Bragging rights and CanalPlanAC

For the canal folks.... I was checking my route, well overnight stops, as there is really only one route.....and realised my house is shown on the OS maps in the Nickelsons. To be precise page  14 book 4... I'll get me anorak !!


A big mention to CanalPlanAC  - Link here it really is a superb program. I found out tonight you can easily set overnight stops for a trip... really useful if like me you have two guests who will require pub stops each night. So for John and Mick I have the following itinerary

Sunday - Black Lion Consall
Monday - Holly Bush Stockton Brook
Tuesday - Plume of Feathers, Barleston
Wednesday - The Greyhound Burston
Thursday - Woolsly Bridge inn- Woolsly bridge
Friday - The Swan Fradley

I'd better order another cassette !!

Clocked off

I am labouring a little on this event but to be honest until your time comes - and I hope you are planning for it, no one can really understand how emotional it is to leave the safety of work. Some will find it easier as they move around in different careers and different time spans in any one place of work. For me it was harder to say goodbye as I had been in one place for the last 30 years !

In some ways I still do not feel like I am retired, I guess that comes with time.

Yesterday the 8th September 2017 was my day. I received the most wonderful send off from colleagues current and I was so pleased to see colleagues from the past, some had made considerable time and distance sacrifices to be with my family and myself.

I was selfish and asked my family to be with me, I was nervous and unsure on my reactions. I wanted to show off my wonderful, beautiful family. It is why I have been in work and it is what work has supported me in achieving.  I will be eternally grateful for my luck in that respect.

Many came  - some were absent by choice no doubt and that pleased me as I only wanted those who wanted to be there there. I was showered with gifts and beautiful cards with lovely words, I am not normally a keeper of cards but these marked the respect and friendships I have enjoyed over a long time.

There were some I thought about who could not be with me as they had passed, some while working which is so sad but makes the need to enjoy and feel blessed all the more important.

I received sage advice from some who had gone before, retire with pride and dignity don't focus on the bits that were not right, focus on all what has been good. My colleagues made that very easy to do.

So I am very very lucky to be free from work at the age of 55. It has come at cost  - financial which is significant. However as I have said to so many this was the time in my life I had the option to buy time. Not all have such a privilege and in my thinking and planning it was not an option to pass it by.

I have changed my timer on the side bar to now count up from my last day of work, rather than what was there counting down to it. Let's see what retirement is like then !





 

The last help of a group of good men.

Only two days to go in my working life now. How do you say thank you to those who have given their support to you, some over decades....

The people who I have worked most closely with, those that have managed the difficult day to day stuff while I basked in the glory of their hard work,  how to make a thank you a little more personal.

Well I took them for a little jolly on Percy. They have all heard stories of the mooring, the boat, the community, the lock walk, the two hard winters living afloat. Also Percy was pointing south towards Shardlow and on Sunday or Monday we will be setting off north on the reinvention cruise so Percy needed winding.

I liked the sentiment of asking them to help me point my boat into the direction of my retirement....

So while I still had the management responsibility and the blame would fall on me I took the executive decision to sod off and have a little cruise and a bacon roll. You'll have to excuse the attire, I did not tell them what I was planning just asked them to book a few hours into their respective diaries, so they were not ideally dressed for boating  !

I have never publicised my blog at work. I recently introduced a friend from biking to the Uni who was also a Facebook friend and to cut a long story short James my transport manager found my blog ;-). So I told him he would be appearing .... As I suspected he was a natural at steering the boat - pin straight down the cut, well done James.

It was helpful having so many lock assistants to get us to Alrewas and back.

Two pro's at the tiller. Simon on the left has Caledonia Canal experience and Mike is a veteran of canal holidays and I'm led to believe lots of canal walking. One walk we have in the bucket list is to walk the complete Caldon canal in a day from Stoke to Froghall.... I think a long June day next year is best.

Tony on the tiller here  I have worked with for the longest. He is a seasoned canal boater. Those with a real focus on my blogs will recognise Tony from trips on my other boats, Sylph and Waterlily. Some photos are classified as he is a married man with responsibilities of children now. He was aboard on the last trip on our share boat Sylph  -  in fact I recall he broke the boat  - resulting in an engineer call?

February 2008 was the last cruise aboard Sylph. Click here   this was before too much beer was consumed !!

Gavin second from the left declined to damage my retirement plans. I say he chickened out...

As the title says a group a real good men  - thanks for all your help and support.... the very best of luck for the future.

NB Briar Rose comes to my valley

I received a message from Adam to say he and Adrian would be close by today  - at my local in fact, the Black Lion Consall. It's part of their 'Northwest Passage trip - Click  here . It would have been rude of me not to pop down to say hello. I was a little late back from work, so after a cup of tea Leia and I headed off down through Consall woods to the canal and walked to their boat.

They have the 'Les's spot' Its a mooring I aim to get at some point and get the same photos Les and Jaq  had on their blog. Canal boat in front of a steam train with pub behind.

Everyone had a good smile for the camera  - including Leia. As it was late it was a brief chat, then a walk back up the canal and up through the woods in the failing light.

The canal had a beauty only available to those daft enough to be walking late - my bonus !

This time next week we will be on our way to the same spot.... can't wait !

It was good to meet you both again, have a great rest of the trip and enjoy the steam train.

