Sat.27
Arrive back on board 15.43 from The Air Show. Voltage low due lack of sun and poor storage so I fire up, cast off at 16.00 and tie up by Bridge19 an hour later to explore the local area and overnight with a 5.50am start in the morning.

Sun.28
Arrive in Atherstone (8.30am) with the batteries well charged.  I'm here to upgrade the boat's  solar system. A battery pack is to be delivered to a local motor factor for me to collect and put on the boat.  For this I have a local man with a van on stand-by. The pack weighs 100kg. 
I left Wavy Rider at Ansty two weeks ago expecting a round trip of four days until canal time intruded.  Took a return bus to Tamworth for a look and to pass the time and on return shanked down the flight and round the road to shop at Tesco

Mon29
Early morning I continued boat-painting:- masking and daubing a few dozen diamonds.  Atherstone Nuneaton return later to see about traveling to Cambridge tomorrow since the batteries are not going to be here for some days.  It's been rather a hot day but the front cabin was bearable.  And in the evening when the sun went down I finished boat painting. 

Tue30.
Delay on delivery of batteries gave a window to go to Cambridge and stay overnight at wife's cottage where we did some book-keeping, some gardening and had a nice dinner and a good sleep.

Wed 31
On the return leg of a train ticket you can break your journey so having boarded at Meldreth and changed at Cambridge I got off at Peterborough about 2o/c and went to my flat to water my plants, change my clothes and stay overnight.

Thu1st August.
Laundry and housekeeping at the flat before baling out to rejoin the train and get  off at Melton Mowbrey for an hour. This was a sentimental stop.  In 1984 with my then young family we did a massive road trip from Shannon via Warrenpoint, Larne, Stranraer, The Wirral in our new Fiat Uno. We traveled down through the spine of England via Neston and stopped in Melton Mobrey in front of Ye Olde Porke Shoppe. 

a ten minute shank from the train station to a pedestrianized town centre brought me back to a street I instantly recognized.  I got a pie and two Eccles cakes before rejoining the train and carrying on through Leicester to Nuneaton from where (having collected my embroidered shirts) I bussed back to Atherstone to rejoin the boat.

Since the battery saga is on this blog let me update.  I collected the batteries on Mon 5th at 5pm and set sail  almost immediately to overnight , overnighting at Bridge18 in open country.  Being aware that I was on very low diesel reserves I was taking it 'easy'

and and going through Hawkesbury Lock1 on Thu.8th at 10oc.

Midday Tue6th
I chose to stop for lunch and fit two new Vartas which was the first time I noticed I was replacing 70Ah with 95Ah.  Same height and width but four inches longer and well heavier.  I got back to Wavy about 3.30 in the afternoon and moored alongside for the hitch up so up sticks at 1545 and make it to Combe Farm after an engine cut out.  The diary tersely says 
"During the fukkup I got stung by a wasp and dipped very deep into my CFS reserves. Two paracetamol going to bed at 22.20".

Wed.7th
It was expedient to take things very easy today and although the diary documents quite a busy day it was completed by moving very slowly.  My mooring is near the Stretton under Fosse aqueduct and but not yet in sight of the swing bridge which is a mile away.

I have a dream mooring here at Bridge 14 where overhead a bus runs to Nuneaton twice an hour.  If I go only to Attleborough on that bus I have a 20min turnaround with an excellent Co-op.  I have two shirts in for embroidering to enhance my onboard image when my plan gets launched and I have complimented my wardrobe from Nuneaton charity shops.   

Today (Tues) I planned to have sausage egg and chips but ended up having a boiled egg for breakfast, a "small-chip-open" for lunch and a sausage roll for afters and another for after.  My stomach was satisfied it had had sausage egg and chips.  For dessert I had handpicked plums and blackberries from the bus stops.  There are two trees by one bus stop with luscious bullace type plums and the other bus stop  juicy fat blackberries.  At either stop you pick your own. The plum trees grow in the grounds of a social stratum which knows how to negotiate mortgages and the social welfare system and lease everything from air-conditioning via prestige cars to cable tv. 

Since I am going to the airshow on the morrow I wanted to ensure the larder was ba re, not buying in any food to go bad in this swelter.  When the heat was gone out of the day I went to Attleborough Co-op and got bananas at 5p each,  a bread stick for 10p and a bottle of Ginger Ale for £1.30.  Talk about all costs and no cost at all

In other news the gas went out just as my afternoon coffee was coming to boil.  Suspecting the bottle was empty I changed over and then had a look back through the logs to find the bottle may have been running since May 2023.  I don't keep tight records but have a history of gas bottles lasting a year so no surprises.  After changing over, I tested the nozzle pressure of the 'empty' to find it high so I will have a look further when I get back.  The most important thing is to always have gas spare.  Never leave an empty empty.  Trade for full ASAP. 

