Vicarious Bolinder boating

You may be getting the sense I am missing my boat. We should have done the four counties now and be planning our Llangollen trip, which may or may not happen.

Anyhow for those like me wanting some canal cruising albeit vicariously here is a very well shot Youtube series of video taking the Bollinder to the port on Mykaskin's  channel.

Get a cup of coffee, a few malted milks (my rediscovered biscuit of choice) , superseding the venerable Ginger nut and fig rolls at the moment and enjoy.

Bolinder to the port day 1 

Bolinder to the port day 2

Bolinder to the port day 3

Bolinder to the port day 4

Be aware there is an unnecessary altercation at the first of the Glascote locks in the day 1 video, his behaviour really lets the boat owner down as does the bashing into the top lock gates  - shame.

Wanna bike ...?

I used to cycle to work, in fact cycles have been a part of my life since I got my first (real) bike when I was 12ish. Then they were my first taste of distance freedom. Back in the day me and my best mate Mark Chester used to go out all day to play in the local parks and streams, just knowing that when our bellies rumbled it was time to go home.

We had a really long steep hill close to where we lived called Windmill Hill Lane

I still remember me Mark and I think my sister Sue nicked a load of segs (remember those?) ....

.... from my dads cellar workshop and hammered them into the bottom of our shoes then sat on the crossbars of our bikes and came down the hill with our feet on the road with a great firework display of sparks coming from our shoes.... god only knows what a mess we made of our shoes - I'm sure there was a telling off in there somewhere !

My commutes to work were in the main on my motorbikes but I did also like to cycle to work, sometimes - many times taking a longer route to work than needed. I can still remember sitting in bed dreaming of my first proper mountain bike - in the days when I could only dream as we could not afford luxuries...

I have cycled the London to Brighton, then the next day cycled London to Derby. I've cycled Manchester to Blackpool and plenty of other day rides as well as a regular Wednesday evening ride with a couple of good work colleagues, spoilt by a few too many pints afterwards in the local pubs to warm down ! I even cycled across Derby each Sunday morning to play two hours of 5 a side football then cycle home.

Two wheels, powered and unpowered have always been important in my life. As I type this our two person family owns an embarrassingly high number of cycles - seven in total. Part of the 'lockdown' has been to clean and fettle them and a decision was taken to get rid of at least two maybe three of them leaving two at home and two folders on Percy.

So if anyone is in the market for a lovely ready to go tourer my Ridgeback World Voyage cycle is on Ebay at the moment  - here is the link

Click me 

... and for if/when the bike sells a picture to remind me what a great bike it was

Getting high on isolation

I am very lucky in that being retired I have been practicing isolation for the last two and a half years. In fact there are some extra benefits during this period  -  more time with Rachel, less 'noise' and much more friendly people out and about.

There is no doubt the weather has been a real bonus, certainly over the last four weeks. My drone got another flight the other day. I surprised myself with how close we actually are to the canal as the crow (or drone) flies. When I am more confident I'll have it in the valley and fly up and out towards our cottage.

For now enjoy a small 3 minutes of isolation tranquility.

Consideration of engines, some decent Youtube videos

This blog was conceived while I was walking out of the Valley yesterday (21st April) using my engine, heart lung and legs to make the steady climb from the Black Lion (not open). It was a tad over the 'one hour' we are allowed/advised but in my defence we live in a very rural area and we only saw one other person on the walk and it was so therapeutic.

Before I elaborate I recalled I wrote a blog in 2016 where I collated many Youtube videos of old engines being started in canal boats. To fill some distracted time have a browse here  

So then I got to thinking about all the engines I/we currently own and it's more than I originally imagined.

In no great order of preference (I've rounded the engine sizes to their given side rather than their specific CC as I'm lazy...

• Percy's engine which is the biggest engine in our ownership.... 3 litres 2 cylinder diesel 
• Honda ST1300 Pan European, unsurprisingly my European and UK touring motorcycle has a 1300cc V4 petrol engine 
• Honda NC750x (DCT) motorcycle, this is the 'little' motorbike for anything I don't fancy on the bigger bike. There are hundreds of miles of unclassified roads in the moorlands and the peaks to explore and this is the perfect bike to do it on. It has a 750cc parallel twin petrol engine with a Duel clutch transmission.
• Rover 75 Connoisseur tourer, 2 litre diesel* getting close to having done 100,000 miles in this car, my automatic mimi limo I'll be sad to see it go it's useful but too big really for what I need now. It was perfect for weekly 400 mile round trips to the south coast.
• Toyota Auris 1.4 diesel* Rachel's car. So far very reliable frugal motoring.
• Honda 1000kw generator.  I think its only 50cc petrol **(yep checked) lovely bit of reliable kit for the boat 
• Flymo strimmer I think this is just 25cc. Petrol 2 stroke so I have to mix oil in with the petrol

So seven 'engines' in total, more than some and less than others I guess.

