Spot the difference – plus Vitriol poured on CRT

Some people seem to need a bit of help with my technical “What’s missing?” photo yesterday.  How about a before and after picture to help?  BTW they are both pictures of Herbie.

before                                                                    after

                

I know it’s tough to spot but something is there in the second picture that isn’t in the first.  Here’s another clue, it begins with E.

Nice to see that people are interested in Jim’s shiny shoes in my other photo yesterday.

Still no offers of captions.  As far as I recall he was trying to remember where he’d put the missing bit, (beginning with E).

I see that Steve Heywood has written a critical piece in Canal Boat about the CRT London plan to improve the towpaths.  I can’t say I’m surprised, a) because Steve makes his living by having a grumble and CRT are a soft target and b) because I suspect a lot of boaters share his views.  His vitriol is equally shared between speeding cyclists and CRT for aiding them.  You may draw your own conclusions.

Coming soon to a blog near you

Well the old calendar on the wall tells me that it’s nearly December, and you know what that means.  Yes, time to book your Tux hire at Moss Bros,or dust off the old tiara, because it wont be long till the 2016 Herbie Awards.  I’ve already been consulting the boss on suitable categories for this year.  Old favourites like Best Pub (of course), best moorings, best boating gadgets, this year’s scariest moment, and more, including the prestigious Herbie Award to someone deserving.  (Deserving what, I’m not sure.) 

I might fling in the odd old picture quiz to leaven the proceedings.  How about something like this for those with a razor sharp technical brain.  What is missing in this picture?

or maybe a caption quiz e.g. what is the man in this picture saying?

Stay tuned. The ceremony opens on December 1st.  Bring your own bottle.

Boater wrestles with Python as speeding debate rages amongst volunteers

Ok I’ll explain the attention grabbing headline later, but first a burning question. How fast is too fast? 

Following some recent criticism of excessive passing speed by wb Jena, the big CRT display boat I and others helm around the London area,  I wrote round to fellow volunteers, not all of whom are experienced boaters, reminding of our obligation to pass moored boats at a slow pace.  Now you have to bear in mind that Jena is not normally used for pleasure or leisure cruising.  Usually she has to be delivered somewhere by a certain time, and at this time of year, with it getting dark early, the schedule can be quite challenging. Add to that the proliferation of moored boats around London and you can begin to see the problem.One volunteer went as far as to say that because Jena was on a job and on a deadline, she had the right to keep a move on.

Well I don’t know about you but I can’t agree with that.  Passing another boat at such a speed that it may cause it to bang about, or pull out the mooring pins is to me unacceptable at any time, working or no.  “Well how fast is too fast?”, asks my frustrated friend.  Aah well, that all depends doesn’t it? If the canal is shallow or narrow, then it might be tick over.  If the canal is wide and deep then a couple of mph might be ok. My answer was to say that you have to watch the boats you are passing and you adjust your speed so that you don’t pull them about as you pass.  So I don’t always agree with the common signs telling you to pass at tick over as that is sometimes unnecessarily slow. Tickover on Herbie is barely a crawl. Any comments for me to pass on to my volunteer colleagues would be interesting and welcome.

Now then, what’s all this python business?  Well really it’s because I can’t resist an attention grabbing headline.  No I have not been wrestling snakes, but I have recently been teaching myself Python which is a popular computer language.  I confess that over the years I have done a fair bit of programming in other languages too, but one I’ve not used before and I quite like it. In this instance I’ve been using it to program the BBC Microbit, which must be the coolest little gadget I’ve seen in years.  I bought one for Grace to play with, which she does, but I liked it so much I bought another one for me.  If you have two of them they can talk to each other.

As you can see, it’s tiny, but don’t let that fool you. I’ve used it to make a compass, an infrared burglar alarm, a messaging pager, a voltmeter, a scrolling Christmas message display, a light meter, a stopwatch, a thermostatic fan speed controller, a spirit level, a thermometer, a pogo stick bounce counter, a mobile phone finder and a lot more I can’t recall right now. What I need to do now is to think of things to use it for aboard Herbie. I’m sure there are loads of applications.

