Pickingupducks

WiFi hot spots and an alarmingly hotdog

Living afloat in the UK, as some have found living on land, has been testing this past week as the highest temperatures were recorded – 40.3 degrees Centigrade in Lincolnshire.

Summer heat comes as no surprise to many narrowboat dwellers. Living as we do in steel boxes we do tend to expect summers to be hot. The 17-19th July days of 2022 were though, ridiculously hot, dangerously hot for some. Like most extremes it didn’t last for long, although the Met Office have been issuing health heat warnings since 8 July. For most of that run up time we’ve been working in a bricks and mortar house, painting, refurbishing and reletting whilst trying to recover from Covid.

This week has for me has also included working online. I foolishly imagined colleagues would recognise when I appeared on calls via Teams with slicked back hair and apparently dripping that they would realise I was swelteringly hot – I do live and work in a steel box after all. But they felt it must be ” so lovely by the water”, and complained how cold their air conditioning settings were making them. I worked on through gritted teeth…

It helps in the heat if you have a breeze, or can create one by moving but at the height of the heat this week we weren’t moving for work and social reasons, and no breeze was coming off the water. Normally we’d moor in shade in such circumstances but where we needed to be the visitor mooring has no shade whatsoever.

The sun just beat down…and down…and down until I was debating seeing if it was possible to fry an egg on the roof, given that it was too hot to touch. (I couldn’t summon the energy to walk to the shops to buy eggs though). Good thing we don’t have a cat! The veg garden on the roof (painted pale grey to reflect the heat) has virtually perished… although it may resurrect if we get some proper rain.

We have had doors at both ends of the boat wide open and a large side hatch (swan hatch to us) which we also left open 24/7. As we’ve been moored near a pub we turned the boat so the side hatch was on the water side – saves uninvited guests and feels more comfortable that way sleeping with it open at night. All our windows are single glazed top hoppers, so just the top drops open, but believe us, everything we could open was open.

Some boats run generators all day to power air conditioning units…we know this as one was moored behind us one day. As we had everything we could open open on our boat, the noise nearly drove us mad.

I worked with my feet on wet towels, a wet tea towel slung round my neck, and kept refuelling regularly with water or squash.

The main issues were the internet and the dog.

The dog first – he’s more important. At over 14 years old now he is less able to cope with the heat. Previously he’s always been trimmed short in the summer but his last grooming earlier this year proved utterly exhausting and stressful for him, even though the groomer made it as easy and quick as she could and allowed me to stay with him. So we decided not to put him through that again.

Instead short river swims every few hours and an Aldi cooling mat along with topped up water bowls have proved invaluable during the day.

The nights though have been a very different story. He has struggled in the humid nights, as have we all. His breathing has been ragged and he pants so hard and so loudly that had we been able to sleep we’d probably have been awake with him. Socks in the freezer helped me sleep a bit, as the freezer can’t ice a hot water bottle for me. Maybe I should have frozen a couple of pairs for him?

Finally we succumbed as the mercury rose and decanted to a daughter’s house. Fortunately for her, she’s on holiday and we were keeping an eye on the garden (crisped rather than flourishing). For two nights we and the dog slept on her downstairs wooden floor with the patio doors wide open – it was the coolest spot in the house. We still sweltered, restless in humid heat but we survived.

On the boat our only thermometer is ourselves – but many other boaters have an impressive range of gadgets and soon they were filling social media with their recorded rising temperatures as the heat intensified.

The internet was another issue, for work and leisure purposes. We run a 3 modem and have an aerial boost, and generally it works fine for what we need – teams call? No problem. Emails, no problem. Both of these simultaneously with two of us working simultaneously, no problem. Our only drop out bad spot that I remember was Wheaton Aston on the Shropshire Union Canal where we had no connectivity at all, but the canal ran in a cutting and we assumed that was the issue. I remember walking through the cold (it was icy whilst we were there on 2 April to find connectivity from my phone to send a document.

