Two milestones today: the total mileage for this trip passed 500, and we went through our 300th lock. There was no Internet where we moored yesterday, so this is going to be a two day update. Yesterday, we moved the boat down to be near Napton-on-the-Hill. This was just a few miles, so we were moored up for the day by mid morning. I walked up the hill to Napton post office, which had a good line in home baked…
Paula is allergic to something in the English autumn. We think it may be barley. As befits a country with a great tradition of beer drinking, barley is grown pretty much everywhere, and Paula’s allergies started up for the first time as we set out this morning. She is loading up on allergy pills and hoping for the best. It was sunny and windy this morning. We moved the boat a few miles today, and moored up in a lovely…
The weather forecast today said it was going to be windy as f*ck this afternoon. Well it didn’t use those exact terms, it was a bit more meteorological, but you could see what they meant. Thus prompted, we got off to an early start and got our travel for the day out of the way by the time for elevenses. That’s actually a pretty good time to stop for the day if you want to moor somewhere popular, as that…
A few days ago I wrote: In case you are wondering how her husband reacted, the original chronicle says ad virum gaudens reversa This can either mean, “She returned to her happy man,” or, “She returned to her orgasm.” Those medieval chroniclers, such jolly chaps. Nick pointed out to me that gaudens is nominative, and therefore refers to Godiva and not her husband. Thus the translation should be, “She returned happily to her husband.” However Google translate is convinced that…
Just a quick post tonight, as the usual writing time was spent entertaining. We had Howard over to dinner. We were hoping his husband Gordi could make it as well, but he hurt his back and could not make it. Hope you’re feeing better soon, Gordi. Today I dragged Paula into downtown Rugby, which she was delighted to find had lots of thrift stores (UK: charity shops). We also visited the William Webb Ellis Rugby Museum. This is a museum…
Here we are back in Rugby, this time having approached from the north. This time I made it into the town center, by a route known as The Black Path. It sounds a bit like the black death, and you can imagine carts full or corpses being dragged along it but in fact it was just called that because it used to be surfaced with cinders. It connected the homes in Rugby with the British Thompson-Houston (BTH) factory site by…
In the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, the narrator remembers his childhood when tasting a madeleine cake dipped in tea. I get pulled back to my childhood by the sight of a wall topped with blue bricks. The house I grew up in had this sort of wall facing the street, and I hadn’t really noticed it was a regional thing until this trip. The blue bricks are made from Etruria Marl, a red clay found…
The original live/work lofts. These houses were built by John and Joseph Cash in 1857, to provide both housing and workspace for ribbon weavers. The first two floors were accommodation, and the top floor with the big windows was a “top shop” or weaving workshop. The ideas was that all the weavers could use a single steam engine for power, while working on their own looms. Though the idea of independent weavers sharing a power source did not work out…
This morning I went to the Coventry Transport Museum, while Paula plotted some decorative enhancements on Pegotty. First of all, it should be the Road Transport Museum, as all the vehicles there have wheels. But, if bicycles, motorcycles, tractors, and cars are your thing, then this is the place to be. Coventry has a long history of vehicle manufacturing, first with bicycles then with motor vehicles. Jaguar is still headquartered here (though now owned by an Indian company) but the…
Coventry is famous for two things and this is neither of them, but it’s my favorite thing in town. Here’s a close up of the important bit. Looky there! Punched cards. This is a Jacquard Loom (actually, a British knock off of a Jacquard Loom I think). A chain of punched cards pulled the control strings to weave intricate patterns. A new pattern could be programmed simply by changing the cards used. The punched card idea from these looms was…