Using the macro setting on my camera

Before I get onto that, here's one for Nev. Alice B tied up in front of us at All Oaks Wood a few days ago and looks like a very nice boat indeed. The names on the cabin are those of R A and G A Redshaw, who were the previous owners of Nev's boat Percy. Here they are just setting off towards Hillmorton.

Today we got the diesel and gas at Fazeley Mill Marina, winded at Fazeley Junction and moored up.

During the initial, strict, phase of lockdown I discovered how to take big close-ups with my camera. These next two photos are of dandelions on one of our lockdown walks near our home in Norfolk.

And this this bee was on a balance beam at Atherstone Bottom Lock.

One of the most photographed bridges?

When the rain - and the threat of rain - passed I put a second coat of paint on the well deck. The pits are still there but are smoothing out as they fill with paint. I had thought of smearing filler over before painting, but reasoned that it would crack up as the deck flexes when walked on.

I took only one photo today, that of us et al at the Indian restaurant. Before showing that here's one from yesterday as we approached Drayton Footbridge.

I guess most boaters who have travelled along the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal will have at least one photo of this unusual bridge.

Several historic boats passed us on their way to Birmingham. Some, if not all, will have been at the gathering at Huddlesford Junction last weekend. This is Whitby having just passed the entrance to Fazeley Mill Marina.

And so to the meal out tonight. Nine boats have now congregated in Fazeley for the BCF event this weekend; fourteen of us enjoyed a meal at Kudos Indian Restaurant. I realise I have omitted Gwyneth from the photo, sorry Gwyneth.

Stephen, Hazel, James, Elizabeth, Richard, Sally, Chris, Chris, Gill, John, Tony, Jan

Low level on the Lee

We had a look round Hertford this morning - and wished that our schedule could have allowed for more time in this attractive town. As it is, we set off at about 1100 and stopped at Ware to have a quick look there too.

As the first visitor mooring - room for one narrowboat immediately beyond the trip boat - was occupied by kayaks we tied up to the bollards just before the Town Bridge. This gave me an opportunity to photograph the so-called gazebos, the curious riverside summerhouses at the ends of gardens.

I took the photo from the boat, but I couldn't actually see what was on the screen when I pressed the shutter. I had to hold the camera low so as to avoid foliage getting in the way. I'm quite pleased with the result - yes, I know, it's better than most of the ones I try to compose.
At Feildes Weir we turned left onto the River Stort Navigation. There is no sign at the junction, but the wide expanse of water is a bit of a clue. The turn is much more obvious when approaching from the south.

Between Ware and Stanstead Abbots one pound was rather low, causing some moored boats to list.

It must have been getting on for a foot lower than normal.

As we approached the first lock on the Stort the gates opened and an enormous-looking Dutch boat (a tjalk?) emerged.

What a splendid boat.

We tied up just above Hunsdon Lock - on piling! There's not much Armco-style piling on the Lee; perhaps there's a bit more on the Stort. We thought it was going to be a quiet spot, far enough from the railway line and the A414, but every train that passes gives four long blasts of its horn, each separated by a few seconds. Looking at the map I see that there are several places where footpaths cross the line on the level. The hooting must be for each of these. Hmm. I wonder when the trains will start running in the morning.

Oh, back to Hertford … one of the squares had been decorated - if that's the right term - by a mass of knitting. Yarn bombing, I understand it's called. Apparently it raises money for charity, but I find it difficult to see how.

All very clever, but what's the point of knitting covers for bollards when, presumably, jumpers, hats or tea cosies could have been created? You know, some products with a practical use. Or am I missing something?

Now to see if I can get some sleep between trains ...

Spot the kingfisher

Is this the worst photo of a kingfisher ever taken? I think it's the worst I have taken, anyway. Can you see it? Here's a clue: it's in flight.

A butterfly - a red admiral, I think - landed on the boat the other day. I was hoping to photograph it with its wings outstretched but it didn't play ball.

The lure of all that lovely canal juice proved too much for another group of cattle today. We left Banbury and are now just above Cropredy Lock, in the same spot as on the way down.

Crocodile spotted in Grand Union Canal

Jan was steering the boat along the short pound leading to Stoke Bruerne Top Lock. She looked round to see me closing the top gate of the previous lock ... and saw that she was being chased by a creature in the water.

As I came up I saw it swim away. I thought it might have been a dog, but then it came towards me.

Yup. A crocodile. But who was that sitting on the opposite bank? And what was he holding?

Could he be connected in some way to the scaly swimmer?

