England's five best canal holiday routes

There was an article on Times Online today by Terry Ramsey about his five favourite canal holiday routes. I wonder how they compare to others? Feel free to leave some comments about your favour canal routes :)

Narrowboat Wardrobe | DIY repairs | Completed

As you may have seen from a previous Narrowboat Wardrobe post one of my many DIY jobs to do on Sirius was to mend the wardrobe doors, well you'll be glad to hear that I have finally finished and the repaired doors are now hanging :)

The only problem which you will notice if you look at the photo below is I have some how managed to loose three of the slats, so there is a small gap at the bottom of the left hand cupboard door, opps!

Double Bridge Naish Hill Lacock | Official opening by the Duchess of Cornwall

The Duchess of Cornwall is to open a newly restored double bridge on the Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal next Tuesday (26th May 2009)

I actually found this article on Twitter and the original article can be found on the This is Wiltshire website.

You can find more information about the event on the Wilts and Berks Trust website, the following page might not exist after the event: The Official Opening of Double Bridge Naish Hill Lacock

I hope I still have my Narrowboat when this link is finally finished :)

Narrowboat Directory - Looking for ideas / feedback.

I am currently building a new website which I am hoping to launch in July 2009 which will be available on the following URL:

http://www.NarrowboatDirectory.com


As you can probably tell, the idea of the website is to be a directory of all Narrowboats in the UK. I have the current listings from BW, EA & the Broads Authority which are all pretty poor when it comes to database design. E.g. The BW database has approx 12,000 Narrowboats but it has approximately 3,500 different Manufacturer names!

So, a simple bit of maths tells you that there must be something wrong, it's unlikely that there were so many craft builders and even less likely that on average they only built 3 boats each.

A couple of weeks ago I dug deeper into the data and realised it was a real mess, but you'll be glad to know I am sorting it all out and creating a new database with a unique list of Craft builders, so when my new site goes live you will actually be able to see all the boats manufactured by the same craft builder!

Of course with 12k+ boats I may make the odd mistake, and of course my source data may well be wrong in the first place!

What I am hoping is that some of the people who read my blog and own Narrowboats might actually be interested in my new site? If you are, I would be really interested to get some feedback comments with your ideas of what sort of information I should store related to each of the boats?

My medium term goal is to allow boat owners to update their own records with things like links to their blogs / websites. Contact details (not public) to allow easy contact (i.e. a forwarding service for messages)

What else would you as Narrowboat owners like to see in a Narrowboat Directory?

If you have your own blogs, it would be great if you could link to this article to try and increase the amount of feedback it receives, thanks everyone in advance!

Narrowboat Wardrobe - DIY Repairs

The next phase of my DIY on Sirius is to repair the wardrobe door and give the wardrobe a good clean! As you can see from the photo I took yesterday, it really needs both :)

The left hand wardrobe door fell apart a couple of years ago, but I have all the bits and a couple of clamps and some wood glue, so hopefully I will be able to put it all back together again. Then the cupboard will need a really good clean as I was storing wood and coal in the cupboard ( no idea where I am going to store it now! )

As soon as I have sorted it out I will create another blog post with the results so watch this space :)

Google Tasks or Remember the milk?

I have been using Remember the Milk for a few months now for trying to manage my tasks, both related to my job working for Ava (who produce Temporary Staff Agency Software) and also for day to day tasks like repairing the floor on Sirius!

I saw today that Google have announced they are now providing Task Lists in Google Calendar which I am sure will effect companies like Remember the Milk.

For me though, Remember the Milk still has the edge as they have an excellent little iPhone application that allows me to check my tasks whereever I am, and it also allows tasks to have a location associated with them, so I can see what are the closest things I need to do at any time. So for any of you travelling up and down the cut in your boats with an iPhone, it could be useful to you too, i.e. Remember to buy XYZ at a certain boat yard, or Milk at the next Tescos :)

Narrowboat Bedroom Floor Repaired - Part 1

I have been meaning to upload a couple of photos for over a week now! I have been busy as my younger brother decided to beat me to it and he married Linda over the bank holiday weekend, they were very lucky with the weather!

A friend Dave and I ripped up the very rotten flooring in the bedroom on Sirius and built a new supporting structure which is fixed down onto the Narrowboat steel. Most of the floor boards are now fixed on top of this structure, I just have a little bit more to do, I thought I would post some photos today showing how far we have got, and then when it's all finished and TIDY ;) I will post some better photos :)

Narrowboat DIY

Well the DIY is going to continue this weekend, I will hopefully post some photos tomorrow. The plan is to rip up some of the flooring which has unfortunately rotted away by water leaking into Sirius through a currently un-known source.

