Why wasn't I told??

Why didn't somebody tell me about this wonderful web site THE GRAND JUNCTION CANAL compiled by Ian Petticrew and Wendy Austin?  It is absolutely brilliant and it's been there since October 2012 without me finding it until now.  I cannot think of a better web site dedicated to canal history.

I won't bother to describe it all, as you can look for yourself.  Suffice it to say that they have drawn together a shedload of fascinating guff about the canal. It'll be especially useful to us London Towpath Rangers 'cos we are planning guided walks along the canal pointing out this or that.  Now we'll have loads more to point out, especially in our patch from Uxbridge to Paddington and down to Brentford.  So if you want to know what Paddington basin looked like when it was first dug, or what the packet boat fare was from Uxbridge to London or how many aqueducts there really are on the Slough Arm  (more than the three most people think), this is where to look.

Is this a record?

Just because I did all the stuff to qualify as a volunteer helmsman for CRT, it doesn't mean the qualification stands in perpetuity.  Apparently I have to do at least 400 hours boating over a five year period otherwise I would have to go through a reassessment procedure.  So rather belatedly, they've issued me with one of these:

Its a smart little log book in which I have to record all the boating I do -   date, vessel details, waterway, hours, and (ominously) any "incidents".  Fortunately I am allowed to include hours I do aboard Herbie, so keeping the numbers up will be easy peasy.  Backdating my entries for a few months I already have 154 hours logged.

Changing the subject- I have at last returned to flinging my deathless prose  at the computer screen and filling up the virtual pages of my next blockbuster novel, working title Eric II.  I had suffered an extended period of writers block after getting poor Eric into a spot I couldn't see a way out of.  Time is a great healer and Eric is now moving again, so I'm up to 22746 words and counting.  I guess that's about a quarter of the book.  Quite how I will fill the other three quarters I have no idea, but I am having great fun researching one particular aspect which shall remain secret for now.  My target is to complete the book before complete senility sets in, so I'm in quite a hurry.

Double Glazing

I occasionally get requests for more details of Herbie's DiY secondary double glazing the latest request being from VallyP who of course I cannot refuse, so here goes . .

I claim no credit at all for this valuable and ingenious addition to our windows, it was all done by Herbie's previous owner Roy who was a dab hand at such things.

Basically what we have is a made to measure set of simple wooden frames over each of which is stretched flexible transparent PVC of the type use for tent windows.  Roy managed to stretch it very tightly so there are no wrinkles or ripples.  The material itself is very strong and durable.

I found a few old photos to show how they fit. First this one of the galley window where you can see the frame in situ.

As you can see the frame has a central vertical spar for strength. The whole thing is a tight push fit into the outside of the boats window frame, leaving an air gap of perhaps an inch and a half.  lets look more closely.

Here's a corner showing that the frame is really simple being mitred and stapled at the corners.  I can tell you is is pretty rigid though and has stood up to more than ten years of use without bother.  You can also see the swivel tab which holds the frame in at the corners. Couldn't be simpler could it?

The secret of course is the precision with which Roy made the frames.  They really are a close push fit with the slightly compressible pvc I suppose being squashed tight between the double glazing frame and the boat's normal window frame.  I doubt very much they are completely airtight, but they work well enough to virtually eliminate condensation between the frames as long as you take care to have it all very dry when you install them.  and of course the pvc facing the inside of the cabin doesn't get condensation either.

Here you see a third picture showing the top centre of the frame.  The fit is tighter than it looks.  each frame is marked with which window it fits and which way is up e.g Starboard No2 TOP

The little ribbon tag is needed to pull the frames out when we remove them after the winter.  That pvc needs a clean doesn't it?  We just wash it with soapy water now and again.  The stuff is pretty clear over all and as you can see from the top picture, the view out of the window is only very slightly compromised.

So there it is.  It really works even though there is no fancy carpentry.  There are frames for each of Herbie's seven windows. During the summer, we take them out and store them at home.

Ice Breaking and an ice cold duvet

Today we took a gang of CRT volunteers out for a ride on widebeamer  Jena, with fellow volunteer Richard and me sharing the helming..  In Adelaide dock where Jena lives the ice was a centimeter thick which made it really hard to manoeuvre her about in the confined space at tick-over speed. It wasn't much better out on the main canal until we got to Bull's bridge where water began to clear of ice.  It's quite noticeable how the ice melts near to large buildings.

I learned how wide the canal is at Adelaide dock.  Assuming that Jean is 60ft long, we now know that the canal is 60ft and one inch wide.  Coming out of the dock in reverse, as we have done on previous occasions is not too bad, because at least the back of the boat steers, but today we had to come out forwards and couldn't really steer until we had already hit the other bank.

Anyway the sun shone and we had a pleasant run up to Cowley lock and back, warmed by Cup-a-Soup and various nibbles provided by Debbie the CRT volunteer co-ordinator who sadly couldn't join us for the run.  Arriving back at Adelaide dock bang on time we once again ploughed into the ice and then Jena's engine stopped quite suddenly.  No, not the ice, but something big on the prop.  Taking off the weed hatch lid, I saw a sight I had never before seen.  The level of the water in the weedhatch was higher by several inches than the water in the canal.  That could mean only one thing - a large object was completely blocking the weedhatch. It turned out to be a big white duvet wrapped around the prop so tightly that we couldn't shift it.  After half an hour with a boat hook and a knife we managed to clear half of it - enough to fill a black rubbish sack, and then we had to go home because the yard was closing for the night, so the poor guys at Adelaide will have to finish clearing it in the morning.. Sorry guys, that water is literally freezing cold.

