As Andrew’s just noted, this is the blog’s third year at Shugborough, so I’m going to assume you’ve either done your assigned preparatory reading on the 2016 and 2017 prequels, or have decided it wouldn’t leave you any the wiser. But for Margaret & me it’s our first visit, and we get two days and nights here before we chug on to Stone tomorrow where we jump ship. We arrived shortly after midday yesterday, which was the last day of…
The canals system has many memories of the days when canals were used for commerce rather than pleasure. This crane is one of them. There were no electric motors to make lifting easier in those days. If you wanted to get something heavy off the boat and onto the wharf you had to crank it off by hand. We stopped at a chandlery today, in a huge marina. It was a little walk from the towpath, through some parkland, with…
The Leicester Line of the Grand Union Canal has been spending more time mingling with the River Soar since Leicester. Rivers are different to navigate. They meander, so it which slows things down, and makes steering more difficult. The land on both sides is owned by people who don’t want you to moor there. The water is cleaner, but there are currents and weirs to watch out for. They are prone to flooding, so there are fewer houses and villages…
This morning we were woken again in the small hours by the low battery alarm going off. It was a little later I found the reason. This was a bracket that held the alternator in place. When that broke the alternator moved and the belt that drives it shredded, so the batteries did not charge properly. Luckily we already had an electrician booked to work on the boat today. I called Alex up to let him know, and he was…
If you’ve seen the movie The Imitation Game, please be aware that it is a work of fantasy, and that the truth was much stranger and more wonderful. Alan Turing was not the only genius working at Bletchley, the Bombe was not the only, or even the best code breaking machine, and the Enigma code was not the most difficult code that was broken there. Benedict Cumberbatch is still cool, though. It’s a three minute train ride from Fenny Stratford…