You don’t have to learn Python to do this stuff. Most of it can be done with a really simple lego block type approach which is literally child’s play.  Yes, and I do mean literally. You can pickup a Microbit for about £13. School kids aged 12 are getting them for free. For most of the things I have listed above, you don’t need anything else at all, except a home computer to programme it from. You can even program it with a smartphone or tablet. If you are Christmas shopping for cheap presents for your friendly Nerd or Geek, look no further.  If anyone lese out there is playing with Microbits and inventing boating gadgets with it I love to hear from them.

A hundred years today

Forgive me for going off topic, but today is a special day for me.  One of the great pleasures of my life has been being a Grandpa, and as many of you know, I enjoy having a close relationship with the grandkids.  I guess this is especially important to me because I never met either of my grandfathers who both died long before their time.  One of my great regrets is that I never knew them.

A hundred years ago today, just as the great battle of the Somme had drawn to a conclusion, in a field hospital in France, my paternal grandad James Corbett “died of wounds” aged 33.  He lies buried, along with hundreds of his comrades in this neat military cemetery in a little place called Puchevillers.

The burial records just says this:

I suppose that when this photo was taken, they realised it might be the last one of them all. My dad (bottom right) would have been four years old at the time, so he wouldn’t have remembered much of him either.  My Granny, Sarah, is the only one of my grandparents who lived long enough for me to know.  Looking back over her own history, she went through some very hard times. I was a tad scared of her.  I remember as a child knocking on her door once and she squinted at me and said “Which one be you?”

I might not have known you Grandad, but I remember you today with a real tear in my eye.

RIP.

Neil is innocent!

I'm innocent despite Kath's cruel accusations. I did not pee all over the bathroom floor, something not easy to do on our airhead loo unless you fail to reinstall the pee bottle properly after emptying. Further investigations revealed the liquid to be water emanating from the main water pump and I was exonerated.

This last happened seven or eight years ago. The joint between the pump and the motor body loses its seal and the water drips out. Sometimes you can fix it by the application of some sealant round the join, which is what I have done in addition to retightening the fixing screws. At the moment I have left the pump in the warm by the stove while the sealant cures.


Meanwhile we're drinking and washing fro bottles and saucepans of water we drew off before disconnecting the pump. I once met a proper hill billy chap who lived in the Appalachian mountains where he got all his water from a well via an electric pump. I asked what he did if his generator failed and he said "We just have to drink whiskey." Interestingly the things that most amused him on his first visit to England were fields with (dry stone) walls round, and three wheeled cars!

The sealant may work and it may not. Thd pump pressure is quite high. If not, the next step is to split the two halves of the pump and smear some sealant on the joint faces. If that doesn't work it'll mean a new pump. I think they're in the region of £100 so I hope not.

Tomorrow we head back to Cropredy and then home. Once again it's been a good trip despite not really going very far. People ask if we're cold on the boat at this time if year. Blimey no, we're too warm sometimes. People who shut up their boat for the winter are missing out.

MAD NURD PLOT Gunfight at the OK Canal

Could this be a new way of CRT dealing with overstayers in Banbury? Well there were a lot of spare mooring places so I guess it might have worked. If Donald Trump ever takes over CRT he might well adopt it as policy. These guys might have been re-enacting some civil war event, but it certainly never happened on the Oxford canal which didn't open until 140 years after the civil war.

Speaking of Mr Trump, I spent a pleasant half hour yesterday working out anagrams of his name. The best I have come up with so far are, LARD DON'T JUMP, DUMP DARN LOT, DROP TAN M"LUD, and MAD NURD PLOT.  A disappointingly near miss was DROP MAD NUT L. Maybe you can come up with some better ones.