 I have been to and from the airshow, moved the boat to Atherstone to facilitate the acquisition of four new Varta Duals two for Pentargon and two for Wavy. They are bought online for delivery to an adjacent click and collect depot and a man with a van trollies them to the boat for £20. All agreed. The batteries are now ordered but delivery is delayed til the w/e as they only have ONE actually in stock.  I decided to take the train to meet Diane in Cambridge Tue 30th with option on breaking the return journey at Peterborough.  Tomorrow is to be a heat wave day. 

22nd. I listen to BBC R4 on a cheap and cheerful little radio powered from the boat's DC.  It is quite reliable and unusual for it to fail.  But it can happen that reception dries up preceded by audio distortion.  Long ago I discovered that moving the boat by its own length can restore reception and allow me to listen to Farming Today and Inside Science.  This evening was such a time. I wanted to record the science and the signal was unreadable.  Since I was on Armco pulled the boat up a length and pinned it down.  Sure enough the signal was loud and clear so I started to record and sods law kicked in. 

Not only had I heard the programme before but I had even recorded it already. 
I am all for recycling in the rght place and the right time etc etc etc

Observations from the cut would indicate that solo sailors tend towards introversion, shyness in the extreme, with difficulty at small talk and eye contact and tend to shun company.

I now discover I am an introverted extrovert! 
I hope to tease this one out as it does not make sense to me. 
I do prefer silence to noise. I do like my own company.
I am very comfortable communing with nature. 
At my last stop by Ansty there was another boat where the soloist seemed to be suffering from loneliness and/or depression, showing classic signs of introversion.  I was going to and from the boat for some days and he seemed to spend his day just staring out the side door at the water.  I was thinking about this extrovert introvert thing and also about manic depression which switches from black dog to unicorn and back to total sanity in an apparently mindless manner.   

Then I met Gary on "Get Knotted" and realized not all soloists play the same tune or even the same instrument.  Gary and I are both soloists and we do not seem to fit the described pattern.

I recalled Dave on "Whiskey Galore" and Peter on "Emily".  That was when I googled "Introversion". Gary on "Get Knotted" bound for Ashby de la Zouch.  We met at Sutton Stop on Saturday morning having both over-nighted in the basin.  Being early risers we had a short banter about early rising and things across the water. An excellent banter before I fired up cast off and swung north-east onto the Coventry canal.   Later we met again as I had already tied up at Bridge 14 for my encore coffee while Gary motored through for Marston Junction. 

I had established that a bus crosses my bridge for Nuneaton Bus Station every day of the week so maybe this is a good place to lie over.

Talking with Gary set me to googling and "Get Knotted" came up immediately. 

I decided to try strings like "Pentargon Springer" and "Pentargon" and "60906" separately as well as "Pentargon60906" just to see what would come up and all of them were hits.

If I can get people to actually read the blog and comment and subscribe it could get wings

The picture shows the rear-end masked up and Albany Sky slapped on at Ansty.  The job will be left that way while I slip to Homenene with a bit of washing as the paint cures.  It is a water based viynl, dries very slowly and that is its strength.  Brushes are immediately washable and come clean.  The paint is remarkably resilient when cured and sticks readily to any surface.  Today is perfect for this type of activity. 

wabi sabi at the back end
follows random brick concepts
detailed at Curly Wurly Concepts

I have long craved crosstrees and Moonlight (pictured below) was snapped transiting Hillmorton.  Looking on its roof I saw a fine crosstree which the owner said his wife hates and wants shut of.  I bid a ton, got his number with a view to buy if 'mature reflection' does not interfere ... and hope to see hm Sat at Brinklow marina ..

Tues9thJul ... arrived in Brownsover last night to park on the two-day, having come down from an enforced stop at Hillmorton where I over-nighted Sunday to clean out the fuels tanks and lines and filters removing almost ten litres of water, crud and solids from the tanks, both of them, with no clear idea where the merde came from. 

Its gone now ... more or less ... and the port tank has about 16L of diesel.  On Tuesday I crossed the cut to moor on 14day rings for a day or two.

Brownsover is less than five minutes from a Tesco superstore and has local and long haul buses to hand.  I took X84 to Lutterworth to replenish my milk at Waitrose and visited Morrisons for a whole chicken (£3.75!) to roast Gas6/45min last night. This morning I was up at 6 monitoring the batteries, checking the solar input in quite cloudy conditions and noting that nothing useful came in til after 8am.  I had to run the engine from 7.30 to 8. I left the boat at 9.35 and picked up a No4 to the station having bought tickets on line before I left the boat.

I have never been rightly sure why I vote
but with the UK elections on 4th July
I was up early and out with my ballot card and ID
to cast my line and return to the madhouse
to update my website in the early morning

(page Curly Wurly Concepts)

also to start this new blog introducing JULY
to my imaginary friends in cyberspace.
The boat is calling to me from Braunston. 
First bus tomorrow gets me to Northampton
with time to call in the Drapery phone shop
for accessories to commence filming
and recording my misadventures.

of which perhaps more later