Wheaton Aston in early April on the Shroppie

We know we don’t get brilliant connections from the boat moored at Mountsorrel, but usually we get some signal. Our system comprises 4G router connected to 3 network mobile to create WiFi aboard…known as MiFi. We have a 4G aerial that picks up the signal which is helpful in our Farraday cage.

Some people have aerials hanging in windows. We did that for a while but found the external aerial more effective. It’s attached to the bow and we raise it when stationary and desperately try to remember to lower it when setting off so we don’t wipe it out on a bridge! We’ve only set off once and had to lower en route – a bit like scuttling down the gunwhales and removing the chimney mid cruise when it looks like a low bridge is about to decapitate it.

Anyway…back to the internet…fortunately we were able to connect to mains WiFi via our holidaying daughter’s house although our laptop demanded we reconnect it to her provider almost every 15 minutes! I’m loading this postfrom my phone in her house because no images will load on the boat.

It has been frustrating but we have survived, and it all panned out so well, it’s as if it was planned! In case you may think we are taking unfair advantage of our eldest… we have cleaned, gardened and left some £ as a thank you as well as providing 1.55am taxi service back from Birmingham airport!

Normal service and weather looks like it will be resumed next week and we’re on the move again. We’re also giving thought to what retrofitting modifications we might make for next year’s heat wave…Double glazing? Tinted windows? Opening windows? More insulation?

We hope you managed in the heat and have emerged triumphant, if a little toasty round the edges.

Waste not – want not – a valid mantra for today

We’ve been working flat out this past week off the boat (well as flat out as you can with Covid although both of us have now finally tested negative) refurbishing a rental house as one tenant left for another to move in. It’s been a salutary time of ups and downs.

The tenant who left was a single mum of one who has lived there for several years. She told us she wanted to stay but struggled to make ends meet after being laid off for part of last year due to the pandemic and now facing mounting costs. She and her child have moved in with her mum.

After she left we moved in to refurbish the house. One of the first things we found was the freezer section of the fridge freezer literally crammed with food. Knowing how strapped she is for cash, we rang and asked when she wanted to come and fetch it. The response had us lost for words: “, I haven’t used it in ages, just chuck it please.”

It felt so wrong throwing food away when the UK’s food poverty rate is among the highest in Europe. This week The Big Issue has an article which makes sobering reading.

Food banks in the area where the house is can’t handle frozen food. They just couldn’t take it. Many recipients of food banks haven’t the capacity to freeze food either, and the dates on the food proved the point that hundreds of pounds worth of food had been languishing in that freezer for months. The food was highly processed, mainly ready meals.

While many people end up in food poverty because of low or irregular incomes, spiralling costs of living and debt, it made me wonder how much unintentional waste many of us may be creating through carelessness, or ignorance.

Are you like me, guilty of any of these:

*Not keeping an eye on dates on products – particularly on food which can lead to food waste.

*Not teaching our children to revere and reward frugality to prevent waste.

*Not making the most of what we have so there will be more to go further.

I find it alarming and shameful to think how thoughtlessly wasteful I’ve been in my own working and personal life over the decades.

I know at home and at work I have been unintentionally over-consuming. This profligacy of ignorance could have allowed someone else to benefit rather than to go short. It might even have allowed a company to make more profits to plough back in. If enough of us enabled that then perhaps another person would have a job, an income.

Waste not want not was seen as a wartime mantra. Mother Theresa said she only ever felt anger when she saw waste. This week I understood how she felt but I also felt sad. Sad that a little family is struggling when with some guidance they might be able to manage a little more easily.

If we all wasted less there would be more to go round. It isn’t rocket science. If we consciously consumed there less resources would be used, wasted and there would be more to share.

I felt really bad this week but grateful too, to be spurred on to do my bit to make sure that I waste less, use less. Graveyards are full of buried unfulfilled dreams, I don’t want my vow to make the world world a better place in my own small way to come to nought. I have to do more to ensure it happens.