I do like Banbury, all those little streets interlinked by alleyways. Yesterday we found something to recommend (vegetarians look away now), in the little alley opposite the Reine Deer pub, the kind of butcher's shop you are always looking out for. Proper locally sourced meat and not at all expensive. You know it's a good'un when the queue of customers stretches out of the door and along the street.  Add that to the market stall where the man sells lovely lardy cake and that's enough reason to stop over in Banbury right there. Mm, perhaps not for healthy eaters though.

We moved off today in search of a TV signal to watch the grand prix. Telly reception down here is pretty bad. In the end we had to go all the way down to the Pig Place near Nell bridge where we knew there was a spot with a good signal. I hope after all that effort, the race will be worth it. As you'd expect with the stoppages and it being out of season,  the canal is very quiet. Lovely.

Schadenfreude

Well of course we are reeling from the shock of this week's news. It all makes me very depressed. How can people be so stupid? I mean who would think Toblerone would do a thing like that?

Well we all need cheering up, and nothing beats a bit of schadenfreude so feel free to read on and enjoy my misfortune.

Now that the weather has at last taken a turn for the worse and the nights have drawn in, we decided to spend a week or so on Herbie. On the first morning we looked out of the boat window and the gale lashing across the marina and decided to stay put. On the second morning it was cold but the wind had dropped so we disconnected the shore power, got out the ropes from their dry storage, took in the fenders, checked the oil and water, put on our hats and gloves and switched on the engine. Or tried to. The starter battery was dead despite having been on charge all night. Drat!

I wasn't too surprised as last time out I noticed it was struggling a bit and we have had it for several years. Anway, I jumped in the car and headed off to Halfords in Banbury, only fifteen minutes away where I bought a shiny new one that looked about the right size and the right number of Cold Cranking Amps. So, off back to the boat to remove the old battery and slide in the new one. Simples. Well the new battery fitted the space OK, but I hadn't noticed in the shop that the plus and minus connecting posts were the other way round. "Oh bother" I exclaimed (well words to that effect anyway). The cables in the battery compartment are thick and short and no way would they stretch to the right place. So back to the nice man at Halfords who found me a different battery with posts the right way round.

This one fitted, but not without some skinned knuckles trying to fit the clamps over the posts at fingertip length in the semi dark. By now we had gone off the idea of boating for the day so we retired to the cabin as several very heavy showers soaked my nice dry centre ropes. This is all beginning to sound like one of Bones's Tillergraph articles don't you think?

So this morning we awoke to blue skies and warmish sun and set off towards Banbury. Apart from moored boats, the canal is desolate. We soon realised the reason for this. We are cut off from the rest of the canal system by winter stoppages, a closed lock in the Napton flight and a bridge repair below Aynho. Even if the hire boat companies had any customers, they couldn't send them here, so we arrived in Banbury with oodles of free mooring space. At last something to cheer me up. I'm thinking of going into Poundland and buying their entire stock of £1 Toblerone before the new skinny ones arrive.

A leaflet dropped on the boat tells us there is to be a historical reenactment outside the library tomorrow. Apparently people will be firing muskets on the lift bridge outside the shopping centre. Things are looking up.

Reynard’s rest – a Fox near the Fox

I like foxes, and this one was a little sweetie, taking little notice of us yesterday as we piloted Jena past.  Connoisseurs of the canal might look at the nasty grey colour of the water and conclude that we were down near Brentford, and they would be right. This is the weir above Osterley lock.  All very appropriate as it’s not far from the Fox pub.

It took us ages to get down Hanwell locks because they were busy with boats in both directions.  Luckily we had some lovely volunteers to help us.  We had some interesting boats to gawp at while we were there.  This one grabbed my attention.

A 67 foot tug built by its owners using facilities at HMS Daedelus, hence its name.  I’ve often driven past there (we have good friends living nearby) and seen a narrowboat being built, but apparently it wasn’t this particular one that you could see from the road.  Anyhow, look along the gunnels to see its interesting shape.  I guess that step up is to raise the tug deck, which would make sense.  Here, he about to run aground, as we did, because the inexperienced crew in the boat above, you can just see it in the lock, had drained the pound by trying to fill a lock with one of the bottom paddles half open.  One mistake you don’t mind, but then they did it again in the very next lock. Doh!  Oh well, their boat, a whopping gert Piper widebeam barge thingy (very smart and no doubt palatial within, but not to my taste) was a mere seven days old, and had just come off the Thames that afternoon, so they weren’t used to canal locks.

