Suddenly, life's gone quiet!

Sadly, there's little to write about at the moment. The weather is colder, grey and drizzly, and we really are not tempted to go anywhere in the boat until it improves.  Visits from friends are postponed until that time - should it come before the end of the month.  So our days are slow and lazy, though we have bursts of busyness doing jobs around the boat - washing it, waxing, polishing, fixing things, and I even got right down into the engine compartment for the first time yesterday, to check the fluid levels in the batteries, and generally look around.  The bilges are totally dry, which is good.  The batteries... well, I think the fluid levels are all right, but I was only able to check half of the cells of the three domestic batteries because of the stupid lack of headroom above them.  We drove into Rugby this afternoon, to try to find a few bits and pieces which would make that and other jobs a bit easier next time, but came back with just a box of toothpicks, a small tin of Vaseline jelly, and a disposable boiler suit - and only the latter was for working on the boat!

We've been having concerns about the batteries again.  We've had two lots of conflicting advice about how to use them.  One school of thought says keep them on trickle charge all of the time while we're using a shoreline, to keep the state of charge high.  The other says let them run low before recharging them, and this is the practice we've adopted.  It made sense, because this is surely how things would be when we are cruising, and have no mains electricity supply to rely on when we are moored.  We run the engine for five, six, maybe more hours during the day, charging the batteries from the alternator on the engine.  When we are moored and the engine is off, the use of lights, water pump, and inverter to power our computers will start to drain the batteries.  In the morning, the process will start again.

Sadly, this turns out to have been the wrong thing to do, though, and I have noticed that the battery voltage has fallen too quickly after each charging.  A quick plea for help in the Canal World Discussion Forums brought a good number of replies saying, "You're ruining your batteries".  Sigh.  So for the rest of the day I've had the charger on all of the time, and I do detect an improvement in the state of charge now, at 10:30pm.  Let's hope that daily treatment like this will restore the health of the batteries - I'm told it is possible.

Guy Fawkes Night...

...was a quiet affair here at the marina.  The site is adjacent to a farm with animals, so fireworks were out of the question, so a token huge bonfire was lit on the hillside overlooking the water.  It was a still, mild night, and quite beautiful.

Rain!

I know that most people don't get very enthused by rain, but the sound of a downpour on the roof of the boat yesterday evening and throughout the night brought a smile to our faces.  Waking up this morning, we saw the marina pound back to the level at which it had been last week.  Whether this is entirely down to the rain, or if Watford Locks did some back-pumping as well, I don't know, but it is a welcome sight!  And more on its way, too!

Weather or not

It's really a bit of a pain, is rain.  (I feel a poem coming on!)  Despite forecasts earlier this week suggesting tomorrow was going to be dry, with little wind, today's forecast says quite emphatically that it will rain heavily.  This is sad, because it might have been the day Michelle visited, and she was looking forward to some dry cruising.  But on the other hand, the rain is most welcome.

I've not looked into the situation around the whole canal network yet, but in our parts, the water levels are very low.  Watford Locks have stopped back pumping the water from the bottom of the flight, so consequently water is lost from the stretch of the canal at the top of the locks - where we are - each time boats use them, and our water level drops.  I heard in the marina office yesterday that the three reservoirs which supply the Grand Union around this area are all very low.  It seems we need heavy rain throughout the winter if boats are going to have enough water to float on.  I finished today's hour's walk just moments before a cloudburst, but it did not continue for very long.  The question occurs to us now, will be get stranded here over the winter?

Stranded?

Crack's Hill from the towpath

Skeletal trees

Who are you?

A web service called StatCounter is monitoring visitors to this blog, and tells me that we have just had our 500th visit since September.  Now, that's not a huge number in two months, and nothing like as many visits per week as my teaching blog "Grumpy Old Teacher" which I stopped doing last year, but numbers aren't what the blog is about anyway.  The most interesting thing about the stats which StatCounter gives me is the locations of readers.

We have a reader in Australia, so that is bound to be my cousin Sheila or one of her immediate family.  There's one in New Zealand, and that must be our old friend Jenny.  The oddest thing is the seven readers in the States, all of whom came to the blog direct, rather than by stumbling across us in a Google search or similar.

The biggest mystery of all, though, is our UK readers, because I know that most of you must be family or friends, but really have a problem knowing who you all are.  So would you do me a favour, please?  Would you just go to the bottom of this post, and add a comment, saying who you are, and where you're from?

To give you a clue, these are the towns which show up in Statcounter against readers - not necessarily the town they live in, but a nearby one, where their Internet connection is registered.  Which of these towns is you?

Rotherham
York
Berkhamsted
Sevenoaks
London (on PlusNet)
Milton Keynes (on TalkTalk) - is that you, Mr Doody?
Stevenage
St Albans (on BeUnLimited)
Doncaster
Hitchin
Lincoln
London (on Exponential-e)
Huntingdon
Westerham
Hemel Hempstead
Leicester
Preston
Stockton-on-Tees
Sheffield

I have lots of relatives out there, most of whom I've never met - cousins once removed and their offspring in particular - and more than a few friends.  It would be really good to know who you all are.  Would you take a moment to do that for me, please?  Oh, and if your town's not in my list, say hi anyway, please, give me a name and where you're from!


And who are you folks in the US?

Weight a minute!

In the first two or three weeks we spent on Kantara, I lost four or five pounds.  I don't know why.  I was well, eating as normal, just doing different things.  I was pleased about that!  I could happily lose a few pounds.  But recently, I regained those pounds and added a few more to them besides, so now I am the heaviest I have ever been... by a small margin.


Of course, this is down to the fact that, as a teacher, I was used to doing a lot of walking around the campus, hurrying up and down stairs, standing up throughout lessons, and moving around the classroom constantly.  In the boat, there is little walking to be done, and no stairs. We are eating healthily enough, possibly better than we did when in St Albans, but I have really missed the exercise.

Cruising is another issue.  On the cut, I will often be walking ahead of the boat to get to the next lock - it's common for locks to be in groups spread out over a mile or so, so it happens often that I stay off the boat until we have left the last lock.  And then there is the locking.  Opening and closing the paddles at a lock, and opening and closing the gates, takes a lot of energy, not just keeping my weight down, but also building muscle in arms, back, abdomen and legs.  After just one typical week, I really notice the difference.

Victorian Reading Room

Yelvertoft High Street!

Thatched cottage on High Street

But I have done little of that this past couple of months, so I have been rather too sedentary, and I have to do something about it.  So today, I started on my plan to walk every day for at least an hour.  I did a very brisk four to five miles, and returned to the boat feeing the better for it.  I shall do this every day, building up my time and mileage gradually until I am really benefitting from it.  And I join Grace's brother-in-law Mike in my determination to lose significant pounds before Christmas.

Victorian pub