Narnia Tunnel

I've been over a week in the Braunston area now - some days I was pottering around with various small boat related projects, some days I worked on the Navigator, some days I taught myself to make fire using a bowdrill (an ongoing project! I got smoke though! Not bad going...). On Tuesday and Wednesday Nick fitted the stove at Braunston Marina - last night was the first firing! It's stunning, I love it!



I woke up this morning to find the first frost on the boat - which I promptly assaulted with a couple of logs! The good folks on NB the Teal told me just how much wood I could expect to get through, and they weren't joking! I've gone through a good half of all the wood in the locker and a bag of logs that I took off my mum's hands has gone, bar one monster log who requires the axe. Or the chainsaw. Or the guillotine...

This morning I visited the village again for some supplies and met my brother Simon who had agreed to come up to cruise with me for a day! We conquered Braunston lock flight and the tunnel - clear blue skies when we went into the tunnel, and snow covering the ground when we came out! I thought we'd taken that well known diversion inside the tunnel and ended up in Narnia. I've taken to renaming most of the places that I come across on the cut for fun, for example Bridge 71A on the Grand Union at Wolverton is Pigeon Bridge (self-explanatory if you ever go under it!).

Narnia Tunnel passed reasonably quickly, then we moored up and got the stove on. I'm having issues with getting the heat down to the other end of the boat, despite the ecofan working perfectly. It doesn't seem to be doing a great deal, but then I haven't run the stove without it on yet. The real heat seems to be very much isolated around the stove, which I can understand, but I've heard too many people tell me that ecofans are the single greatest thing ever invented to assume it's anything other than a case of needing to work out the best way of operating it all.People have told me how good the ecofan is for heating the lower levels of the boat but my feet are cold.

We have heat! Temperature outside is -2c apparently... Temperature inside is acceptable. Except on the floor! Now the race is on to get as near as possible to Milton Keynes in about 3 days... If everyone would like to kindly form ranks and fall on Buckby Lock Flight tomorrow armed with windlasses and real ale, we'll have a ball!