Rat, rain and radio conversion to 12V

This is obviously a good year for buttercups. This was on the North Oxford Canal at Ansty this morning.

The buttercups make it easy to see the ridges and furrows typical of mediaeval farming practice.

We found a less bucolic scene when we stopped at Nuneaton for lunch (appropriately - Nuneaton ... geddit?) This brown rat was brazenly walking along the towpath.

In the town I obtained supplies at Lidl while Jan had a haircut. We set off again at about 1700, still in very warm conditions, although the sky was clouding over.

And then the rain came.

This was the view from the front doors after the rain had eased off a little. When it started we were just approaching a bridge; I stopped under the cover and held the boat while it poured. But then the inevitable happened. Another boat came into view behind us. So we had to move on, knowing that the other boat would use "our" shelter!

I was hoping for piling for a quick tie-up, but there wasn't any. I had just decided to pull up to a nice wooden edge in front of a moored boat when the downpour suddenly intensified. Rain was running off my coat and soaking my shorts; I stopped the boat near the side and hid inside the back doors, checking now and again for moving boats. Jan did the same at the front. Conveniently the boat snuggled up against the (correct) bank enabling me to dash out during a lighter phase of rain to bang a couple of pins in and tie up properly. No boat had passed, of course; it really had been lashing down.

And the calm after the storm. This is again taken through the front doors and, if you know where the old telegraph pole is, shows exactly where we are.

"Mount Judd" is next to us, hidden by the trees. We went for a walk after tea (the planned barbecue having been abandoned) and encountered the weird landscape of the old granite quarry with its roads between vast heaps of rocky spoil. We got a closer view of the enormous spoil heap which is Mount Judd, too.

Back on Jubilee, here's something I wired up a couple of days ago. Now we have the 12V fridge we don't need to run the inverter all the time. The DAB radio was relying on its mains power supply, so now I had to be able to run it from 12V.  I had already got a couple of DC - DC converters from eBay; I simply soldered wires to the battery terminals inside the case and connected it up. The voltage is adjusted with the blue trim pot; I set it to 6V and it all works perfectly.

Yes, it would have been neater to connect the PSU output via a plug into the back of the radio, but I didn't have one the right size. We don't move the radio, so this should be fine for now.