We do have three EV's  - electric vehicles if you can count cycles as vehicles. We hope to swap one or both the cars for an electric car in the future, not sure when but it seems the way forward especially as most of our journeys do not seem to exceed 50 miles nowadays. I expect as soon as we buy one with limited range we will then find out how many times we do need the extra range !

* Both diesels brought when the government were telling  us diesels were better for the environment and diesel was considerably cheaper than petrol !!

**My first motorbike Honda FZ1E was a 50cc  - the same size engine as my Honda generator and the bike took me all over the place.

When was the first time you saw your boat ?

Linking to my last blog post I found photos of our old and current boat. It got me thinking when was the first time we clapped eyes on our four boats we have owned - and I include our shared ownership boat in that list.

In order of ownership we've had;

1. Sylph  - a 57 foot Pat Buckle cruiser stern shared ownerships (Ownerships) boat
2. Comet - a 45 foot Teddersley (needs checking) cruiser stern boat
3. Waterlily - a 50 foot Derby boat builders (needs checking) semi trad boat
4. Percy - a 60 foot Tony Redshaw built traditional stern boat.

Sylph - frustratingly I can remember some of the other Ownerships boats we viewed before deciding on Sylph. I certainly remember going to Barton Turns Marina to view one boat. I think Sylph was on an online mooring on the Shroppie, up from Barbridge junction..... I may have a photo or two from that time I'll have a dig. Anyhow this is a nice shot of Sylph - now in private ownership around Nantwich I seem to recall.

Comet - easy one this as it was between Christmas and New year at Hunts lock. It was our go to place to do some gongoozling only being about half an hour from our house. We had wanted a boat of our own after getting the bug hiring and then owning a part share. Fradley was my mooring of choice and at that time moorings were difficult to get and you could still with a bit of a wangle transfer a mooring with a boat. We had followed the build blog of Chris and Stella Wells's boat (no known relation) and they were recently moored at Hunts lock. I recall I could not quite see the phone number on Comet's for sale advert in the window so I emailed Chris to ask he pass it to me next time he walked past the boat.

Found the details on my old Waterlily blog - have a read here. It was the 1st January 2008 we first saw Comet

Waterlily - Again I blogged about the viewing of Waterlily (why no pictures !!) here . We brought her from Whilton marina, a bit of a good and bad experience if I recall correctly. Looking back it was the 14th of February 2008 when I first saw Waterlily in the steel so as to speak. We'd only had Comet less than a couple of months but I knew I wanted a forever boat and Comet was not that boat - too many limitations and too costly to improve to what I wanted, plus we had the hard to get mooring at Fradley now. Fickle or what ! It's all down in the Waterlily blog but by summer Comet was sold ( at a profit) and Waterlily was in our ownership. 

Percy - I remember vividly the trip down to Weedon to view Percy. I was a little apprehensive meeting both the boat and her owners Tony & Gill Redshaw. The broker Tony Heathcote from Tollhouse Boat sales met us and we did the tour and were welcomed and impressed in equal measures. Money as ever was going to be an issue but where there is a will there is a way and I've always tried to make our money 'work' ! Another viewing and some haggling and we had two boats - again! 

Pleasingly I did record the date we first saw Percy with a photo (I must have been learning) It was Saturday the 27th October 2012 and we put our offer in on the 31st October 2012. 

So there you have it.... our four boats. Will we ever have another..... I doubt it. Some days I wonder if we get the full use out of Percy. Then I visit and it's like coming home (Percy was my home for two years) If we did then it would be a smaller boat but to be honest I think when the time comes we'll downsize to hire boats. Hopefully not for some time to come, but I'd not want to be too presumptuous about anything in the future, the last couple of months have taught me that.

So get blogging about your boats  - lets have some more reflections on past boat ownerships - I'd like to know if I'm unusual in having had four boats ?  

How do you all sort save and categorise your photos and videos ?

One of the ‘problems’ of this current virus lockdown is the weather.  Tongue in cheek observation as its been blooming lovely meant I’ve been outside doing jobs around the cottage and I’ve got a load more still to do. However yesterday was the first wet inside day for what must be three weeks plus ?

