All went well with my new paddingtonOmeter and regentscanalOmeter as we cruised down to Limehouse on Friday and Saturday. The calculations worked out pretty well and we arrived in good time each day.
However Monday was different. A new and hitherto unforeseen element came in to play and Herbie was forced to negotiate the narrow Slough Arm in near darkness.
It all started when we stopped off at the Black Horse at Greenford for a scheduled break. We arrived spot on schedule, leaving time for a quick pint and a snack. That's when the ESB factor hit us. Phil and I both agreed it was the best pint of Fullers ESB that we had tasted in a very long time, and over a packet of crisps it was decided that we really ought to have another, and maybe we could make up time later.
Sadly the ESB clouded our judgement, so that half an hour after resuming our journey we decided to stop off in the park at Yeading to eat our Toulouse sausage baguettes rather than eat them on the move. Now nearly an hour late we set off for home in the gathering gloom. We thought it would be light until 5.30, but along the Slough arm it is very shaded and I was steering by a faint reflective glimmer on the water surface all the way down. By the time we arrived back at that time we had the tunnel light on. Miraculously we moored up against Lady Elgar without so much as nudging her.
One solution to this would be to avoid drinking nice beer at lunchtime, but as designer of the CanalOmeter I think it would be better to put a warning notice on the device and advice on adjusting factors in the case of beer of a particularly strong and delicious nature.
HERBIE! Journeys on our narrowboat and the trials and tribulations of maintaining her.
1 comment:
solution; add an extra 'correction factor' disk to the middle, that is calibrated in pints; you then rotate it by the number of pints you've had to calculate how much longer it'll take, or possible rotate it back to reduce the distance you've cover... ;-)
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