We’re back on board aware that having a smaller space helps us be more frugal, less wasteful but also that as we revel more in the glories around us we feel we need less to make us satisfied, fulfilled.

Back home afloat reflecting on lessons learned this week

Covid, violent colours and discarded underwear – our life this week

Covid seems to have left one us bu is clinging to the other according to lateral flow test. We are now both sounding as if we have colds and coughing has been reduced mainly to the evenings.

It’s a good thing that we are out of bed at least as one of our tenants gave notice a month ago. We knew we were likely to be faced with some physical work to do to get that house back on the rental market.

It wasn’t until we had the handover of keys and house inspection we worked out what needed to be done. The longer it takes to do the work and the longer the house lies empty we are responsible for council tax, services and without an sizeable chunk of income. Covid is tiring even in mild doses, but needs must.

A quick glance indicated a thorough clean and total repaint – could have been worse… We had new ceilings upstairs some months ago and we knew we’d have to paint them when the plaster cured anyway. What I hadn’t quite bargained for was trying to resolve a tenant’s approach to interior design that appears as eclectic as Boris’s approach to governing with integrity. One bedroom in punk pink and apple green and another in black…

The first half day was spent deep cleaning the bathroom and making an increasingly long list for…yup Screwfix!

One thing Covid has done is make me incredibly clumsy…that’s reduced the number of mugs and tumblers on the boat. When working around 10 litres of paint at a time it’s nothing short of a potential ticking timebomb! At the time of writing this blog, the only disaster to date has been with a much-needed, well-earned cup of coffee which I promptly upended in my lap as I took a rest in a deck chair (the only chairs we have in the house with us and bit do we need sit downs!). That then meant I couldn’t walk to the car three streets away as I looked like I’d had a seriously embarrassing accident!

So we’re 1.5 days into the turnround and so far the blackout room has been washed twice and experienced a brighter vibe with its first coat of white. This has been achieved with the socially distanced help of Steve’s brother who kindly provided ladders for us as he’s in the locality.

The underpants found tucked into the original Victorian fireplace have been removed (with gloves)… The kitchen has a brand new working mixer tap. The kitchen door now has a working door handle. The bathroom has a working lock and the oven is being steeped overnight in some no doubt hideous chemicals applied with gauntlets to save what skin I have left after scouring the bathroom!

The pink/apple room has been washed twice and awaits its first coat of single colour emulsion tomorrow.

A weekend of emulsion, gardening, cleaning, glossing and more cleaning awaits us. Hopefully that will get us to a point where we can put it back on the rental market to attract a new tenant, and continue other bits like recarpeting etc before they move in. Our tenants do tend to stay a long time, so it’s quite a while since this house had a serious makeover.

Getting back to the boat in the evenings even though moored 80 miles away from where we’re working, reminds us how incredibly lucky we are. It’s quiet, calm, and moving. Whichever way you look there’s something different to see, views created by wildlife or light. There is something both uplifting and liberating about leaning out of the swan hatch or sitting on the roof, drink in hand (taking Covid gin medication seriously as advised). In a town house life is much more constrained – bricks and mortar encase us with a static density that seems to separate us from the world outside and turn us inward.

Both ways we’re isolating still – keeping ourselves and any lingering bugs to ourselves. Once work is done and both of us record negative tests then we can socialise again, making up for lost time.

Is it a conspiracy or are we doomed?

After years of being told that we really should cruise the Erewash Canal which ambles between Nottingham and Derby, this week we’ve made it onto Erewash waters but it now looks as if we won’t be able to complete the navigation.

The River Soar took us to its junction with the mighty River Trent in the shadow of Ratcliffe Power Station. Suitably clad with lifejackets for all of us, we crossed the Trent, grateful that the blustery wind had dropped a little as we made it past the opening to the Cranfleet Cut beside the yacht club and Devil’s Elbow rowing club, to cut straight across to the Erewash Canal.

