Ships that pass in the day
Back in the days before Gecko we had to hire boats to travel the canals in short bursts.
Some of those bursts were more intense than others: I am thinking particularly of the three years we participated in the BCN Marathon Challenge.  This event took place over the weekend of the longest day, in June, and involved cruising for 24 hours in a period of 30 hours. Every mile and every lock negotiated on the BCN in that time earned points based on some esoteric formula designed to encourage the navigation of the least used stretches of the network. Planning the route took longer than cruising it! Plans were lodged beforehand with estimated timings in order that the scrutineers could check your progress and photographic or other evidence of significant points of the route was required. We  joined this appropriately named exercise in boats we hired from Alvechurch Boats on the Worcs & Birmingham Canal. The challenge started at 9am on the Saturday so after picking up the boat on a Friday afternoon we had to get it to our chosen starting point the same evening.  One year this involved cruising right through Birmingham to the top of Wolverhampton 21 locks. That was the year the boat broke down.
However, on the two previous years we acquitted ourselves quite well.  One of the competitors who we encountered was an ex-working boat named Fulbourne.
Since then we have seen Fulbourne wintering in Aylesbury and today at the Little Venice Canalway Cavalcade where we are moored at present.
This was not the only boat to pass us which we recognised.  Limelight Crew also from Aylesbury is here as is John Pattle on his lovely Stewarts & Lloyds tug, Pacific.

Whilst She who must be obeyed was sitting in Hyde Park yesterday celebrating the wedding I took a short stroll and returned to find we had neighbours. Tony & Pauline had recognised Gecko from the BCN Explorer Cruise we shared in 2009 and breasted up Iberia until a space came available for them in the pool. Soon Henry and Lyn added Trinity to the group. Such is our unrivalled social esteem that they both moved off to better moorings smartly leaving us to collect sticky sap  drips from the trees all alone.

nb Iberia on the BCN Explorer Cruise 2009

nb Fulbourne at Canalway Cavalcade 2008

Tug Pacific at Batchworth lock May 2008

My  Landmark  of the  Week

Lundy

click here for details

Where were you on 11 September 2001?

We were in the Bristol Channel with neither TV nor newspapers and so were spared the media frenzy which accompanied the Twin Towers tragedy. We had joined a Landmark Friends house party. If my memory is still functioning there were 25 of us occupying 5 different properties ranging from the 2-bed Castle Cottage to 12-bed Millcombe House. We crossed to Lundy on ms Oldenburg but returned to the mainland a week later by helicopter - both most enjoyable journeys in their way.
It is so peaceful on the island that it is hard to leave it.  We were out walking every day and still we did not see everything the island has to offer.

Where there's a Will................................there's a Kate

Some of the less conventional tributes to the wedding couple

A famous store in Oxford Street, London

Care to count the crystals?

A dress shop in Rochester, Kent

The same dress shop

2012 Olympics Ban
Margaret wants to go to the Olympics next year but has finally given up trying as it has become clear that we are not allowed to.
1)  To buy online you need a Visa card which we do not have. following a dispute with Citi bank recently they have black marked our credit reference so we cannot get another card anyway.  This is despite them refunding  the charges under dispute!
2)  To send a cheque the bank account must be registered at the delivery address for the tickets.
3)  Tickets will not be delivered to a PO box which is how we get our mail and is where our bank and credit cards are registered.  However if we could apply by post the address to send the application to is .............a PO Box!!!!!!!!
4  If someone else buys the tickets they must attend the event and give all personal details of  those accompanying them.
I think we would be more successful if we lived abroad.

Eco Boat
Woke this morning to find a boat breasted up to the  craft behind us. It must have crept in quietly during the night.
At first glimpse I thought it was stern on to us but as the sleep cleared from my eyes I realised that I was looking at an unusual bow shape. As we tend to refer to this end of the boat as the pointed bit I was a trifle confused.