Ah yes. By remote control. The radio controlled reptile was causing heads to turn, but the only snapping was from cameras by amused onlookers.

Back in the real world ... we navigated from Old Wolverton to Weedon Bec via Gayton Marina for a top-up of diesel. At Cosgrove we passed under the ornate Solomon's Bridge.

Tomorrow we should make it to Crick, where we shall be for the boat show this weekend.

Standing on one leg on the edge of an aqueduct

No, not me. I'll come to that in a bit.

First, the three-legged footbridge at the new Campbell Wharf Marina in Milton Keynes will make for some good photos. Here's my attempt, as we passed on our way from Peartree Bridge to Galleon Wharf today.

Shame it's not level.

A couple of days ago, while we were moored at Peartree Bridge, the resident heron was nonchalantly dealing with a fish it had just caught. I got my camera out as quickly as I could and fired off a safety shot before attempting to zoom. This is the result. The camera had switched on at its widest angle, hence the poor quality after my cropping.

By the time I'd sorted out the zoom it had swallowed the fish.

Another example of 'getting one in the can' before fiddling around, and hence possibly missing the shot altogether, was this photo of a duck standing on one foot on the offside of the Iron Trunk Aqueduct at Cosgrove.

And after cropping:

Again, by the time I'd zoomed in, the moment had gone. The bird had flown.

Today we had the pleasure of Ally and Ben and our two grandsons on board; tomorrow we will continue our journey to Crick for the boat show.

Camera SD card issues

The other day I mentioned that I was sure I took a better photo of the Wissington plant than the ones I published. Well, I've found it.

All right, it's not that spectacular. But the point is, I found it lurking in the camera's built-in memory and not on the SD card. I wonder if the card is getting a bit flaky. On a couple of occasions recently the camera has told me there was an error writing to the card, so I reinserted it and it was fine. I reseated the micro-SD card within the adapter as well. All the contacts look fine - can the card "wear out"? Should I get a new one?

It's been too long!

I somehow got out of the habit of regular blog posts, which I shall try to rectify. On the boat we had run low of data which meant that I couldn't upload photos, then we were very busy at the Birmingham house. When I wrote last we were on the Stratford Canal at Yardley Wood. From there we went to the Black Country Boating Festival, then back to Yardley Wood, then to Fazeley for a BCF event. Jubilee is still there, on a friend's end-of-garden mooring. We are now at home in Norfolk.

I shall try to revisit the last couple of weeks of the summer's boating, with photographs, over the course of the next few days.

Meanwhile here are some photos of the strange sky we had on Monday. The light had exactly the quality of the light either side of a total solar eclipse (which we witnessed in France in 1999). I don't think it fooled the birds, though.

orange sky at 1752

the sun at 1522

eerie daylight at 1719

For a really good shot of a red sun see Erin Mae's blog.

"Just normal stuff for hire boats"

It was all so quiet on the Grand Union. Then, this morning, we joined the Stratford Canal at Kingswood Junction and, suddenly, there were hire boats everywhere. Mostly going in our direction and mostly in front of us. The first few locks of the Lapworth flight had queues, but it all sorted itself out eventually.

At what is probably the trickiest pound for passing in, between locks 9 and 8, we had to pass a long hire boat coming down.

The hire boat did the right thing by going into the 'dead' area to the right of the lock so we could squeeze past hugging the bank, then, once we were clear, it reversed and headed into the lock.

We tied up at Hockley Heath, and I cycled back to Warwick to get the car. Had I cycled on the towpath it would have been downhill all the way, but I chose to use the B-road. This avoided villages, by and large, and was rather hillier than I was expecting. Still, I got to the car and brought it back OK.

As Jan steered under Bridge 25 I took a few photos, this being the best of them. The strong contrast between the sunlight and the shade of the bridge made getting the balance between under- and overexposing tricky.

We ate at the Wharf Inn - two meals for £10.49 was good value. (Jan had the beef and ale pie; I went for the hunter's chicken. We gave each other half of our meals - Jan's pie was very good.)

Our last meeting with the Waiourus? And a good Sunday lunch in Stoke Bruerne

On Sunday we arranged to meet up with Tom and Jan of Waiouru at the Navigation pub in Stoke Bruerne for lunch. We left Jubilee at Gayton Junction and drove to the pub. There was no space in the car park so we parked on the road.

The place was heaving but our orders for lunch were placed reasonably quickly. Tom, I'm very grateful to you for helping me transfer - wirelessly - photos from my camera to Jan's mobile phone so that I could e-mail them to the BBC.

