Plus ca change

Not much chance for boating at the moment with another lot of frosty weather on the way before the ice from the last one has properly thawed.  Chatting with a friend about his holiday plans for northern France next summer led me to go back to my old photo albums to refresh my memory about a trip to Brittany 20 years ago.  It must be years since I've looked at those photos.  Digital makes it so much easier, and these days I use the picasa web album site as an online backup and to give access from anywhere, with 20GB of storage for the princely sum of $5.75, (the annual bill has just arrived).  It's very handy, as picasa indexes images on your hard drive, and if you wish automatically copies changes to the web.

Well, one album full of memories leads to another and before I knew it I was looking at pictures from a trip to New Zealand ten years ago, and wondering whether I shouldn't scan a few of the pictures in case I ever lost the prints.  The one below caught my eye, and for some reason it reminded me rather strongly of Radford Lock.  Who would have thought that boating and canyoning could feel so similar...

Winter's REALLY here

 

You can be sure the season has properly turned when the snow reaches all the way down to the tide line.  Down here on the coast the major roads are open, but the minor ones and residential streets are decidedly slippery.  So a short walk into town to buy a couple of essentials, and then home through the park in the gathering dusk.

 

Winter is here

With the best will in the world, noone can even pretend that it is still Autumn and not winter.  There are scarcely any leaves still floating in the water to foul the propeller, and the wind is bitterly cold.  Still, not too cold for a quick trip out to Braunston for an overnight visit.  Work carries on though in the boat yards, and looks all the more spectacular in the afternoon gloom.

Blue Lias and back

 A day out with friends - looks like painting the handrail on the other side will have to wait until next spring though.

Before and after

Over the weekend we caught up on fixing some damaged paintwork.  Normally we do it as we cruise, but we were doing long days on the Thames Ring and didn't feel like it, and then it rained for lots of trip to Stratford, so we couldn't.  The first picture shows the undercoat I put on last Autumn.

Somehow once we got fresh dings in the new undercoat before having a chance to put new gloss on last Autumn I sort of lost interest.  It looks a lot better now, and if you look closely you can see the first of the horseflies that thought it was so attractive that they would land for a closer look, and get stuck.


No cruising, but at least there were some fantastic views to be had on the evening before and the morning after the first frost of the winter.

Home again

We went up the Stockton flight in heavy rain and wind, and decided to go on past the marina for dinner at the Bridge.  This turned out to be a questionable decision, as the heavy rain turned torrential, and the visitor moorings were full.  Along with half a dozen other boats we fought our way to the bank across the shallows, and tied up against what felt like a bank made of cream cheese after eventually finding some firm enough spots for pins.  It was early so I set off to walk the dog down to the Folly to see if it was open, but gave up after the rain running down my legs filled my (waterproof) shoes.  A good meal at the Bridge, with the experience marred only by the state of the towpath that you wouldn't normally expect until later in the winter.  Back to the marina in the morning.