Crossing the Trent from the mouth of the Soar feels a bit like going to sea!

So far so good. We moored up on the Trent Lock landings, headed through without issue and left the rivers behind us for the calm of the canal. Surrounded by chalets in the fields, pubs, a tea room and chalets on the water, this is a hugely popular place to spend time. Walks across the fields , along the Erewash and Cranfleet Cut lead to the stunning Attenborough Nature Reserve. It’s no wonder people flock here, not just from Nottingham and Derby but from across the country.

For us this visit up the Erewash gives us a long-awaited chance to catch up with old friends and former colleagues we haven’t seen since pre-pandemic days. We sorted a packed calendar of visits to the boat, stocked up the fridge and got ourselves to Long Eaton as our first point of call (mooring just past the West Park Footbridge handy for The Bridge pub). Duty called with work first and then disaster no. 1 struck.

Finishing work on the first day moored there (glad it’s all online) I was aware of feeling as if my head was going to explode, as if it was too heavy for my neck, as if an elephant was sitting on my chest, and generally that I was exhausted. Yes, I’d done some work but not enough to shatter me completely! I took myself to bed and woke up completely disorientated the next morning. Just for precaution’s sake I took a Covid test and almost fell off the sofa in shock when two lines appeared. Meeting up with more and more people as we have has obviously brought us into contact with more than we bargained for.

Quick cancellations to everyone we had hoped to see, and disappointment added to the misery of feeling ill. Still, sleep seemed to be the main thing my body sought, and we had a pleasant mooring spot so we stayed put and I snoozed.

The next day’s I joined MS Teams meetings sounding very husky, and by the end of the morning it was all o could do to stagger back down the boat to bed. It’s a good thing that downshifting has led to shorter working days!

Steve’s hayfever has been appalling this year, and he seemed to be getting a lot worse. Then on Friday morning he too sounded like me – so another test was brought into play to discover that we both have tested postive.

The dog is now in charge of us both!

Cola taking his caring duties lying down

Then we faced a very urgent practical issue about living aboard – we filled up with water at Barrow on the Soar, and emptied all our rubbish and toilet waste there, with the idea that we would be at the top of the Erewash before we needed to empty the toilet waste again. One cassette lasts two of us 2 days. We currently have one that’s now full and one that’s filling… and despite having thought this year about buying a third one, we still have only have 2 aboard which gives us 4 days cruising between emptying…and now we are down to less than 2 days… These are things you don’t need to think about in a house.

Staying at Long Eaton longer than intended, and feeling the way we do, travelling 7 hours, 10 miles and 13 locks to the end of the canal at Langley Mill and the next waste disposal ahead of us is not something we genuinely feel we can manage. Behind us there’s one at Trent Lock much closer but we’re facing away from it. To get there we need to travel ahead 2 miles and 3 locks to a point we can turn and then head back through those same locks and on a bit further, a total journey of 5 miles and 6 locks which will take 3 hours to reach the waste point. So that’s the plan.

We have to see if we have the energy to manage the locks, feeling as weak as kittens? It could take us ages at best and be a danger at worst, but we need to do something…and so we shall try. We cannot risk an overflowing loo (a horror of living afloat!). Some boats have a larger waste tank which has to be pumped out every few weeks or months but that costs each time and we took ours out of this boat in favour of economical cassettes which can be more easily transported for emptying in times of delay or ice stopping us moving to a pump out point.

So on wobbly legs, we have moved up to Sandiacre Lock, turned in the old Derby Canal junction and made our slow way back to Trent Lock. When we have the energy the loo can be emptied.

