No news is good news??

Hello again, I didn't realize that it has been so long since I last made an entry on my blog!

Obviously if there is not much happening then you cannot report much I had a quick chat with Andrew of n.b. Granny Buttons (www.grannybuttons.com) as he passed on his way south. We had a useful chat about boats honeypotting around mooring sites with adjacent car parks!

Over the last few weeks I have been trying to give one side of the boat a repaint. On the advice of a painter who used to work for a local boatyard I decide to give Rapidpaint of Birmingham a try, (it is very local to me and cheaper to go and pick it up rather than have it delivered). There narrowboat site is www.narrowboatcolours.co.uk ! I must admit that one side of the boat is starting to look rather shiny.

Soon I will be on the move (Friday 8th August to be precise). I'm heading for the National at Autherly Junction and have offered my help for a few days before the Festival actually starts. I only hope that they don't work me too hard!

I shall also be an assistant harbourmaster on the site at the festival so if any of you visit the festival, feel free to come and chat with me. The missus makes a mean cup of tea and has been known to bake some rather lovely cakes to accompany the tea!

Have BW got psychic powers?

Would you beleive it? The day after I posted my pictures of the vegetation growth on the Ashby Canal I was cruising near Hinckley and what did I see? Yes, you guessed right. There was the BW mower heading south on the canal! Murphy's law or what!

Veg Pledge continued

This has gone a bit wrong. The first photo shows just around the corner. I obviously have a few problems with my blogging to sort out!

I promised that I would publish photos of the vegetation growth on the Ashby Canal. Hopefully they are here. The first one shows my 70 foot mooring, kindly trimmed by a predecessor, hopefully future moorers will continue the trend.

My second photo shows just around the corner. Bearing in mind I have two golden retrievers, the vegetation is at least twice as high as them.

The Veg Pledge

Has the veg pledge been abandoned? It certainly seems like it if you cruise the Ashby Canal. Once you turn off of the Coventry Canal at Marston Junction the vegetation seems to take over. In some places it is four or five feet high and obviously has not been cut at all this year. I suppose I really ought to take a picture and attach to my blog - maybe tomorrow!!

Luckily on the approach to hospital bend at Burton Hastings someone with a 70 footer had been here before and cut back all the vegetation, I cut back a bit more with the pair of shears I always carry. Are we all going to have to carry strimmers in the future to do BW's job for them?

All I ask is that the next boater to use this mooring does his bit of gardening.

As for the weather, it's gorgeous!

Speak to you all soon.

GUELROSE is on the move!!

Having persuaded my sister to come up and look after the parents for a few days Jenny and I have taken the opportunity to escape on GUELROSE for a few days. Obviously we picked the right weather!! We left Hopwas on Saturday 7th June and had a long day of 4.25 hours to cruise to one of our favourite moorings in the middle of nowhere between Polesworth and Bradley
Green.

The next morning was her birthday (Heinz varieties is the obvious clue) and after a cup of tea, cards and pressies in bed it was back to cruising. We took a leisurely cruise up the Atherstone 11 and then moved on to Hartshill to moor up for the night. Tomorrow will probably see us going onto the Ashby Canal and probably mooring at hospital bend in Burton Hastings, another one of our favourite moorings. Our moorings are obviously dictated to a certain extent by our two furry friends, Lewis and Alfie, a pair of hairy golden retrievers.

Once again, it is soooooooo good to be on the move again.

SZpeak to you soon

Twenty Questions

Here are my answers to twenty questions
1. Macclesfield Canal
2. If it is a canal and has locks I love it
3. The wife obviously
4. Something by James Patterson, I can't quite remember the name
5. Dawn or dusk in summer
6. All those boaters who do not pay mooring fees and moor all winter round the corner from me for nothing whilst I pay my dues!!
7. Now but a few years younger
8. 1977 - they told me breakfast was served so I jumped for the bank with rope, mallet and mooring pin, ... and missed!!
9. A pilot in the RAF
10. I'd be insane
11. Different
12. A glass of sherry, a fine red wine with my dinner and good fishing.
13. Investment to protect something that is wonderful and could be even better
14. Who are you? (or words to that effect!!)
15. A combination of both
16. Once again, a combination of both.
17. Canals, if I wanted to cruise rivers all the time I would have a gin palace, (by the way I do have an optic mounted in the boat serving gin!)
18. Hopefully still cruising and living aboard.
19. Retiring at 49 and living aboard, having two lovely children and three even more lovely grandchildren.
20. Finding the satelite for sky television when England are winning -almost impossible

mobile phones

I know you are all eagerly awaiting reports of my cruise in 1973 accompanied by photographs but demands from my children required a visit to Portsmouth to do some decorating for one and to help install solar heating panels for the other!

The crux of this story however is mobile phones.

We seemed to be paying quite a bit for our mobile phone service so I wrote to our service provider requesting to cancel one of our contracts. A few days later I received a call from the service provider.... and, guess what, I ended up with three times the minutes at half the price! Obviously it pays to threaten them!