Jena now rests at Brentford ready for a steady trip back up to Ricky next week when CRT staff on board will be looking at mooring sites.

Solar perplexus

It’s an astonishing 5 years since we got our solar panel on Herbie.  Seems like only yesterday.  Anyhow we’re still very pleased with it although of course we could always do with more .  These days we don’t seem to be in such a hurry to get somewhere and it’s not uncommon for us to stay in one place for a couple of days or more.  So, I thought I’d have a look at what it would take to expand our solarosity. (or should that be solaraciousness?)  We could of course move to the South of France and get more sun more often, but the beer is terrible, so plan B is to get another panel. The idea is to up our power from 95W to 200 W. That’s where it gets difficult.

You can’t just go around connecting any old panel to your existing stuff. Oh no, because the panels have to match else one will drag the other down.  Apparently it’s not even a good idea to add a new one of the same make and spec as the old one as they gradually degrade and the old one pulls down the new one.  I’m told that there is clever trickery you can do with diodes  to alleviate the problem but diodes are inefficient things at the best of times. In any case our original Kyocera panel is hard to get these days and it is very expensive compared with more modern panels. I can buy two or three decent 100W panels for less than we paid for our 95W one.  Amazing!

So. If we can sort out a couple of new panels that will fit on what space we have on Herbie’s roof, I’ll find some lucky person to have our old one cheap.  We’ll have to sell our controller as well because we’ll need a bigger one. Then of course I’ll have to make or buy tilting mountings for each panel, and while I’m at it paint that bit of Herbie’s roof which has got a bit knocked about by the current frame feet.  Typical DiY, a simple job turns out to be more than you think.

First job is to get out to Herbie and re-measure our roof space, dodging chimneys and mushroom vents.  This could run and run.

Fire and rescue

Last week we happened to be driving past our local fire station and noticed large crowds around it.  Yes, it was one of the open days they sometimes do at half term holidays.  Having Grace with us, we thought we’d take a look.  There was lots going on and some interesting demonstrations that might make you sit up and take notice.

The first was chip pan fires.  They lit a gas ring under a pan of oil and left it for about 15  or 20 minutes.  Eventually it began to smoke heavily and then spontaneously burst into flames. Time for a demo with the old fire blanket  which did the job nicely at first, but they took off the blanket deliberately too soon and the flames came straight back.  Leave the blanket on folks.

Then came the exciting bit when the Fireman turned a tap and sprayed the pan with a little bit of water.  Now we all know that’s not a good idea, but the results were spectacular.  This is one second later:

I don’t think Grace will be putting water on a chip pan any time soon!  When we got home I got her to do a bit of fire blanket practice – not using a real fire I hasten to add.

The next demo was possibly of more interest to boaters.

Can you see the little Lego man under the water?  He was dropped into the water at the right of our picture where he floated quite happily until the circulating undertow from the weir drew him upstream and then sucked him under where he stayed, just spinning round and round.  Don’t fall in in a weirpool!

Lastly they showed us what happens when they cut a driver out of a crashed car.  Nothing to do with boating, but most of us have got cars so I thought I’d share it with you.  This was quite an eye opener for me at any rate.  It’s not just a matter of getting the hydraulic cutters and snipping through the corner posts.