We feel absolutely exhausted! 6 locks and 5 short miles has finished us. They weren’t straightforward either as we hoped – whenever are they when you just want life to be easy. Handcuff keys were needed on all which delayed unlocking and relocking, and we came across a pair of warring cob swans fighting to the death over territory inside Dockholme Lock. Fortunately swan food moved cygnets and the pen out of the way to safety. We filled the lock to get the birds within our reach reach a boat hook helped separate the warring pair until we could squeeze the younger male back through the gates onto his side of the lock. The dominant male then left in a huff heading for the opposite direction.

We are well stocked up expecting to see many friends so have lots of alcohol and cake ingredients! Marie Antoinette moments will probably abound as my bread making is rubbish and the bread is running low. We’ve been inundated with generous offers of help from boaters and shore based friends but we’ve arranged a distanced family food drop when we can get back on the Soar OK.

There are many pluses to being ill afloat – it’s just just step or two from a sickness to lean out of the swan hatch, to breath clear air whilst watching swifts and dragonflies dart just above the water lilies.

Our trip on the clear waters of the Erewash has been brief, eventful and downright doomed. We are being forced back by Covid. We need to return the boat to a set location on the Soar to work in Bedfordshire at the end of next week so we are forced to head away just as we were beginning to explore amid willows, dragonflies, swans and waterlilies.

The eye-catching Erewash is now top of a ‘must do’ list, joining so many other waterways we have still to explore.

Seeing our life through the eyes of a child

When you live and work in a different way to the norm – when your commute is a stroll along a 50ft boat, when your office desk is your dining table set under the gunwales, when glancing up from your computer you see calming ripples on water, swans bringing their new family along for a snack and at this time of year, ducklings jumping in ungainly leaps from the water to catch a tasty insect for a snack – that’s when you know you are lucky.

As with everything though it is easy to become complacent, to take things for granted, and sometimes it needs a fresh pair of eyes (or pairs of eyes) to remind you how wonderful it is to live and work this way.

For the second time in two years we’ve hosted a preschool on board – we don’t move the boat with them but invite them on to see what it’s like to live and work on a narrowboat. Young children have a remarkable capacity for spotting things many of us miss.

We trooped them down a gangplank at the stern and after exploring the length of the boat, we trooped them off another gangplank at the bow. We counted them in and out making sure none had stowed away.

They were accepting of our difference but aware of similarities with how we live. They commented that we have a washing machine in a wardrobe at the end of our bed whilst theirs sits in a kitchen, utility or lean-to. They didn’t think it strange, just observed it was different.

One four-year old sagely said of our boat: “It’s got everything and you don’t have bits you don’t use.” How true!

What really made them envious was sitting in the bow attuning their eyes to watch fish darting in and out off the weeds below; seeing the brilliantly bright metallic blues and greens of the banded demoiselles (aka dragonflies in their minds) flitting across the water to land on lily pads; and the luxury of having all this available all day long.

These waving weeds are packed with darting fish

It was a lesson for them that our waterways are precious, that we all need to care for them. Whether we boat or canoe, kayak or fish, walk or cycle alongside them, our waterways are havens running like ribbons across our countryside, nurturing us as much as they nurture wildlife.

The children learned that not everyone lives in a house made from bricks and mortar, that we should recognise the strengths of living in alternative ways that don’t harm others, and in many cases actively support the environments in which we live. It isn’t about judging people but accepting each other. We talked about fishing out plastics and rubbish from canals and rivers as we cruise, of looking after the beauty around us, and I hope as they grow up these delightful, aware youngsters, will continue to value their surroundings.

They missed the misty morning sunrises, the stunning evening sunsets and candyfloss clouds handing in the water around us but their lessons are ones for us all – don’t take anything for granted, guard what it precious and appreciate the daily delights that surround us, however we choose to live and work.

Living and working your dream? Why not?

I’ve lost count of the number of times this past week when I’ve heard “Oh you’re so lucky to live and work on a boat.” Invariably it’s followed by a wistful “I’d love to do that.”

