First Ducklings!

I know I'm not the first to have blogged about the arrival of this year's ducklings, but I promised myself I'd finally get around to adding an entry here as soon as I saw them. And saw them I 'ave!

In the process of moving from Bolbeck Park in the northern half of Milton Keynes to Milton Keynes Marina at Peartree Bridge (in the south of the town) to get a pumpout and fill up with diesel, they were near the water point with their parents, extremely small balls of yellow and black fluff! All sixteen of them!

Moored up again at Campbell Park, I noticed another group of four. In fact, one has just gone past the window, frantically tailing mum by about a tenth of an inch!

I expect they'll be getting into the habit of chewing noisily on the weed just below the water line on Wils in the very near future... Oh joy!

So here I am, still in Milton Keynes for the time being, working on a number of things, including completing my training as a care worker.

I have had some company onboard recently:



I'm pretty certain he belongs to the good folks on the widebeam Our Lucy (seen above) whose movements have been very similar to my own recently, we have been mooring at Giffard Park and Campbell Park with almost identical timing over the last few weeks! He was particularly curious about the wool I've been spinning recently, trying to paw it as soon as it's spun! I'm spinning a great deal at the moment for two reasons, I need to make some curtains for the front windows of Wils, which I thought I really should do from scratch because I can, and I need to make a soft liner for my camping hammock.

I used my hammock recently, over May Day weekend I took it up to Salcey Forest, near the village of Hartwell, Northants. It's a Hennessy hammock, and I think a photo will explain it better than I could in words!



It's smaller than a tent when packed away, lighter to carry, more comfortable than sleeping on the ground and far quicker to set up and pack away! Of course the night I chose to head to Salcey would be the night of the thunderstorm and torrential rain... All good fun though! The owls were very loud and the pheasants nearby didn't like the thunder. It is essentially two parts, the main sleeping section and a waterproof fly sheet over that. The top half of the sleeping section is all mosquito net, entrance is from underneath! Luckily the weight of the occupant holds it shut once you're inside... The only thing it's lacking is a bit more protection from the cold underneath you, hence the soft woollen liner I'm creating. Getting home on the Sunday was interesting! I walked the mile or so into Hartwell from the forest, to realise there are no buses whatsoever going anywhere from Hartwell on Sundays. Huff. But there's one leaving from nearby Hanslope in about 55 minutes! Unfortunately the country walk from one village to the other takes about an hour, and I missed the bus there by 5 minutes... Huff. The rain was picking up by this time too, and the next (and final) bus from Hanslope was four hours off. Huff. So onto Castlethorpe! Now, in the right shoes, with some decent weather this would make an amazing walk. Sadly I had neither of these things! By the time I reached Castlethorpe I had already stuck out my thumb to every vehicle that went past, and was met by the most common responses to hitchhikers in this country nowadays, which are as follows:

• "What? People still hitchhike?!" (by the time it's sunk in, they're already half a mile away...)
• "Don't slow down, Dear! Whatever you do, DON'T SLOW DOWN!"
• "Don't look him in the eye! If we pretend we haven't seen him, it's not our fault if we don't stop."

These, in short, are the three most common responses I get when trying to hitch in this country. It's different if you're a couple, if you're holding pizza, a baby, a musical instrument case or a petrol can or if you're a single girl, preferably without a backpack. Huff.

Eventually a car that had previously gone past me turned around and came back for me! Andy the Gas Man, you are a true legend! Andy was on his way to plant green beans, he kindly dropped me in Wolverton where I was able to get a bus to Great Linford and slowly crawl back to the boat from there! Quite a trip!

I also attended the Woburn Classic Car Show on bank holiday monday, Tom and I went down in his Renault 4! Here is Tom looking very excited to be exhibiting his car with the Renault Classic Car Club:



It was an excellent day, and it has inspired me to get my Fiat 500 going again after a sorry 8 years or so in the garage! Photos of that progress to follow shortly! I hope we can both drive to the next meeting/event together and display both cars!

On the whole the weather has been amazing...

Coincidental Ongoing Coverage of NB Caxton!

Thanks to the wonders of mobile blogging, and in the spirit of my incidental coverage of their progress through this neck of the woods, I can report that NB Caxton has passed Campbell Park!



Well I have to do something with my mornings...

Sleeping Seven Onboard, Tunnels, Lambs, Darts, Ale & Mangle Bidding!

So I probably should have comemorated the first anniversary of Jem and I moving onboard on the 31st March, but apart from having little to report I was too busy preparing the boat for the imminent invasion!

For the past few days I've had six of my old uni housemates staying on Wils. We started in Milton Keynes, went north as far as Gayton Junction and returned to the same point. It was an amazing chance to have everyone together again, and the weather was generally kind to us. Sleeping seven people onboard turns out to be no problem at all! The stretch we covered took in a lock flight, urban and rural stretches, impressive pub food, many a dart board, Blisworth Tunnel and the perennially busy Stoke Bruerne, not bad for five days really!









As we came through Stoke Bruerne it was a great surprise to pass NB Caxton, whose blog was one of the first Boaters' Blogs I started reading over a year ago! This is the best photo I could take:



I have been furiously bidding on mangles online, it seems they sell for surprisingly large sums, given that there seem to be so many about for sale, and that most are in advanced states of disrepair, which surprised me most for the fact that for most people they seem to serve little purpose more than that of garden ornaments. Moored at Campbell Park tonight, I'll be moving on to pastures new tomorrow, but I'm still not certain where that might be exactly...