The first job is to try and get someone else, preferably a paramedic, into the car often through the rear window.  His / her job is to do the obvious injury checks, but equally importantly to protect and support the driver during the rest of the process.  In particular there is a risk that the trapped person may suffer a spinal injury by moving their head, so they sit behind and hold the head still while all the cutting is going on. They use boards to shield the occupants from the broken glass when they smash the windows, having first covered them with sticky film.  A special bag is placed over the steering wheel to restrain the driver’s airbag should it go off during the rescue, otherwise it can cause more injuries.  A lot of creaking and banging goes on whilst the door hinges are burst so they can remove the doors. Apparently the hydraulic cutters are very heavy and can’t be lifted for more than a couple of minutes before someone else has to take over. Having got the doors off, you might expect them to pull out the trapped driver, but no.  He might still have a neck injury so off comes the car roof, so they can lower in a long spinal board between the driver’s back and his seat.  Then they recline the seat if they can and slide the driver now flat on the board out through the rear screen.

The teamwork was very impressive.  They were keen to point out that complicated as it seemed, this was an easy example with the car upright and not crushed.  Speed is of the essence as the evidence is that getting the victim to hospital within an hour of the accident gives the best chance of recovery.

Unfortunately road traffic collisions are a lot more common than fires these days, so this is a key part of the job of the service.

I hope you found that interesting. We did.

Drive safely folks.

Quietways, busy days

Coo, I’m cream crackered.  Having retired from work eleven years ago I had forgotten how tiring commuting was. Helping out with the CRT Quietways consultation cruise on just four days this week was fun, but I’m glad it’s over.  All that sitting on rush hour trains to get to the boat and back is not my idea of fun.

I haven’t seen the final figures but we might well have spoken to a thousand towpath users and had proper conversations over the details with a couple of hundred of them.  Our boat Jena stopped at West Drayton, Hayes, Southall, Greenford, Alperton, Ealing, Meanwhile gardens (near Ladbroke Grove) and Paddington.  On the bank we gave out maps, leaflets, free bicycle bells, poop bags for dog walkers and more leaflets.   On board we had photos of key improvement sites, maps, schedules, and even engineering drawings of the planned towpath improvements.  People came to see the information and ask questions, support the plans, express concerns about the effect on wild life, complain about encouraging speeding cyclists, check there would be space to drive in mooring stakes, eat free biscuits, ask unrelated questions about what it costs to live on a boat, or how to walk to the zoo – we had all sorts. The lady from Towpath Talk came over yesterday and took notes and photos, so you’ll see that after Christmas. In general, the reaction was pretty positive.

By the end of each day we were surprisingly tired. Here’s volunteer Ken, still keeping vigil in the dark while luckier folk across the canal were enjoying the pub.

We did have some friends under the bridge to keep us company.  By that time of the evening the spiders under the bridge were doing rather better at ensnaring their prey than we were.  I suppose they benefit from the lights brining in the insects.

Over at Paddington yesterday we were a tad more comfortable

So what were we telling people about?  (Please note that I am writing here only what I have observed and learned and that this does not in any way constitute official CRT information.) That between Ladbroke Grove-ish and West Drayton (that’s about 15 miles) over a two year period the towpath will be improved to a new standard creating a new path surface between 1.8 and 2 metres wide, plus a 500mm strip of level grass either side and the hedgerow vegetation trimmed back ( not in the nesting season) and overhead to create more space.  No more muddy puddles, no more cycle ruts, no uneven surfaces, and more space for people to get past each other.  There will also be a significant number of access points (already identified) where improvements are needed where current steps and ramps are unsuitable or in poor condition. Finally there will be improved signs. (I think CRT might call it signage GRRRR!!)

I had a look at the cross section drawings for the new towpath surface which is to the latest spec. I didn’t understand all the details of the materials, so don’t quote me on this but it looks like a sub structure of aggregate, smaller in the middle and larger at the edges for lateral stability (not under the grass verges), then a layer of some sort of bituminous material (that might not be the right word but you get the idea) on top of which is sprayed and stuck a top layer of a much finer stones to give a smooth but grippy surface. It will of course have a gentle slope towards the canal (1:50 I think) to drain off surface water.