One view from the office this week…yes it’s fabulous

Why is it that we don’t follow our dreams, why don’t we cast off and make our lives work for us? Whether you want to live afloat, work a 4-day, 3-day, 2-day or no work week, live up a mountain, or by a beach… the worst that can happen is that you find you don’t like it and move back but that would be just another valuable adventure as well as a lesson.

What could be worse than having to deliver those devastatingly sad words “If only.”

People are seizing their dreams – we have evidence all around us that we aren’t the only ones. We heard the uplifting inspiring words “We’re going for our dreams” from friends just this week. Like us they recognised that life is to be lived – not living to work but working to live. They accept there will be some compromises along the way but they balance those against the chance to achieve the bulk of their dreams – evening walks on beaches, lower bills and pressure among them.

Relaxing afternoon swims among the lilypads

Self-authorship is the key to feel in control, to achieve a sense of freedom – selecting when we work, and how often we need to work. For some that can mean stepping off the career ladder we have been climbing for many years to move to jobs rather than careers.

A happy worker working hard in the office this week

Sometimes that is a completely different type of work, for others it means becoming freelance or a consultant. From experience, this jobbing worker approach can carry a satisfying honesty – it is work where we know what is expected of us, and work we will do as well as we can in the knowledge that it brings us the wages we need to live our dreams, along with the satisfaction of doing each job as well as we can. For those of us working in multiple different companies we often have the advantage of being able to get on efficiently and effectively with the task required unencumbered by corporate or office politics. It is those latter elements that people talk of when they begin to complain about their jobs and why they want to move – something managers and bosses would do well to genuinely address.

It should be your choice which route you take

This week I had the delightful task of presenting at an aspirational careers day for Years 5 and 6 (ages 10-11) in a Leicester primary school. These switched-on youngsters are our future. What was interesting was how many presenters from diverse walks of life and career fields said the same thing to them:

Do something that makes you happy (as hopefully your working life will be a long one)
Gain as many skills as you can to give you choices
Remember that health and happiness can never be replaced by money – so look after yourself

What advice would you add?

From our heatwave working this week, chilled and unstressed on the water, we wish you the time and peace to reflect on your dreams. Achieving them doesn’t take luck but it does take some planning, determination and courage.

It’s in your hands to live (and work) the life you want.

FUEL FOR FREE

Prices are rocketing, costs are escalating, and the impact is being felt among us all. Anything we can get for free is becoming not only a bonus but a necessity.

This week anyone working with me has had a taste of my brand of free fuelling for a taste of feel-better times. We all need a boost after all, and the Jubilee celebrations provided that temporarily for some.

We can all look at contributing a little more for a little less, giving somerhing for nothing to help others at the sharp end of the dramatic rises in costs.

It isn’t that we are not affected by rising prices – we are and very directly. We may live and work afloat in an apparent idyll (and we do) but our costs are rising too.

We need fuel (red diesel) to move the boat, at a minimum every 14 days. We are likely to move as infrequently as possible and less far than we have been doing. Diesel is more expensive, food costs are also escalating because of global unrest and spiralling production costs, more salads are required as the price of gas which we use for cooking rises.

Boat dwelling has many benefits but the Chancellor’s energy handout isn’t one of them. Our income too has been dramatically affected by tenants unable to pay their rent, and clients cutting costs by reducing outsourced work. But amidst these, there are small ways we can help those around us.

Now is NOT a time for greed or grabbing but for generosity and giving whatever we can.

This week it has literally been sharing the outcomes of successful and rather pleasant times foraging among the hedgerows in some cases, and in other cases a metaphorical helping hand – providing an extra hour or two of work for free, or reducing rates where I can for virtual clients to help in these tough times.

The hedgerows are hugely productive at the moment alongside the River Soar where we are enjoying the beauty of dramatic sunsets and peaceful surroundings. Elderflowers are in abundance, the frothy bouquets of sweet scented flowers adorning these common trees in hedgerows and alongside roads too. Being on the river means we can select bunches from wilder growth, less affected by pollution or pesticides. It has meant a very local sourcing process – walking to collect. The other ingredients were already in the store cupboard.

