We started the day with a flight of five locks. Paula was working the paddles and gates, and I just had to get the boat in and out of the locks. Working lock gates is good exercise. If anyone wants to come and visit us we can promise them a workout plan as well as three meals a day and all the non-alcoholic shandy you care to drink. Talking of three meals a day, I fried up some black pudding…
The canal engineers of the 18th and early 19th Centuries were a determined lot, and they tunneled like obsessive compulsive hobbits. To create Blisworth tunnel they spent three years digging a tunnel through a hilltop by hand. The tunnel collapsed due to quicksand and killed fourteen men. They picked a different route, almost two miles long, for the tunnel and spent another eleven years digging that. That involved digging nineteen shafts straight down and then tunneling across from the bottoms…
My sailing instructor, Dennis, used to say that if you went out, and came back again, and didn’t hit anything, then you had won. Canal boating is a bit more of a contact sport, but you are not usually traveling fast enough to do any damage if you hit anything. Alex who manages this and other boats, did mention that in ten years he has had a couple of boats sink. So, I decided that if we managed not to…
It’s raining on and off today, so we are staying put for the day, unpacking, and settling in. Here’s the inside of our little floating home. Entering from the bow, we have the living room and galley. The living room has a wood burning stove, and a futon for visitors. There’s a fold up table for dining. The galley has a new propane stove and fridge. Aft of the galley is the head which is pretty cramped apart from a…
Reliable sources inform me that it is now Tuesday. I have had about six hours sleep since Sunday morning. Any random content the the following post is entirely due to jet lag and sleep deprivation, and not at all due to space aliens eating my brain. Probably. Until the musical Kinky Boots, Northampton’s main contribution to human culture was a catchy little song about aliens coming to Northampton to repair their flying saucer, commissioned by the Northampton Development Corporation. I’m…
Uneventful flight on Norwegian Airlines. We sprung for “Premium” seats and the extra room was marvelous. And they actually served real food. Dinner and breakfast. Currently in a Hampton Hotel near Gatwick. Took a walk yesterday through some horse pastures to the border of Surrey.
A unique tribute to conspicuous consumption, Hearst Castle sits like a gothic wedding cake on a hilltop on the southern California coast. Hearst Castle was a meal ticket for architect Julia Morgan for twenty-eight years, and the estate now includes the hotel sized big house and three guest cottages the size of mansions. Here’s one of the cottages. William Randolph Hearst was a collector with the artistic sensibilities of a rabid magpie. He collected coffins, ceilings, floors, tapestries, and fragments…
The town of Cambria on the California coast was the inspiration for “Pine Cove” in Christopher Moore’s books. It lurks on a hill overlooking a bay with a small lagoon where eldritch horrors quite probably gather when they want a seaside vacation. Though most of the inhabitants clearly eke out a precarious existence selling each other antiques and curios, there may be some farming. We did see one couple with a pig on a leash, though whether this was for…