Friday 27th February 2009
Location: Newbold, Warwickshire, Oxford Canal
Today: 11 miles, 3 locks. Total distance: 1994 miles. Total locks: 1361
I was awake early today and decided to head on up to Rugby.
Pulled the pins at 06:30 and headed north. Stopped off at the water point in Braunston to top up the tank while I was passing.
I arrived at Newbold around 12:30 to find all of the 14 day visitor moorings taken so I am moored on one of the few remaining 48 hour moorings. There are a number of boats moored here that I have never seen more than 4 miles either side of Rugby, they play the ‘move a mile or so every 14 day’ game. I really don’t care what they do, but I do wish they wouldn’t take the best visitor moorings all of the time. BW just seem to turn a blind eye to them. Oh well, such is life.
Spring is definitely in the air, another very mild and pleasant day – it will probably snow tomorrow now!!!
As I knew that I was going to be on the move for more than four hours, I decided to try baking a four hour loaf of bread. I have only ever baked the two hour rapid bake loaf. The four hour loaf recipe requires slightly less yeast. The loaf has turned out better formed than the two hour loaves usually do, the proof will be in the eating – as they say.
Current Mooring
Countryside north of Braunston
Another little boat
This towing thing is becoming popular
It turns out that the boat I moored behind yesterday is nb Pickles 2, another boating blogger. I popped by to say hello and have a quick chat this morning – nice to have met you Pete.
I caught the 08:36 bus into Rugby this morning. I wanted a headset for my laptop to tray and connect to Skype. I also wanted a book on Microsoft Visual C++.net. I managed to find the headset OK but not the book. I may have to venture to Coventry to find a good book shop.
I took Archie for a walk to Tesco after lunch, a very pleasant 3 mile round trip along the tow path. The weather is still pleasantly mild. It’s hard to believe that we are in to March tomorrow.
The boat behind me move off this morning so I move Ten Bob Note back to the spot that they had been moored at. I only moved about 70’ but it made the difference of going from reasonable GPRS phone reception to good 3g reception. It’s amazing how such a small distance can have such a big effect on phone reception.
The new Newbold water point - a black plastic box
Have been busy this last few days, walking back and forth to Rugby to see to stuff to do with bank accounts etc. that I have been putting off for the best part of the last two years. I am not very good when it comes to dealing with the boring paperwork stuff. Now that I have started, I will stop here on the 14 day visitor mooring until it is all done.
It’s a fairly pleasant walk from Newbold into Rugby town centre. This morning, Archie and I walked into town then back again via Tesco at Brownsover, all in all, a pleasant 7 mile round trip according to the GPS – track here.
It’s a full house here at Newbold this evening, it looks like the boating season is beginning to take off, must be the nice weather we have been having of late ???
nb Gosty Hill passed a couple of days ago so I took the opportunity to top up with diesel and coal, their diesel is currently on sale for 59 pence per litre, it seems to be coming down in price – must be about the only thing that is these days.
Interest rates at 0.5% as of today, who would ever have thought it, unbelievable. We will soon be at the point where we have to pay the banks to have them hold our money for us – won’t be too much of a problem for me though – unless the Euro Lottery comes up tomorrow night that is!!!
Right, feedback on the four hour loaf mentioned above. The bottom line is that the four hour loaf has better texture, is better formed and tastes better than the two hour loaf. I have baked another four hour loaf since the original post above and the results seem to be consistent. I will not be going back to the two hour loaf unless I am pushed for time. The big problem is power consumption over such a long period. As it turns out, the bread maker uses very little power until the last hour of baking so my plan is to time it so that I start the loaf off on batteries (via the inverter) then finish it off with the engine or generator running. Life living on a boat is just so very complicated :)
Newflame, must be the worst coal I have ever tried to burnt, every bag was rubbish!! Bought 8 bags of this when desperate at Devizes last April. It produces so much ash, it chokes itself and goes out. Thankfully, this is the last bag of it. I will never buy it again, even if nothing else is available.
A full house here at Newbold tonight, nose to tail (or, bow to stern).
Previous Page -- Next page -|- Index page