The less glamorous side of boating

Romantic, idyllic, peaceful, stressless, beautiful, relaxing......that's canal boating,  then you have to stick your arm up and over the back boiler plate and remove all the stuff swept down the chimney. I was wasted in my previous job, I should have been a gynaecologist !

It is an essential job, makes the fire draw properly and helps also by not allowing the stove to kill you in your sleep with carbon monoxide poisoning ..... yes you reading this, check before you light that fire for the next 6 months  !!

I could have just licked back and relaxed  - if I knew how, but there was grass to cut, the boat to clean and the oil to be changed on the engine.

So for the record, 10 litres of Morrisons finest (not the supermarket) went in after the same came out  - one a little dirtier than the other. I hope this 10 litres works harder than the last lot.

Talking of engineering  -  I expect this little beast takes some looking after.... it was making some smoke, more than the steam train we tripped on a few weeks ago when we walked to Froghall station and caught the steam train back to Consall Station. 

The engine fettle and boat clean were for a good reason. I can't call them holidays anymore, here is the Wiki definition of a holiday;

A holiday is a day set aside by custom or by law on which normal activities, especially business or work, are suspended or reduced

So henceforth they are trips, or special events. I may drop into old slang calling them holidays, please excuse me if I do !

After this week I'll be tripping out to a few places, and in the spirit of this blog i'll post them up. I have reviewed my photos recently and I have some catching up to do so a few things may appear in the wrong order.

A bit of fuel use.... and a lesson in life

Nothing really noteworthy to those looking for a vicarious canal fix - they are coming I promise. However when I went out on my lonesome cruise a few weeks ago I topped the tank(s) up so I was ready for the trip out in September.

I managed to get 79 litres in to the top. On checking back I last filled up in February 2016 when the engine counter was on 347 conveniently (for my maths) the engine counter was at bang on 447. A sad 79 litres in 16 months and the engine run for just 100 hours. However I did live aboard for 7 months over the winter of 2016/17 as the house was left empty to sell. How cheap is that living !

As I wrote in February 2016 It is a sad reflection of the lack of cruising we did last year and we have done the same to date this year.  But retirement will present options and the boat has always been our 60 foot escape capsule from the treadmill. Talking of treadmills.....

.......one for James  a good work colleague who has found my blog just after I announced my retirement, he told me a story of a monkey and a nut. I am reading a great book at the moment - I am Pilgrim  and the same story is in there....

In order to catch spider monkeys, hunters in South America simply walk through the jungle and drop heavy containers on the ground. These containers have very a narrow top and a wider bottom. Inside the containers the hunters drop a special kind of nut which is particularly attractive to the monkeys. Sometime later, the spider monkeys come down from the tops of the trees, smell the nut, but the tops of the containers are so narrow they have a tight squeeze to get their hands inside. Once they grab the nut at the bottom, their fist is too large to remove if through the opening. And the container is too heavy for them to carry.

So instead of letting go of the nut, the monkeys just sit there until the hunters come back, pick them up, and throw them in a bag.

The spider monkeys are not prepared to let go of a small nut in order to gain their freedom.

See where this is going.... it does not take too much of a leap of imagination to transpose the nut for much of modern life.... we grab hold and are afraid to let go, but when we do we get freedom. 

Anyhow that's why I am retiring - just letting go of the nut !!!

So back to the boat and to servicing, a quick search of my blog tells me I fettled the engine  - including oil change in May 2015  - with the engine counter on 271 hours. So 26 months and 176 hours of use I think Percy's donk is due another oil change, I wrote a bit of that a while back and now have the oil ready for a pre-cruise service 

Percy's engine does not have a modern filter for oil, it relies on the oil not holding the minute particles that a modern oil does which are then filtered out via the oil filter under pressure. The Morrisons oil dumps the sludge in the bottom of the crankcase so at some point I need to open her up and check if I need to clean this area out. There is a decent sized door to gain access but it will require removing the water pump ..... a summer job  retirement job so a nice little winter project, frosty outside me working in the warm boat in my very handy engine room !

Anyhow there are some uses for the blog, recording the above has been a useful reminder of what will need doing (oil change) and what does not need doing (diesel fill up)

Youngsters on the cut

I was on the boat last week and when I arrived there were four boats opposite our moorings. I think this was/is a record.

One shared ownership boat, one broken down boat, one moving around the system boat, one fit out boat. Its amazing how you can tell or find out about such boats and their use. Some from sitting fishing just watching  - and listening as people don't always realised how sound carries when it is just one voice. Last time we were on the Fradley visitor moorings a very well to do couple came back from the Swan to then have a very loud argument - well she was having strong and industrial words to her fella about texts he had been receiving and sexual acts she though he was being given .... yes it was that clear and she was that loud.

The broken down boat had been brought the day before and now had developed a gear box fault, the fit out boat was from the little boat company above Common lock. Both crews were in their twenties so it was nice to see the next generation on the system, possibly as the cost of housing is so high this is their best option, not a bad one if they understand the limitations and  depreciation.

When leaving the next day the broken down boat was limping off to  'thousand pound Rays' place at Streethay. The lad was using  the stern rope to try and control the boat while waiting for keepers lock, I asked if he was receptive to a bit of advice and he was very keen so I suggested he take the stern rope off and put it as a temp centre line while cruising, as I left he was making the change. A small detail but he was happy to listen  - all the advice we can get is helpful he said, well done to him, he will hopefully soon be a better skipper than I especially if he spends all year cruising the system.