So this week has been elderflower cordial production week – a couple of happy relaxing hours which has resulted in enough. Bottles of tasty vitamin C-rich cordial for us and for family, friends and face-to-face clients too. It has taken very little time but made people happy and cut costs a bit – adding it to water (hot or cold), gin and tonic or any form of cheap fizz if able to splash out makes life a little sweeter and more palatable. (See the recipe at the end if you want to try some but leave enough on the trees for birds, bees and to create wonderful berries good for spiced elderberry cordial later in the year).

Next up will be rose petal collection for jelly and exfoliating body Scrub – both as good as the commercially produced products but produced at a fraction of the cost.

So as budgets tighten and the squeeze bites – what can you, what will you offer family, friends, colleagues or clients to sweeten these tough times?

To the lovely client who gave me homemade Elderflower Cordial this week – thank you so much – great minds think alike and it is delicious!

Really strong Elderflower cordial:

20 elderflower heads shaken, washed and drained
1 lemon – rind grated and fruit sliced
25g citric acid or 5 tbs lemon juice
1kg sugar
750mls water minus 5tbs if using lemon juice

Dissolve sugar in water, add all ingredients. Stir. Stand for 24 hrs stirring occasionally. Sieve through muslin (or Sainsbury’s veg bag). Bottle in sterilised bottles or jars. Give generously.

Long service rewards for all

We may be narrowboat nomads but that doesn’t mean we’ve missed the opportunity to join in Jubilee celebrations. It’s just means we’ve joined them in several places!

Whatever your thoughts on monarchies, 70 years in the same job these days is nothing short of remarkable. It is something to be celebrated, something we know neither of us will achieve, and there is also a feeling that after the past few years of uncertainty and upheaval, we all need a party!

In the past week we’ve travelled 54 miles and 41 locks from the Oxfordshire village of Cropredy with its honey coloured stone houses and musical fame, to the rural Leicestershire village of Fleckney whose duck pond once provided clay for brick making.

From the Oxford Canal onto the Grand Union (Grand Junction Canal) and through Norton Junction onto the Leicester Line in sun and rain, we’ve seen growing evidence of celebration preparations for the Platinum Jubilee. Flags and buntings adorn houses and gardens, shops and pubs. Talk at locks is of joining family, parties and public events.

At Crick Marina preparations were well underway for the Boat Show when we passed and those we met on their way there were looking forward to coming away with new gadgets, and in one case with a new boat.

Crick mooring marshal aboard Book and Spud

We’re happy with our boat and our lot, so we came through Crick early, although the mooring marshal was still in evidence working hard. We were down the Foxton Flight before the show even started. Our Jubilee weekend began at Foxton with a stunning sunset.

Our upcycled bunting made from a pair of old shorts and two tee shirts that had seen better days now festoons the cratch. We came down the Flight of 10 locks early on Thursday morning in beautiful sunshine without a gongoozler in sight but with 3 voluntary lock keepers for company, crossing in the centre pound with 2 hire boats heading to work at Crick.

We shared the excitement of beacon lighting at Fleckney, in true local village style. Local band, dancers, children getting involved, before we made a leisurely move towards Leicester.

After several years it is good to see the vibrant multicultural Riverside Festival at Leicester back again. NB Preaux will join the Royal Navy, the Merchant Navy and all recreational vessels today in the Saturday Ships Salute, by sounding a long blast on our horn at midday 12.00 BST.

However you are spending this once-in-a-lifetime Bank Holiday we wish you sunshine, fun and relaxation. It is another chance to remember and celebrate the things that really matter in life – family, friends, communities, good health and stability as well as recognising 70 years of service.

Where creativity and individualism flourish

Individualism has a stronghold on the inland waterways today but I’d argue it always has had. Even in the days when homogonised corporate commercial barges plied their trade, the roses and castles adorning cabins and water cans made individual statements about the people on board and their desire to make their home/workplaces more attractive.