Our chatting while we waited for food helped to pass the time; when the roast meals arrived they were very good. My ordered chicken had mysteriously turned into beef, but I was so hungry I would have eaten anything. And the beef was very tasty, with plenty of nice vegetables - including RED CABBAGE! (one of my favourites).

Two Jans, Tom and Halfie

Tom told us a little about their plans for when they return to the other side of the world, so it wasn't a huge surprise when we read his post about Waiouru being for sale. Still, it will be a sad day when the deed is done and our waterways lose a lovely couple of people. I will especially miss your posts about technical matters, Tom.

We wish you both all the very best for your future travels.

Rainbows over Thrupp Wharf Marina

We're back on the boat again - hooray! Although we won't be spending a huge amount of time actually on board, as we're driving up the M1 tomorrow ready for the AGM of the Boaters' Christian Fellowship on Saturday; then it's back to MK for Josiah's dedication service on Sunday and another trip up the M1 on Monday to visit Andrew and Becky.

The boat has suffered a little from the ingress of rainwater, especially on the floor by the front doors. I'm not sure where this water is coming from; it could be round the doors or through the ventilation grilles at the bottom of the doors. Some water is also still leaking past a window frame, despite the application of Capt. Tolley's Creeping Crack Cure. The rest of the boat was fine, I'm glad to say!

The combination of sunshine and rain led to a fine double rainbow over the marina; the outer rainbow not visible in my photos. And, by the time I got outside, much of this rainbow had disappeared.

My compact camera goes pretty wide, but not quite wide enough for an entire rainbow.

Lovely Lapworth Locks

We set off from Hockley Heath just after half past nine this morning having seen no sign of life on Waiouru. As we slipped past a figure hiding behind a camera lens appeared in the side hatch.

A few seconds later the camera vanished and we could see Jan and Tom to wish them "bon voyage".

We continued to the Lapworth flight in glorious T-shirt weather - warm and sunny. (I thought the forecast was for torrential downpours.)

Some of the locks are so close together that to pass boats coming the other way a side shuffle has to be performed by one or both of the boats. Here the oncoming boat moved over giving Jan a clear run into the next lock.

We paused at the services at Kingswood Junction, then tied up on the short link canal for lunch. Our original schedule had us stopping at Rowington on the GU, but we carried on to a little way above the Hatton locks ready for that delight in the morning.

Kingfisher on a boat, but which?

Travelling to Rugeley yesterday I spotted a kingfisher repeatedly flying in front and then landing. The last time I saw it it was perched on a boat.

I can't quite make out the name of the boat. It was just south east of Taft Bridge 69 on the Trent and Mersey. From another photo I took I can see an RN badge so, presumably, it has a Russell Newbery engine.

Just before it landed on the boat I had seen it on the box from which eggs are sold under the bridge.

If I hadn't been steering at the time I might have got a steadier shot!

We left the boat on a 48 hour mooring at Rugeley and went by train to visit Ally and Ben, staying overnight. I helped Ben with boarding the loft today. Now we're back on board.

Worsley and a rush to get past Poolstock Top Lock closure

A day of some waterways wonders as we crossed the Barton Swing Aqueduct and stopped in Worsley.

This photo of the Packet House I took with my new camera. I'm still very much in the learning-how-to-use-it stage.

We moved on to Astley Green; now we might move some more tonight in order to try to beat the stoppage at Poolstock just before Wigan, having just read my stoppage alerts. Shame - I was hoping to look at the Astley Pit Museum.

Camera conundrum; slow boat to Fradley

One of the reasons we spent a long time at the Ventura retail park on the outskirts of Tamworth on Tuesday was that we found a John Lewis with a camera department. I have been wanting to replace my old compact camera for a few years now; this was an opportunity actually to do it. The old camera, on which I have taken the vast majority of the photos on this blog to date, is a Fujifilm F50fd. Over the first days of ownership I managed to master many of its functions, and have been really pleased with what it can do. I missed the manual focus and the control over depth of field of my previous camera, an Olympus OM10 SLR, but the compact was so easy to carry around that I did. And, of course, being digital, I took many, many more photos.

my Fujifilm F50fd, bought January 2008, taking a picture of itself in a mirror

But the Fujifilm camera has problems. A few years ago it got a piece of dirt inside the lens system, the effect of which is to cause a slightly blurred area on the right of the picture, most noticeable on wide angle shots. To counter this I usually zoom in slightly, but the right side of the picture is still worse than the left. On "manual" it affects the light metering, often causing massive overexposure.

