settled down with the quiz in the Indie magazine to pass the time.

Our decision was rewarded by a chance encounter with Gill Barnard of Farne, who came past walking the dog. We had a nice natter with her, and that took us up to ten o'clock, time for coffee.

Having consumed the coffee, and bought books and a ready to cook slab of rhubarb crumble, we set off again, taking a photo of the festivities as we went:

We've actually stopped just a bit short of Hopwas, before Whittington Ranges, in fact, on a quiet piece of towpath with a nice view. We've spotted a yellow wagtail sitting proudly on top of a bush, and otherwise not done an awful lot, as it continues to be very warm indeed.

We'll stay put tomorrow, then plod on to Tamworth on Monday, so as to get some shopping in at Sainsbury's before going on to Kingsbury Water Park (large stores aren't legally allowed to open on Easter Sunday in the UK).

On the move with two boats again

29th & 30th April, and 1 May

It’s been a good three days, with a brilliant evening with Gill and Des Barnard last night. In consequence, I’m a bit weary this afternoon, so forgive me if this post is short on flowery phraseology.

Wednesday night, Elanor came to stay, and we had a pleasant family evening. Thursday morning, the cunning plan was to be away at nine, so as to arrive at Fradley around 10.30, with the best chance of getting mooring spaces. This all worked out and came together very satisfactorily. Elanor steered Sanity and I took Sanity Again, whilst Sheila lock wheeled and got well exercised.

Elanor had been a bit unsure about single handing after a break from steering a boat, but in fact dropped back into the swing of it straight away, like the true boatwoman she is (she’s been boating, on and off, since she was six months old.)

The only tedious bit was one of the Hunts Lock moorers, Such As Life, who had decided to wash his boat on the special water point installed for them. Since that point is also the lock landing for Hunts, and there was a lot of traffic, it was, shall we say, not exactly considerate boating.

Safely tied at Fradley, we had a good session off loading all the rubbish that had accumulated whilst we were hanging around Alrewas. Elanor stayed for lunch, then set off to walk back to her car at Alrewas, just as the rain came on, naturally.

We took a walk in the rain ourselves, later on, just to get out in the fresh air, and ended up having tea and chat with Alan and Liz on Streamline, which was tied in front of the shop and pub.

Yesterday, we made an early start, as we wanted to move the two boats towards Fazeley. After downloading a nice email from the guy who is buying Sanity, I took Sanity Again up Junction Lock and round onto the Coventry to the water point here. Whilst the tank was filling, Sheila went back and fetched Sanity, then she led through to Whittington, where we were able to tie just before Bridge 80.

Elanor popped out to see us again, bringing our postal voting papers, then Des and Gill came along to inspect the new boat. As I’ve said, we went to them for dinner, and didn’t get back until after midnight.

Making a rather more leisurely start today, we’ve come across to Fazeley, tying by Sutton Road Bridge as usual. We’re the only boats here, but that’s probably because this is a continuous cruiser’s mooring. There seem to be a lot of hippy hutches lurking between Huddlesford and here, but they tend to congregate by road bridges that have handy parking.

We’ve done two shopping trips, and will fit at least another one in tomorrow. We need to take Sanity to Fazeley Mill Marina to get her pumped out, and maybe to make arrangements to leave her there whilst the survey and final paperwork is done to complete her sale; it all takes as long as selling a house, it seems to me.

Meanwhile, I've done a short additional post on Building Sanity Again, and put another five photos up on Flickr.

Toddling to Tamworth

17th & 18th July

It's been a good two days boating, albeit over water we know very well. It's made a good break from the challenges of boating on moving water; knowing exactly where the good moorings are to be found, estimating how long a route will take, not worrying about the weather forecast other than to decide how much waterproofing to put on.

Yesterday we set off at a good hour. Sheila moved Sanity onto the water point whilst I nipped into the village in search of a paper and some fresh veg. It was early enough that the Co-op wasn't open, so the veg came from the butchers, but that's modern village life for you.

(Actually, I can recall a town in North Wales where the best barbers was also a licensed firearms dealer, so maybe it's not so modern after all.)

We then had the entertainment of boating up to Fradley Junction, which was having one of its Freaky Fridays, but didn't have to wait too long at any of the locks. Once clear, I retreated below and left Sheila to do the steady plod to Whittington, where we moored just this side of the first bridge.

The wreck has gone from the length before – some new fencing in the hedge by where it was suggests that they had to bring lifting gear across the field to get it out.

We spent the afternoon comfortably inside the boat whilst it rained, sorting out some stuff for the Braidbar Owners Group, such as the new order form for Braidbar clothing, and emailing the group about the way we might spend this year's Owners' Weekend.

It was all a bit of a struggle, not to sort the documents out but to get them up on the website, as the internet connection was not good at all, but we managed it in the end. It did mean that by the time I'd sorted it, I was too tired of the sight of the laptop to do a blog post, hence today's double ration.