When the skipper emerged I learned that it was an Eco Hull design and the (not very) pointed end was not the only unusual bit.  The curves of the swim at the blunt end go the other way to ours.

This design, the skipper claimed, gave him 25% better fuel consumption and 40% less wash than a conventional design like Gecko.


 He achieved this with 35hp engine instead of the more usual 43hp. The boat is currently unfitted so it will be interesting if these figures, however they are arrived at, hold up when there is another ten tons of fitting out and contents.

An important feature of this hull design is the rounded and bulbous bow, similar to the bows of ocean liners.
It is on its way to Yelvertoft Marina for completion and will be black and silver with the name Ag47.

As it left there was certainly less wash than conventional boats.

My Landmark of the Week

Stogursey  Castle

Stogursey, an old village to the east of the Quantocks, was chosen as his principal base by William de Courcy, Steward to Henry I. Both his son and his grandson married heiresses and the de Courcys became even more important. So, too, did their castle. Then the male line failed, and the castle was inherited by Alice de Courcy. She entertained King John here in 1210, when her husband won 20 shillings from him ‘at play’. Later on the Percys from Northumberland inherited it but, after a minor part in the Wars of the Roses, they could find no useful purpose for it as it stood and they did not think it worth rebuilding as a less fortified seat. So time and neglect, and adaptation to more humble uses, reduced it to ruins, in which it has lain ever since. The small dwelling formed inside the gate towers of the castle has seventeenth-century roof timbers and was repaired in the 1870s; but when we found it, the entire castle had vanished beneath a mantle of vegetation. Clearing this and dredging the moat revealed an unsuspected thirteenth-century bridge. We also recovered some chain mail and other warlike fragments from the mud. The cottage makes a strange dwelling but a pleasant one, still commanding the only entrance to the castle’s grassy inner ward, scene of all those doings long ago. Castles don't come much smaller than this - and with a drawbridge!

Sleeps: 4 Beds: T D  Features Open fire Moated garden Parking nearby Dogs allowed Please Note A public footpath runs past the eastern end of the bridge.

 Best  Wishes 

 for 

 St.  George's Day  

Fly the flag today

Homage to Humph


Whilst in London I felt the urge to revisit Mornington Crescent. Apart from station being a fine example of Tube architecture with its tile-clad walls, it was immortalised by Humphrrey Lyttleton on the Radio 4 show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.




Across the road is the Lyttleton Arms which sounds like a tribute to the great man.


On this occasion I was able to find a clue to that query.






With the temperature approaching 80deg F I very reluctantly succumbed to temptation and entered this establishment for refreshment.
Now, I prefer to drink my ale from a proper tankard but these are so hard to find in London pubs I have  given up asking for them. For one thing the staff, often from Eastern Europe, do not always understand my request and those that do understand consider me some kind of deviant.  Such perspicacity is not welcome.  On this occasion I selected a pint of the Battersea-brewed Wandle Ale and it appeared in a tankard. Now that Humph would  have been pleased with as indeed I was.

This picture is for Dave the Rave

I should mention that the ale was very good and the menu for lunch almost as imaginative as at  The Narrow and considerably cheaper.

Well worth a visit (if you are moored in Paddington Basin the 27 bus will take you all the way)

Whilst there I would also recommend a 50 yd walk to the old Carreras factory more of which I  will reveal tomorrow if I have any data time left on my dongle.

The Mermaids of Limehouse
Water quality has improved so much over the past few years that the mermaids have returned to Limehouse Basin. 

On Sunday April 17, soon after the London Marathon had passed the basin for the second time (south side mile 14; north side mile 21) this mermaid was spotted by our intrepid reporter, April Sage.

Suggestions that this is no mermaid but just another drunk who jumped onto the roof of a moored boat and fell overboard are strongly contested.

Overheard at Gordon Ramsay's Narrow Pub.........
(Formerly The Barley Mow)


"Here is your side order of ships, sir".

"I didn't order **ing ships, I ordered Fish and Chips"

"My apologies, chef".