After the old flooring is up, obviously stage two will be laying some new flooring, I'm not sure yet what sort of wood to use, it will probably depend on what I can actually source from the local DIY store.

Stage 3 - Find the leak! This could be the hardest part, actually trying to trace when the leak is coming from, so fingers crossed :)

Stage 4 - I need to mend a couple of wardrobe cupboard doors, I have all the tools and now just need to take the doors off and glue them back together.

Royal Navy takes delivery of 70ft narrowboat

I thought this was an interesting Narrowboat related bit of news from the This is Wiltshire website. The Royal Navy have bought themselves a 70' narrowboat! I wonder which of the following gadgets it has:

* bow thrusters
* Anti-GRP torpedos ;-)
* Helicopter Landing Pad? ( Something I was considering if I every become good enough at flying my model one :) )

In all seriousness though, they have bought the boat to allow service men and women to relax after a tour of duty, a pretty good idea as it will certainly be relaxing as we boaties all know :)

Giving Sirius a spring clean

For the last couple of weekends I have been giving Sirius a decent spring clean with help from a couple of friends of mine. Two weekends ago we jet washed the outside (both sides) and gave her a good scrubbing down, she looks a lot better now, but the down side is this exposes all the areas that need a re-paint, and on a 70' narrowboat, that's quite a few places!

Then last weekend it was time to give the insides a good clean, dusting, removing a gazillion spiders and their webs, hoovering and generally giving everything a well deserved clean. There is still a bit to do, but she's certainly looking a lot better than before.

The next task is to fix a cupboard door and to replace some floor boards as my friend Anita unfortunately found an area that was quite rotten and she put her foot straight though! ( Even though I have warned her that I was going to replace that patch of floor soon, and please don't tread on it :) ) Luckily she was not hurt at all and we just had a good laugh about it :)

Hold Tight and Tell No One

My girlfriend has been persuading me to read more recently, by more, I actually mean in all honesty that I have not read a fiction book for the past 15 years! So, as we had a long flight Marie bought me Hold Tight by Harlan Coben which turned out to be just the right sort of book for me, I'd highly recommend it! And following on from that I am now reading Tell No One which has proved to be another book that I don't want to put down! Prehaps after all this time, I'm now back to being a reader :)

Playing around with Amazon associates

I thought I'd have a play around with the Amazon associates scheme and see how well their automatic book adverts actually work. In theory after 4 or 5 people visit each page on my blog the books or products advertised should be relevant to the content in my blog.

So far I have noticed that the books advertised on the home page are definitely narrowboat related, so maybe it will be of interest to someone, or maybe just for me :)

Window's have been repaired.

Hi All,

It's amazing how time flies when your having fun. I have now had the windows replaced by Marine Windows, they also added new sealant to the other 10 windows (at my cost) so hopefully that will stop a bit of the water that gets into Sirius, and maybe keep out a few of the spiders :)

I've also moved Sirius, but not very far and the Thames is now back on Red boards and stream increasing again, so I am now stuck where I am until the conditions improve. A useful website is the Environment agency page that shows the current river conditions for the Thames, it's a shame it's not a mobile friendly page, as I am sure there are a lot of people on their boats, especially live aboards who would like to be able to look up the latest information without having to download a 300k page on their mobile! How about being mobile friendly and providing a cut down text only version (or limited images) which could probably be nearer 5k in size?

Thames River Conditions Online

One option if your mobile supports it, is you can add their RSS feed to your mobile, my Nokia is able to read RSS feeds, it actually names them "Web Feeds", but at least that way you only get the information you need and none of the styling, images etc.

The URL for the RSS feed is:

Thames River Conditions RSS Feed

I hope this is useful for someone else :)

High waters on the K&A

Well as those of you who living in the UK (and who actually read this in the next week or so) will know it has been raining cats and dogs over the last few days. The K&A is at it's highest point this year, the water was flowing straight over the weir on Tuesday night in the centre of Reading by the Loch Fyne restaurant.

I don't think there is a hope for me moving Sirius this weekend, for a start I won't fit under the first bridge with the current height of the water. Fingers crossed it comes down a lot in the next couple of days as I had hoped to move on Saturday, others I think it will be a weekend of boat spring cleaning and DIY, a job I must admit I have been somewhat postponing ;-)

I will see what the water levels are like this evening and if it's still as high as yesterday I will try and take a photo for the blog :)

The repairs are beginning!

Craft Insure, who are the insurance company who I have my Narrowboat insurance with have given me the go ahead to replace the smashed windows and repair the window frame.

Apparently they are not sure I should be claiming for new carpet and bedding, I would be interested what you all think? I had two windows smashed on top of the bed and over the bedroom carpet. The glass shattered into thousands of tiny pieces which I have tried to hover up, but if course, I keep finding tiny shades of glass in the carpet and it's even more difficult to hover a duvet. Personally I don't like the idea of getting cut by a bit of glass in bed or when I step out in bare feet in the morning!