Today’s narrowboats echo those original decorations, but there is more, so much more to see on the waterways these days that speaks to the creativity and individualism of those living afloat. Untrammelled by commercial requirements on names and colours, imagination can now run riot.

You don’t have to go aboard to enjoy the this individualism. Walk along any towpath or marina and where there are moored boats you have an opportunity to delight in the creative touches boaters bring to their floating homes.

Perhaps this lack of competition combined with a capacity to demonstrate individual creativity has a significant part to play in the lack of stress and sense of wellbeing to which many boaters attest.

There are still those out with polishing cloths and determined to display ownership of the latest gadget but we haven’t found many liveaboard continuous cruisers in their midst.

It’s definitely not an environment to worry about ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. After all – how could you possibly compete with something as unique as this?

The power of individual change agents

Seeing the changes being wrought on the landscape this week by HS2 prompted this week’s blog.

We’ve been travelling the Grand Union to Napton Junction where we turned onto the Oxford Canal. Both evidence the changes of HS2. Travelling on from Leamington Spa we saw the impact on the landscape of the southern section of the high speed line in Warwickshire.

The line will go through a mile long tunnel being dug beneath ancient woodland and then travels south on a huge 60m concrete viaduct over the Oxford Canal and towpath near the village of Wormleighton. The Long Itchington tunnel is being dug by a mechanical mole named Dorothy after the first British woman to win the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1964. Dorothy Hodgkin was a student of Somerville College Oxford, just a stone’s throw from our current mooring, and later returned to the City as a research professor.

The Oxford is a contour canal, following the curves of the land. That means changes are visible for a long way. The Napton Windmill is one of these landmarks you see for miles. It’s been a visible sign of change on the landscape for centuries, originally powered by wind, then steam and then rendered sail-less before being restored as a listed part of a house. It’s a beacon of historic changes on this 75-mile canal that was once a coal route from Coventry to Oxford, and connected to Reading and London via the River Thames.

The Oxford Canal has seen dramatic changes since it first opened in 1790. Its first competitor turned out to be the Grand Junction Canal (Grand Union as we now know it after a name change). It offered a quicker, shorter route to London. Then came the railways offering even quicker and shorter journey times for freight. The canal struggled on but was facing closure and dereliction by the 1950s.

Today it is bustling and busy with commercial hire boats and private boats, a testament to the vision of the Inland Waterways Association which fought and won one of its first campaigns to get the Oxford designated a Cruiseway in the 1968 Transport Act.

The IWA came about to restore, retain and develop the Inland Waterways of The British Isles not just for leisure but commercial use too. The change it has created stems from the impact of a book – the power of the pen to create change.

Tom Rolt’s book Narrow Boat, vividly chronicles his 1939 journey around the canals in his boat Cressy. It still inspires people to seek a life on the inland waterways (although most of us don’t manage to incorporate a State Room and full sized bath on board!). It also sparked a partnership between Rolt and Robert Aickman who suggested they form a society to campaign for the regeneration of canals.

Tooleys Boatyard in Banbury where Cressy was fitted out

On Saturday 11 August 1945, the men and their wives, Angela and Ray, met for the first time aboard Cressy at Tardebigge on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. The inaugural meeting of The Inland Waterways Association took place six months later.

The leaders have changed, members have changed, the work has changed but the IWA’s focus remains the same – to restore, retain and develop our inland waterways. Change means just that – things don’t stay the same.

The IWA has been active along with Canal and Rivers Trust in seeking to positively protect the canals at times of change wrought by apathy or activity like the construction of HS2.

On our travels elsewhere in the country we’ve seen individuals banding together to try and bring about change because of the environmental impacts of HS2.

We are grateful daily for the changes brought about by Rolt, Aickman, their wives and those they inspired to continue the campaign for the waterways. Those changes mean we have been ablento change to living and working afloat.

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