So, you are asking, how can I put up with it? The answer is that I know it so well that I can take a half-decent photo (all right, tenth-decent) within two or three seconds of the photo-op presenting itself. I have been reluctant to replace it because I know that it will take time and effort with, no doubt, a fair amount of frustration, to get to know a new camera.

At John Lewis, then, I bought a new camera. Call it delayed gratification or apprehensiveness, but - two days since I bought the thing - I haven't got it out of its box yet. I'm now even wondering whether I should have bought the next model up, or a cheaper compact more like my old Fujifilm.

What did I buy? I thought you'd ask that. It was ... (drum roll) ... a Panasonic TZ60.

Martin of Erin Mae has just bought - and likes - a Panasonic TZ70, which is this year's model with certain improvements but without other features. The TZ60 was about £30 less than the TZ70 but has GPS tagging of photos. The TZ60's eyepiece is not quite so high resolution as the TZ70's and it is about 18 megapixel compared with the TZ70's 12 M pixel.

Writing all this down has helped me realise that the TZ70 might be better for me. I don't need GPS, especially as it drains the battery. I don't need more than 12 Mp. If I am to use the eyepiece viewfinder the higher resolution of the TZ70 would be better. Or should I revert to a simpler, cheaper compact camera?

What I do need to find out is whether either the TZ60 or the TZ70 does a 10 second self-timed photo. I'll ask Martin.

Meanwhile ... the camera stays in its box!

Back to boating news.

Today we moved from outside King's Orchard Marina to The Taft, just past Bridge 69 on the T&M. The cruise was notable for being stuck behind an extremely slow Canaltime Hire-a-Canalboat all the way to Fradley.

I had untied but waited for him to pass before pulling out. Mistake. He never went above tickover. Soon we had collected another four boats behind us.

Six boats in a line made it interesting for boats coming towards us. Fortunately this motor and butty didn't meet us in a bridge hole.

The steerer never looked behind him, but his wife knew we were all following. Eventually Jan was able to ask if he would mind letting us pass, so he pulled over and we were able to overtake. Rather than letting everyone else past too he immediately found some throttle he didn't know he had and stuck to our tail! Perhaps he needed a pathfinder to boost his confidence. He was on day four and said it was "getting better". I hate to think what they were like on day one!

We chatted to the man from the boat which had been behind us when we stopped at Rugeley; they were Linda and Alan on Lindalan (naturally).

We tied up at The Taft, home of BCF friends Peter and Julie. They came aboard for a meal with us; here is the photo.

It was good to see you - we'll see you again at the barbecue in September.

Two old Rollers in one day? Oh, and two kingfishers.

Yes, I know this is supposed to be a canal blog, but we saw two ancient cars today. One was in Gnosall, where we'd gone for a walk before lunch; the other was canalside in the Shebdon area.

Here's the Gnosall one, just after filling up at the Texaco garage.

Despite the lack of Pegasus the Spirit of Ecstasy (thanks KevinTOO) on the radiator filler cap I believe it's a Rolls Royce as there was an RR symbol was above the grille.

To start the car the driver (chauffeur?) fetched his starting handle and gave the engine the merest hint of a turn before getting back into the car. I don't know how he knew it had started; true to reputation it didn't make a sound.

We stopped at Norbury Junction to have a look round. Some of the boats in the wharf had intriguing markings on their hulls.

I have no idea what they are for. Anyone?

Everyone seems to take a photo of High Bridge with its old telegraph pole on a brick strut, so I'm not going to show you mine. Instead, here is the next bridge, Double Culvert Bridge. This carries a stream as well as a footpath.

I got Jan to drop me off in the bridge hole so I could nip up and take a look.

The stream was dry and overgrown where I could see it before it disappears under concrete covers as it crosses the bridge.

I saw two kingfishers today - the first since leaving Milton Keynes a month ago. One was the usual brilliant flash of electric blue streaking ahead of the boat before disappearing into the bushes.

Jan spotted the other. It was perching on a branch as we went by, just a few feet away. Amazingly it didn't fly off. I fumbled to get my camera out of its case; by the time I could take a photo it was becoming partially hidden.

Still, it's the best shot I've managed to get. Actually, I think it's the only shot.

And the other Roller? This was, incongruously, next to a fairly unkempt mooring among trees on the offside. This one does appear to have Pegasus the Sprit of Ecstasy flying from the filler cap.

Kingfishers and Rolls Royces are evidently not like buses. I'm still waiting for the third of each to come along.

This post was written and published using the free wi-fi of the Wharf Tavern, Goldstone. (Password provided at the bar - no "registering" needed.) Cost: a pint of Atlantic, which I enjoyed.