What do you all think?

It seems to me like they are trying to back track on paying out for the claim which is really annoying as I thought they were a good company. We will have to see, watch this space.

I am hoping to start cruising again on the 14th February (as long as the Thames is not on Red boards) when the lock onto the Thames has hopefully been re-opened. I am looking forward to reaching Lower Heyford for a pint in the Bell Inn!

British Waterway mooring tenders

I placed a bid on a BW mooring this afternoon to see if I could get myself a mooring. I am in two minds about having a mooring at all, because I just feel if you pay a fortune for a mooring, you should use it.. but then that means your not cruising around the network visiting all those nice little village pubs and meeting lots of fellow boaters :)

So, my plan was to try and get a cheap mooring that I can use for the winter and for the odd month here and there where I want to keep Sirius local to my bricks and mortar home.. (yes, sorry boating friends.. I still live in solid ground most of the time)

There are moorings in Reading near the IDR (ring road bridge) which to be honest, are not the best moorings, obviously noisey from the bridge and also the area is not the best, I've often wondered if the boats there get any trouble... I guess I should really pop along and ask them.

270 people had apparently viewed the tender (probably 10 of those viewings was myself and my friends) and there was apparently no-one on the waiting list for the mooring, and, I was the only one to put in a tender.

BW say that the reserve price is set to ensure they cover their costs for the mooring, now what could those ongoing costs be at this mooring? There are no services provided, it's next to a public footpath which is presumably tender by the local council... so.. we're talking about looking after the rings that Sirius would be tide onto?! Surely these don't need a lot of ongoing maintainence?

So.. I put a bid in for £300 / PA yes, I know, it's about 20% of their asking price of £1500... but come on.. that mooring does not cost £1500 to maintain PA! And another mooring on the same site went for £752 and that was above the reserve price, so, any guesses what I should have bid?

If it was a popular mooring I could understand the price, but, it's really not...

Come on BW.. cut me some slack and let me have a cheap mooring so I can use it for a few months here and there... the rest of the time.. you already have my £1052 / PA license fee!

Official Google Blog: Google Maps for mobile now with Street View and walking directions

Now this is pretty cool, Google Maps for mobile now has walking directions. The question is when will they buy a site like Canal Plan, who have a lot of photos of the canals and then produce a boating directions guide with boat eye photos :)

Official Google Blog: Google Maps for mobile now with Street View and walking directions

Working on water :)

Hi All,

I've no idea how many people actually read this blog, maybe it's just my mum.. infact, maybe she doesn't read it?! Anyway, for those of you who have read it, thank you, and do leave some comments so I know your out there :)

As you will have seen from my previous post Sirius was broken into, since then I have tried to spend more time on Sirius, the problem is, as I work in IT I have a constant requirement to be online, so I needed a solution!

I have previously used various GSM and GRPS data cards and to be honest, none of them were really very usable compared to sitting at home connected to a broadband connection. This time around, my house mate Nick offered to lend me his Vodafone 3G data card, wow! What a difference! It was almost as good as being connected to a broadband connection and perfectly acceptable for working on Sirius, finally technology has caught up and floating working could become a reality :)

I was so impressed that the following week I signed up and bought one of the Vodafone 3G data cards. For those of your interested, I bought a Express Card version as they are Quad Band ( i.e. work pretty much in every country including USA ) and they support the full 7.2mb current maximum speed, where as some of the USB modem versions do not support the full speed.

If you are interested in getting one, go onto the Vodafone business site as they are not available in the consumer area. The costs FREE card and £15 / month for 24 months gets you 3GB of data per month. So far I have used about 100MB in 1.5 weeks, so it doesn't look like the 3GB limit will ever be a problem!

Jerry Cans from Freecycle

A couple of days ago I ran out of Diesel, miles from a filling stop, so I thought I would try and get hold of a couple of Jerry cans ( the big 20 litre fuel containers ). I decided to put a note onto Freecycle to see if someone had one they would like to give away, and low and behold, 24 hours later, I now have three!!

I am going to use them to give Sirius a good drink and then I will probably give one or two of them to a couple of my boatie friends :)

Boat vandals...

Sirius was unfortunately broken into twice this week, I think by some local kids from the Theale / Reading area. They were apparently spotted a couple of times, the first time was after they smashed a window for the second time, and the second time they were spotted they were again hanging around Sirius, looking like they were about to cause trouble.

2 white boys and 1 black... all on bikes.. unfortunately that is all the description I have, but if you moor around the Theale area along the K&A keep an eye out!