Me Toby: Receiver of Licenses, Washer of Clothes, Putter-Upper of Washing Lines!

In other words, Wils is now adorned with shiny new purple license squares! Has it been a year already? Well, very nearly, it'll be one year since Jem and I moved onboard a week tomorrow.

Today, out of unequivocal necessity, is washday. The amount of clothes that can be strung over, near, around and past the stove is minimal, and so began the construction of a washing line! Using rope already onboard, a couple of pieces of driftwood and the old barge pole that I broke on the ice some weeks ago. Amazing what you can knock together! No nails, screws, glue - or any real protection from heavy winds... I think a couple of guy-ropes would be a good idea. It's a work in progress!







Needless to say, as soon as the clothes went up, the rain came down! It's still spitting a bit, even now... Of course it was sunny when I was pounding the living daylights out of the clothes with the posser, sunny when I rung them out, sunny when I built and put up the line - nevermind, eh?

A Plumbing Adventure

Powering down to Fenny Stratford two days ago, I visited Halfords in Bletchley to get a new inner tube fitted to my bike and then I tried Wickes next door for a few plumbing supplies that I required for the upcoming plumbing adventure. Having an extremely limited stock in place and a distinct lack of customer service I decided in the end to go elsewhere... To Travis Perkins in fact, which was (as in Banbury) practically canal fronting! I think someone's twigged that boaters need building supplies on a regular basis! Maybe.

The plumbing adventure itself consisted of capping off two pipes, and then removing the sink from the bedroom and the tabletop into which it was set. A relatively simple job, even for someone whose plumbing experience is firmly established at absolute zero. It took the best part of a day (Friday) to get it done, and involved the following highlights: failing to secure one connection properly and having a classic comedy moment in which the jet of water sprays directly into one's face, and, even more hilarious-and-swear-inducingly; cutting the cold water pipe at the wrong point, effectively relieving the bathroom of its cold water supply. Oops.

But a few hours and another trip to TP later all was well again, pipes cut in the right place and one sink firmly cut off from the system.

Yesterday I had the far easier job of removing the sink and cutting the tabletop. I moved Wils from the 24hr moorings just above Fenny Lock (the one with the swingbridge INSIDE the lock) to our current location just south of Milton Keynes Marina first thing in the morning, then set to work in the afternoon. The journey from Fenny to Peartree Bridge was conducted exclusively in the rain, but no matter.

Along this stretch I came across the same television set that has been floating in the same stretch of canal for at least three months:



How does a TV float?! Is glass buoyant enough to keep it up, despite being the heaviest part of the set? Answers in a comment!

Last night, just before we lost the light altogether, I got a coat of primer on the newly exposed woodwork which I'm attacking with a paintbrush today. It's a cold morning again, but the stove stayed in overnight, just enough to keep me in the land of the living anyway.

I should have an old railway lantern waiting for me at the Royal Mail depot, which I am hoping to be able to fetch ASAP. I'm also trying to decide on the best place to mount it inside... The problem is that the canal runs along the east side of Milton Keynes, and the depot is right over on the west side of town. Good thing I got that inner tube replaced... Suppose I should get the brakes working again at some point...

Wilshamstead: Formerly White Stork & Towpath Tree Planting Photos!

Knowing that Wils is an ex-hireboat, today I scoured the net briefly to see if I could find any mention of her days as a hireboat - and here it is!

It's the only reference I could find and there can be no question, this is our Wils! Back then she was known as White Stork and was part of the Alvechurch fleet. The page is a record created by a Mr Nigel Bromley, it forms part of his personal website, he's a canal enthusiast amongst many other things it seems. He and his wife Cath were onboard White Stork in August 1996 - Nigel claims 38 seperate canal holidays/voyages, of which their time on Wils was number 22, which is a very relevant number for me - AND they now live right here in Milton Keynes, my hometown AND the place I'm currently moored! This is getting creepy...

Nigel claims an interest in canal restoration - so if he's active in this interest in this area there's a good chance he's a member of the BCS and has already received his recent copies of The Buckingham Navigator, on whose front cover is a tiny photo of me, kneeling next to the boat he once spent two weeks onboard!


Still with me?!


Nigel goes through an extremely comprehensive inventory of the boat, which proves that Wils has had little or no improvements/changes made since then! Until now, of course. Nigel even mentions that the BMC engine was "a bit noisy"! Right on, Nige!


He mentions that they hired the boat from Gayton Marina, which makes sense with the Alvechurch connection, but I've always wondered where White Stork was berthed before she went feral...

It's strange that Nigel mentions the clock/barometer combo device in his 'diary extracts', the very one that ended its existence yesterday!

In other news, it's noticeably warmer these days. In a boat which is necessarily so well ventilated for safety reasons, you become very aware of the ambient temperature at all times... Yesterday marked the first day I wore a t-shirt from morning to night! Epic times.

And now, a few photos from the recent tree planting with the BCS:













The lock is Hyde Lane Lock, near Deanshanger, between Buckingham and Milton Keynes, which is in the process of being lovingly restored by the BCS. There are only two locks on the Buckingham Arm, which is probably a blessing from a financial point of view!