So I busied myself sorting paperwork out in our home office as well as starting the mammoth task of sorting my computer(s) out specifically trying to rationalise my photos and videos. Problem being over time I’ve had many computers and when I’ve got rid I’ve copied the hard drives or saved the old hard drives with all the associated data on them. So this means loads of unnecessary files ( work stuff I’ve kept tons of emails and memos !) plus massive amounts of duplicated photos and videos.

So I brought a Mac file duplication sniffer and spend much of yesterday shredding old paper and deleting old duplicate files. I’m now at the stage of having removed all duplicates the software had found a massive amount of ‘similar’ photos, the ones you takes there or four of to get the best one. Deleting this is harder as you have to look at each one to save the right image.

When it’s done the challenge is to then bring all the images to the one location to make a central photo and video repository.

It’ll be worth it in the end and a good use of time.... problem is it seems we have another week of great weather so this project will be shelved for the time being !

One question. - How do you save sort and organise your photos... do you use any recommended software ? Over to you........

Flying high - my drone history

I used to call them Quadcopters - that was the name given when I was building them from scratch. It all started on a visit to Scotland to see my good friend John who was building remote controlled aircraft using some new hardware  - an intelligent flight controller, fully programable to control fixed wing aircraft or Quadcopters. There is a company called Hobbycraft who were very able to sell me all I needed to build my flying machines.

It was a great hobby, lots of soldering, building  programming and planning. We were the 'drone' pioneers. I built two drones one with a camera attached and another to just fly to learn how to control them. I think I enjoyed building them more than flying - and therein was the issue. Where I lived then was in a city - Derby. Lots of parks but not ideal or safe to be flying there. Luckily one of my responsibilities at the University was Security - so I had access to all the sites including a large area of green that was fenced off, my own private testing ground.

This is a short video of my scratch built quad on its second outing testing what was then called loiter mode (gps lock) No camera on board at this time. Taken on the Rugby pitch at my University before it was dug up and a sports complex built there - see later videos.

But the hobby needed more time and access to flying areas so I reluctantly sold the job lot - drones, controllers all my tools and spares. To keep the boating theme, I sold the lot on Ebay to a fella who had two charter yachts in the Mediterranean and he wanted the drones to get some publicity pictures.

I did take it to its place of spiritual conception before it all got sold.... Dumfries and Galloway to fly at John's land that overlook Loch Ryan up the west coast of Scotland. Here is the video.....

I did eventually get another but this was a commercial drone. By this time there was a race to commercialisation of the drone market. DJI being the leader with a raft of others bringing commercial drones out with varying degrees of success. I waited and spent my hard earned on a DJI Phantom 2. It was a good drone, but let down ultimately by DJI's race to the top as they kept bringing out newer drones and committed the sin of not providing spares or firmware upgrades for their older gear. It was a time still of little regulation and I used my drone to take shots for the university - including an impressive New Sports centre.

The university was keen to have more such videos and stills of their (our as it was my university as I'd been there so long and committed so much to it)  property and land so I sold my drone to the University. It never happened of course as it got damaged in 'test flights' !! 

To keep the boaty context I did take some video and stills of Percy at Fradley.... this one being my favourite, the music is royalty free courtesy of U2.

So why this blog - apart from some self reflection I've bitten the bullet and purchased a new drone. Mea Culpa  - yes I did indeed blog about my pledge for change which was about buying less.... and I can assure you I have been buying less and spending less, my trip to the NW500 in Scotland has been canned as has a long weekend meet up with 30 other bikers in Derbyshire and my battlefield tour of Normandy in June.... so I have some money and I did say I wanted to balance the economy (not all of it) using my pension ££'s.

I opted for a DJI Mavic mini... price for performance one of the better drones. Inspired by some of the stunning videos from the vloggers out there. When one of my friends who lives close to John in Scotland was last on my boat Percy one very boozy night we were discussing drones and he encouraged me by saying if he had a boat he could not think of a better 'tool' to use to capture the beautiful countryside we cruise through. Based on my plan for staycations on bikes and boat for the future I think I will get some value for money from this little drone.

Little it is.... the new UK drone laws mean any drone over 250g needs to be licensed by the CAA. The drone I have is 249g's so no need to be registered. However I have taken the test, passed and am licenses and a flyer and owner. I need to put the details of my license on the drone and print out the license should anyone ask to see it while flying (even though I don't need one) 

So hopefully when back on board Percy I can give a better idea of where we are and show you some of the views we see..... just need to be back aboard !