Today dawned much dryer, and we had a very pleasant chug through to Sutton Road Bridge, on a bright but cool day which has improved as it went on. The building works which were in hand when last we were here turn out to be a new base for Audi UK, as part of which they've installed a new footpath through to the road, making it easier to get to the retail parks without fighting your way through a hedge or two.

We got some shopping done, then spent the rest of the morning on the boat. This afternoon, we tried to find a micro geocache, but it's gone, the tree stump where it should have been having been moved.

Other than that, it's continued quiet. My account with Google Reader, which I've been using to keep track of various other blogs, went all strange, and refused to load. Some investigation on the relevant forum showed that I'm not the only one afflicted by this. It will teach me to be lazy and just use Google 'cos it's there. Instead I've downloaded a new piece of software, Netnewswire, which is doiung the job very nicely, thank you.

Tomorrow we'll amble back towards Fradley, planning to be in Alrewas on Monday night so as to do the Village Walk on Tuesday morning.

A sociable evening, and then onto Fazeley

4th & 5th April

It's going to be a shorter blog today, for two reasons which will become apparent as I go on.

Yesterday we had a promptish start on a bright and breezy day. Whilst Sheila topped up the water tank, I nipped into the village to get a paper and some final bits and pieces for dinner. I wasn't on my best form, as I'd had a pretty broken night with what felt suspiciously like the onset of Elanor's cold. (First reason – I'm a bit dopey with it.)

Once filled up with water, we made good progress up to Fradley, where we made a brief stop to dump a lot of rubbish and recycling. Then it was the left turn onto the Coventry, and the pleasant cruise to Whittington. If you except the bit near Streethay that's right alongside the A38, this is one of the best parts of the Coventry Canal, we reckon.

On the way, we saw our first ducklings of the year, another sign that Spring is now definitely with us, and some recompense for the racket the amorous ducks are making outside the boat for half the night.

Just before reaching Streethay, we had to pull in to clear the prop. A bit of fishing line had wrapped itself round the propshaft, and was collecting a lot of weed to itself.

We got to Whittington just in nice time for lunch, and then spent part of a brilliant afternoon cleaning up the boat. I've commented before that having folk in for dinner has this handy side effect that we feel prompted to give Sanity a bit more than just a quick lick and promise. The new mini vacuum cleaner continues to be excellent for this, enabling us to get dust and muck out from a load of nooks and crannies.

After having a shower, I set to to prepare our repast. This was going swimmingly – roast chicken fillets in a mushroom and onion sauce with new potatoes and broccoli, followed by fresh fruit salad and crème fraiche.

The sauce was under way, the spuds prepped, and I was working on the broccoli florets when my chronic mix of impatience and cack-handedeness caught up with me again. The broccoli was wrapped in that stupid tough cling film. The first crown came out reasonably easily, but the second resisted arrest valiantly, and when I resorted to trying to slice the film open with the veg prep knife I only succeeded in stabbing myself in the finger.

The palmar side of the middle phalange of my left index finger, to be exact. There was quite a lot of blood almost straight away, but very little pain.

A quick rinse under the tap, and Sheila sprang into action, first with a big plaster, then, when it continued to leak, a firm wrapping with zinc oxide tape over the top. This brought things under control, and Sheila took over cooking the meal, whilst I sat around giving instructions.

Next time, I'll skip the self-mutilation bit, and just announce that it's She's turn to cook, I think. (Second reason – typing's a bit tricky with one of the three fingers I use out of action.)

Despite this little panic, we had a great evening with Des and Gill, with lots of Braidbar and other canal gossip, and roaming off onto bell ringing and other such subjects. Des also leant me his primer about making websites with CSS, so I really must get on with the revamp of the nbsanity site.

Today was another glorious morning. We had a great run to our usual shopping mooring at Sutton Road Bridge. They are busy erecting another retail outlet of some sort just over the hedge, but it's still possible to get through to the existing shopping areas.

Amongst other stuff, we bought some Steristrips in Boots, and the plasters have been replaced with them. The cut is actually healing remarkably well, but it'll do better for being more open to the air.

Tomorrow we'll go to Fazeley Mill Marina for diesel and a pump out. After that we're not sure how we're going to kill the bit of time we have in hand before heading for Norton Canes. But it will not involve me and sharp knives if Sheila has anything to do with it.

I've got a new toy!

16th & 17th October

It's been a great couple of days, and not without its interesting aspects. Before I get into that, I meant to say something last time about the William IV pub in Alrewas, the base from which we start and finish the Willie Walk. It's changed hands recently, so please disregard any previous assessments of its catering standards.

The new owners seem very pleasant, and the beer continues very good, well kept and with a variety of interesting guest beers.

The food is much more of a curate's egg. Prices have gone up a shade, and some of the portion sizes, especially for the pasta dishes, have gone right down. Best options on the menu at the moment seem to be the sandwiches, which come with a decent serving of chips and in decent, artisan style bread. I get the impression of comparative novices both behind the bar and in the kitchen.

