Nature notes

 Well, we're told that Claydon bottom lock is now working. I think they've even fixed the top paddle.  We're not ready quite yet to get back on Herbie because of home commitments but it won't be long, although they say another heatwave might be on the way.  I'm never going to get the rest of the roof painted at this rate.  Meanwhile, it's now cool enough to potter about outdoors to see how all the wild critters and plants have been faring, so I thought I'd write about that for a change.  These photos were taken today.

This morning we took a stroll (with ship's cat Gertie) over in the old graveyard behind our house. The half of it just beyond our back hedge is now preserved as a wildlife area and we love it. We just walk through a gap in our hedge and there we are.

Now's the peak time for my favourite butterflies.  One I like to see is the marbled white. I didn't see any in the last couple of years, but today there were lots of 'em in the churchyard.  Perhaps they like heatwaves.

Like this one, they seem to like feeding on the knapweed, and there's a lot of that over there.

Another welcome returner is the Small Skipper. These are dead cute with the strange way it holds its double wings and they're very small. This one hasn't been reading the right books because it's supposed to be feeding on Yorkshire Fog.

You might not know that Yorkshire Fog is not a weather phenomenon but a fairly common type of grass. I confess that I didn't know that either until  a couple of years ago. Long grass is not exactly in short supply in our churchyard, neither are wild and not so wild flowers. Almost at every step you disturb little clouds of insects. The birds must have no trouble getting enough to eat, although I'm not sure if they are quick enough to catch the grasshoppers. I certainly failed to get a photo of one although there were loads of them.

While I was chasing a marbled white (the little b***ers won't stay still to pose for a picture), I stumbled across this Ringlet.

 He wouldn't sit still either so he's a bit blurred.  Actually I suppose he might be a she. How do you sex a butterfly?

Meanwhile, back in our (somewhat dessicated) garden we are walking through sawdust.

It's everywhere. The floor is covered in it. You have to brush off the seats before you can sit and the spider webs in the hedge are clogged with it. It gets in your hair too if you stay still for a couple of minutes. 

Of course it's not really sawdust but the flowers from the huge lime tree that overhangs us. It's a love hate relationship with that tree.  There isn't a week in the year when it isn't dropping stuff on us -flowers, sticky goo, seeds, leaves and all winter, daily deposits of dead twigs and branches . It also blots out most of the sky, which is in itself is a mixed blessing because at least it offers us shade in hot weather.

See those dead branches? I hope I'm not underneath when they drop off.  Lets have a closer look at those flowers

Still plenty of them to come down.  BUT we can't complain because for the last week they've bathed us in the most incredible fragrance.  It's absolutely gorgeous and it's really powerful.

We keep a buddelia in the garden especially for the butterflies, but to be frank, the butterflies don't seem to like it much. At the moment it's feeding the bumble bees.

I'm a really rubbish gardener.  I recently bought a little bay tree in a pot and it fell over behind the wall and I forgot about it in the hot dry weather and I think it might be dead.  Conversely I seem to have killed yet another thyme plant, and I think it might be because I over watered it. Doh!

Anyway that's it for now. We  hope to actually go out on the canal this summer. See you then.

Toodle pip.

Herbie takes a short cruise.

 Someone once said to me ( or did I say it to someone?) Don't make plans then nothing can spoil them.

Well we had a sort of half plan for our current spell on Herbie and half of it has gone wrong, so that's about right.  The idea was to stay in the marina for a few days to let Gertie the cat acclimatise, maybe do a bit more painting and then to poottle up the hill to our favourite mooring spot below Claydon locks.  Well I got some painting done. Now the port side handrail is a nice shiny red to match the starboard side.

Before:

After:

Claydon bottom lock is still not properly fixed and only open for four hours a day, so we decided not to try going up there.  Quite a number of hire boats were stuck up there and the hire companies took the holiday makers off the boats if they wanted it.  I heard that some had provided hotel accommodation whilst others hasd spare boats so the punters could cruise off in another direction. A Black Prince hire boat, now empty was brought into our marina at Cropredy and this morning (Sunday) some of the marina staff moved it up to above Claydon for the Black Prince guys to collect.

I'm not sure any hirers will be all that happy in the coming week with three or four days forecasted to get to 37 degrees.  The news channels say that's not good at all for the elderly.  I looked up the definition of 'elderly' to find that I have already been elderly for 14 years!  So we're going home for a bit until it cools down.  Our house is relatively cool thank goodness and I don't think Gertie likes this heat much. We'll be off this evening crying 'Abandon Ship!!'

I got into trouble yesterday.  The gas ran out when Kath was making a cuppa, and when I went to change the gas bottle I found that the spare was empty too. Naughty me for not replacing that one when it ran out.