The sample pictures make the towpath look much lighter and more spacious, and the benefits claimed are a safer, cleaner environment for towpath users.  You never know, the more open environment might even discourage some of the oiks from littering and vandalism. (I’m an incurable optimist) The downside could be that cyclists see it as a race track.  Increased efforts will be made to calm them down and those wishing to get somewhere in a hurry will be advised to choose another route. Well, we’ll have to see about that one, it won’t be easy, but at least there will be more space to overtake walkers.

The money is coming largely from Transport for London and the London Boroughs although CRT will meet some of the costs.

To be frank, there isn’t a lot in this for boaters, but this is London folks, where the towpaths are really heavily used by other people.  The evidence of my own eyes and ears this week is that lots of Londoners and visitors really do value the canal environment so that’s no bad thing. At Paddington yesterday we were joined by the “Chuggers” recruiting “Friends” who sign up to make regular donations to CRT, and I was surprised to see that they signed up quite a few.

I don’t see this type of towpath environment being at all suitable for non urban or suburban areas, so I wouldn’t worry that your local stretch of grassy bank is likely to suffer the same fate, but I’m sure that it would be welcomed in some popular but notoriously muddy areas. Braunston locks springs to mind.

PS I can confirm that you can turn a big boat like Jena at the closed off bridge hole just past Sainsbury’s near Kensal Green. Just!

Towpath Idiot of the Year Award

Should the Towpath Idiot of Year Award go to the bloke who drove a motor bike straight at me yesterday, or should it go to me for deliberately standing in his way ?  Read on.

There we were, at West Drayton, doing our bit for the Trust. Our big boat Jena was moored just by the bridge, on board an exhibition showing the plans for towpath improvements

lots of charts, maps, leaflets etc and a few of us on hand to explain and answer questions.  Outside the boat we were accosting passers by and generally having a sociable time.

Then from under the bridge a young man appeared riding a trials type motor bike.  A couple of the CRT staff stopped him and asked him to take his bike off the towpath, it being illegal and unsafe.  The young man wasn’t at all impressed by this advice(surprise surprise) and forced his way through.  I was standing on the path pretty much exactly where I stood to take the above photo, so I thought I’d have a go at stopping him, standing in his path with my arms spread.  So what did he do?  Open the throttle and drive straight at me.  I thought he would stop when got to me, but he didn’t.  Luckily I remembered my matador’s training (OK that bit might not be true) and just got out of his way at the last millisecond.  We collided, but not heavily and he broke through and escaped. You might (or might not) be glad to know I was unhurt physically or psychologically, although I did spill the coffee cup I was holding, but it could have been much worse.  I’m sorry to say  although this was the first time I have been charged down by a motor bike, I have on a few other occasions been charged by nasty pedal cyclists refusing to stop.

Well, we thought we’d better alert Mr Plod so we dialled 999 and twenty minutes later two very nice constables arrived in a squad car and took down the details.  Naturally we couldn’t agree on how old the miscreant was, or what colour his clothes were etc etc. because it all happened very quickly and he was gone.  The policemen told us that motor bike towpath complaints were frequent in the area, a fact we already know because we did a little investigation of our own a year or two back.

It was all a bit poignant because only a week or so ago a couple of CRT guys who I know but will not name, were attacked by cyclists on the towpath near Southall.  That was much much worse and knives and bike chains were used against the staff.  Luckily no serious physical injuries were involved although as you would expect they guys were badly shaken up and are now understandably nervous about being out on the towpath in such places.

The official CRT advice (especially to volunteers) is of course not to get involved in confrontations, just walk away, but in the heat of the moment it’s hard not to try and stop people who are being complete bastards.

You’ll be glad to know that the rest of the day was fine even though we moved on to the notoriously dodgy area by Hayes bridge. and all in all we had discussions with about 120 towpath users virtually all of which were pleased about the improvement plans.  Today Jena moves (without me) to Uxbridge Rd moorings and then to the Black Horse.  Should you be passing by, do stop and learn about the coming improvements and give your views. You might get a sweetie and a cup of coffee.  Yesterday they even had Jaffa Cakes.  I’ll be back on board on Friday as we move ever closer to Paddington.