Monday 13 February 2017

Chimney hard hat, the widening Thames

Well, I suppose it stops the rain getting in!

Spotted at Taverner's Boat Club, Castlethorpe.

In the local charity shop a couple of weeks ago I saw a jigsaw puzzle of the London Underground. I love the Underground so I had to buy it.

The lines were reasonably easy, not so the large areas of plain white.

While doing the puzzle with Jan I noticed something for the first time. The Thames gets wider as it traverses London towards the estuary - as it does in real life, of course.


Now it's time to put all 1000 pieces back in the box.

Saturday 11 February 2017

Stove fixed and a short boat trip

Just over a week ago the fitters came to fix our woodburner at home. The rear blanking plate had broken, so it was a case of "simply" refitting a new one.

I'm very glad we paid someone to do this as an angle grinder was needed to remove the old bolts, and the three holes in the new blanking plate needed drilling slightly wider to fit the new bolts.

The job took an hour. As soon as it was done we drove to Milton Keynes and lit the stove on the boat - the one at home would have to wait a few days. On the Saturday (a week ago today) we drove up to Birmingham to sort out a loo problem at a house we let; on Sunday we took the boat out of the marina.

We only went as far as Old Wolverton, all of one mile and one lock away. It took more than an hour as we stopped at the services to empty the loo, and there were all the moored boats of Cosgrove Marina to pass.

Our mooring opposite The Galleon was convenient for Jan's BCF committee meeting there on Monday. Later Ally and Josiah visited the boat. No danger of him hitting his head on the gunwale.

Josiah enjoyed watching the ducks with Mum from the side hatch.

The next day we returned to the marina and drove home. The boats on the left are on the Cosgrove Marina moorings; ahead is Cosgrove Lock.

Now we are at home I can report that the stove works better than it has done for a considerable time. It draws better and there are no fumes. Yes, I will get a CO detector. (We do have one on the boat.)

Nev on Percy prompted me to write this post, so here you are.