Things may well improve, and if they do I'll say so here. Meanwhile, I'd be more inclined to go to the Crown in Post Office Road than the Willie if I wanted a meal in Alrewas.

Yesterday we set off in relaxed style from Fradley to go to Whittington in time for our meal with Des and Gill. My recent birthday present from Sheila was a gps unit, a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx, in fact, and I spent the trip steering and playing with it at the same time. Sheila says not, but I suspect she got a little tired of me saying things like "Now we're headed south east!" and "Now we're doing 3.2, no, 3.3, no, 2.9 miles per hour!"

We actually got to Whittington in time for lunch, and after I'd phoned Des to say that we were there, I got his address and put it in the Garmin and demonstrated that it would set a route to take us to his door.

Dinner with them was great as always; Gill is a fabulous cook (I wish I was half as good) and they are both great company. But there you are, Braidbar Owners (Farne, number 82), you see. Des had insisted on coming to fetch us from the mooring to their house, but we walked back by ourselves, me wielding the Garmin to ensure we took the right turnings.

For those anoraks like myself who are into the techie stuff: I've got round the weak support by Garmin for Macs (though it's improved recently) by getting Sheila to buy the HCx model that takes microSD cards, and getting the TOPO Mapsource software for the southern half of the UK preloaded on a card.

This works very well in the unit, with lots of detail at large scales, but you can't back up the data from the card to your computer, be it PC or Mac. This seems to me to be a major drawback of getting the mapping this way. If you did it the usual way of buying it on a CD-ROM and then uploading it to the unit, you have the data in three places, always a more comfortable state to be in. Also, you can then use the mapping on the laptop to design routes and then upload them to the gps unit. Working with the detailed mapping only in the unit, you have to do all the waypointing and route drawing on the small screen of the gps, not nearly as convenient.

If the new Garmin software for the Mac turns out to work well, in future I would recommend going the standard CD-ROM route.

Back to the boating! Today was another fantastic day, weather wise, bright but cold. We had another easy start, and some great boating to Sutton Road Bridge by lunchtime. We've been shopping this afternoon, and I've carried on playing with my new toy.

We had thought of going on to Kingsbury Water Park tomorrow, but we want to be back at Alrewas on Monday to do the Willie Walk on Tuesday, so I think we'll give it a miss this time. We'll go to Fazeley Mill Marina for a pump out, then probably come back to Hopwas for the night, then Fradley for Sunday, and an easy saunter down to Alrewas on Monday.

A nice club, and phone connectors

20th & 21st September

We woke to weather that had resumed the classic warm wet westerly pattern, so no need for the stove. After trolling off to the shops to get a paper, a copy of this month’s Waterways World and a few bits and bobs, we set off for Whittington.

On the way we passed Scarweather, Braidbar number 54. She was moored at Streethay, but they are relocating to Weedon.

We tied in the centre of Whittington by lunchtime, and used a bit of time in the drier afternoon to rinse down the starboard side again, and to polish the portholes on that side. Despite washing her at Hartshill, the side had got very dusty again, whether from the limestone BW now uses for towpath surfacing, or from the bonemeal factory nearby, we’re not sure.

In the evening we had a meal with Des and Gill Barnard, who live in Whittington and moor Farne, Braidbar number 82, at Lichfield Cruising Club, Huddlesford, where we are going for the Boat Gathering this weekend.

An excellent evening was had, with good fod, pleasant wine and chat ranging over a lot of shared interests.

Today we had all of half an hours boating to do, so had a very lazy start, eventually chugging round to Huddlesford at 9.30 or so. After tying, we went round to the club. Last night we’d said how nice it would be to be just punters visiting a boating event, but when we got there, there were a couple of marquees to put up, and it was very windy, and they needed all the help they could get...

LCC proves to be a very friendly club, with a lot of moorings on the stump of the Lichfield canal (focus of restoration by the Lichfield and Hatherton Canal Trust), a clubhouse in the old toll cottages that they rent from BW, and that great atmosphere of a club that relies on its members’ work to maintain itself.

They’ve got plans for a mooring basin when the L&H is restored, and have already bought a field to use for the purpose. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow's event.

Phone Connectors

The other month I said we were trying out a new type of connector from our mobile to the Boaters Phone Company aerial. It’s attached by a Velcro pad to the back of the phone, and works by induction between the connector and the phone’s internal aerial.

I have to say that it’s been a disappointment on our Nokia 6234. The Velcro is very feeble, and falls off at the least excuse, and the gain in signal is poor, much worse than the plug in connectors we use on the old Nokia 6310i (now well past its prime) and the Sony Ericsson K700i (still functional but not such a nice phone as either Nokia).

We’ve gone back to using the Sony as the main boat phone, as the 6234 was just too feeble in poor signal strength areas, so that I had to keep swapping the SIM card out of it into one of the others. It’s a pity, but I don’t think I would recommend the Velcro type connector, and at £20 it’s not cheap.

Probably better would be to buy a phone cradle of the type meant for in-car installations, if you can find one for your phone which takes the FME connector on the downlead from the aerial.