Anyway that gave us an excuse to go cruising this morning, all the way to the other end of our basin to get two new gas bottles (£109!).  Out in the middle of the marina basin, which is a lot wider than most, there was a lovely cool breeze. I don't suppose the marina staff would have been supportive of the idea of lettng us drop anchor out there for a few days. I thought it best not to ask.

In a previous post I mentioned the beautiful skies we seem to get hereabouts. Here are a couple of pictures from the last two nights.

Stay cool folks. We'll come back when  the temperature is more reasonable.

A novel way to damage a canal lock

 While we wait for CRT to fix the lock gate at Claydon (see previous post). Here's a little tale the CRT man told me about the stoppage at Grants Lock below Banbury last week.

Boaters will know what a bottom gate paddle looks like. They can skip the rest of this paragraph if I'm teaching them to suck eggs.  Here'a very rough sketch I just knocked up.

When you turn the windlass it rotates a cog against a toothed rack which then lifts or raises. The rack is at the upper and of a long rod (usually square section for some reason) and the bottom end of the rod is attached to the actual paddle wich is a large rectangular plate covering a hole in the lock gate. Raising the paddle lets the water in the lock escape, so emptying the lock.

Boaters will also know that when you are ascending a narrow lock, the strong currents produced by the water rushing in can really shove the boat back and forth strongly.  Two techniques can overcome this. One is to position the boat hard against the top gate and have the engine running in gear. The other is to keep the rear of the boat a yard or so ( or a metre if you prefer) from the bottom gate and using the engine, keep the boat in position by driving it against the current, forward and back, as it pushes and pulls. 

Well at Grants lock, some clever boater had another idea. He looped his stern rope around that long paddle rod, like you might on the riser rods in big river locks. I'm guessing he might have also had his engine in gear pushing forwards. Well those rods and paddles are designed to go up and down only and so when the boat lurched forward the paddle didn't resist much and gave way ,thus emptying the lock faster than it filled. Doh!

So lots of boaters had to patiently wait for CRT to come and fix the paddle. Best part of a day's cruising lost I suppose. I do feel sorry for those poor folks on a week's boat hire when something like that happens.

While writing this we got a notification from CRT that they are offering assisted passage through the broken lock gate at Claydon (see previous post), so it looks like it's not fully fixed but they need to clear the backlog of queueing boats. So I guess we might at last take Herbie up the hill today. Gonna be scorchio!

Nearly out on the canal

 

Spot the fifth man!  Oh there he is lying under the balance beam vainly attempting to fix the bolt that holds the lock gate in place. I can tell you he was puffing and grunting quite a lot. "Need more washers" shouted the man.  "We haven't got any" came the reply. Anybody that thinks these guys have an easy life should come and have a go.  Up here, some way from the road, these's no heavy machinery to help or no spare parts store handy.

This is Claydon bottom lock on the South Oxford and it is the reason why Herbie isn't out on the canal today.  Apparently the old fixing bolt had sheared off for no apparent reason except perhaps old age.  When I spoke to the CRT guys they thought they'd have it fixed by the end of the day yesterday but there was nothing about it in the batch of CRT updates we got this morning.  Never mind, it gives me a chance to get a bit more painting done. I'm now nearing the finale of the restoration of the port side handrail. Just the red top coat(s) to go. That'll be five coats of paint in all. Two anti rust primers, one lovely Craftmaster undercoat (how do they get their paints to flow so well?) and two red top coats in Hempel paint. The Hempel is ok, but not as lovely as the Craftmaster. However Hempel has the Bordeaux Red colour we want to match the other reds on the boat. This warm weather is good for filling the old rust pits with  Isopon providing you work fast, but when the sun is out the metal gets hot really quickly and you can't paint, so you have to be opportunistic and dash out there with the paint brush when the weather looks right.

Now then I should explain while we've been gone missing for so many weeks. Well the primaary reason was that we were at home looking after our son Richard who was convalescing from a double hernie operation.  He was told not to lift anything heavier than a kettle for six weeks and as he normally lives on his boat, that wasn't going to work.  Anyway he's recovered now so we're able to get away for a bit.

Apart from getting a bit of painting done, our plan was to go up the hill to our favourite spot below Claydon and indulge in a mixture of chilling and odd jobs.  So we don't want to go through that busted lock at all. However the queue of boats moored up there now  stretches back as far as where we want to tie up, so we're waiting until they can move away.  I worry for the possible hire boaters who have booked an expensive week aboard and then get stuck waiting for days.  If there are any above those locks, they have nowhere to turn round.

Meanwhile here in Cropredy marina is not a bad place for us to wait. Gertie the cat quite likes it and we have a pleasnt sopt to sit outside and watch the world go by.  People often go on about the amazing skies we get round here and they're no wrong. Here's the view from the other end of the marina yesterday.