I found out how the car that I reported on yesterday got into canal down the Slough Arm.  Apparently some oiks had nicked it and pursued by the constabulary had driven through a field to the canal where they hopped out and shoved the car into the water before scarpering.   What a pain in the backside these kids are.  I have rather more sympathy to the two people we saw sleeping rough by the canal today, huddled up in blankets on the hard ground .  Just imagine how cold they must be.  We have to report where we see them and someone from CRT will visit them with a social worker to see how they can be got in the warm and dry somewhere.

Slough arm mystery

Apparently there's a sunken car in the Slough arm, just at the end of where we are now moored.  I can't imagine how it got there unless it crashed through the parapet of the road bridge, which I doubt.  I may well get the full story tomorrow from the guys at CRT because I'm off down to Adelaide dock tomorrow to skipper Jena for a volunteers' floating day out, probably tootling up to Cowley and back.  We'd all better wrap up warm because Jena is only heated when attached to a land line.

Co-incidentally I was down the Slough Arm only yesterday to check up on Herbie.  There is a thin layer of ice on the canal, but not around Herbie because we are moored inside another residential boat which keeps us warm.  You see, there is some benefit in an on -line breasted up mooring.  Now that winter seems finally to have arrived, I installed our temporary secondary double glazing and removed the shower mixer to prevent it freezing up, both very quick and simple jobs.  The domestic batteries are now at 100% thanks to the solar panel and the fact that I have switched off the loo fan. The Airhead loo remains odourless thank goodness.  All in all Herbie seems fine.  It's nice to be able to get to her in only half an hour from home I must say.

Constant rain and seasonal coughs and colds have kept us from cruising since November, but we're hoping to resume boating soon.

Answer to the science puzzle.

Just this once, I'll allow you to feel sorry for me, as I have been in bed with a nasty cold for the last 48 hours. Kath has been playing Florence Nightingale, so I am well looked after.

Anyhow, enough of my troubles, here's what I think caused the sudden leap in the temperature graph I described in my previous post. Well, when I say "I think" what I really mean is "what our Peter tells me" 'cos he is a professional scientist and I am not. When we took the gubbins out of the freezer, it immediately got covered in condensation, which briefly froze, the room being a lot more humid than the freezer. Now we all know that when water evaporates it cools things down (like when we perspire), well it does the opposite when it condenses and freezes, releasing latent heat, so our temperature sensor got a good dose of that heat when the water in the air condensed upon it. So that's the answer. Don't say I don't try to teach you anything. Full marks to Bill S who got it spot on. The rest of you, read and inwardly digest and you will become wiser people.

We're hoping next week to take Herbie out for a few days, maybe dowln to sunny Brentford if there is room down there, or at least to the rather wonderful Fox pub at Hanwell. I may well do a bit of towpath rangering while we are down there as it is on my official patch. I keep meaning to go to the musical useful at Brentford. I'm partial to a bit of mighty Wurlitzer. Has anyone been?

 

Posted with Blogsy

Geek week - a scientific brain teaser

I've been having a geeky week. if you are a technophobe, I would look away now if I were you. Our son Peter is home for Christmas and the two of us have been having a loads of fun  playing with microcontrollers and electronic bits and pieces, doing daft things like making his simple little bluetooth powered temperature monitor and putting it in the freezer and plotting temperature graphs with data arriving on the PC.

We could knock up a version of this a couple of inches square if necessary. Using this sort of stuff it wouldn't be all that hard to build monitoring devices to keep an eye on Herbie while she is moored up and we are at home.  For instance we could monitor the state of the batteries and keep an eye on the temperature in the boat and get daily results on our mobile phones.  But here we come to catch 22.  Keeping the technology running on the boat would probably use up more battery power than we could afford to waste.  Although these things take very little power, when they are on for 24 hours a day for weeks on end, it adds up, especially keeping a dongle charged up to send phone messages or to keep a little web server charged up..  Of course in the summer the solar panel would easily take care of that, but in the short gloomy days of winter, I'm not so sure, and of course that is precisely the time of year when we might need the data from the boat.

Anyhow, just for fun, here's a little puzzle for you if you are scientifically inclined.  This is our graph of temperatures against time.

Don't worry too much about the detail.  It starts off at the left with a little kink where Peter handled the temperature sensor - ignore that. Then we put the device into the freezer and as you can see the temperature slowly dropped to about -20 deg C in a reasonably smooth curve.  Then, and this is the interesting bit, we took the gubbins out of the freezer and the temperature at first shot up much faster than it had fallen before resuming a more normal curve.  This seemed very strange until Peter worked out why.  Where did that sudden boost of heat come from?  Nothing to do with our handling, or where we put the gubbins really.  Peter realised what caused it, but can anyone out there think it through?  A clue - we could see the cause.  Answers next time.


We paid a quick visit to Herbie yesterday just to check that she was OK (she was) and that her batteries were not getting run down by the Airhead loo extractor fan.  We haven't had much daylight over the last month what with the days being so short and the skies being so gloomy, so I was wondering if the solar panel had been doing anything. Doing a quick sum based on the toilet fan requiring 60 milliamps and running 24 hours a day, it should have used up about 72 amp hours since we last ran the engine which is suppose is about 25% of our total battery capacity, so I was relieved when the old Smartgauge showed we had used only about 9%.  The solar panel was making about 0.2 amps at about mid day yesterday.  It would have been making more if we had it raised to the optimum angle, but with this stormy weather it wold probably blow away if we left it like that.  Anyhow as we hadn't "made a donation" into the loo for several weeks we felt it safe to turn off the fan now and let it get on with composting.

And the Herbie Special Award for 2015 goes to . . .

Charge your champagne flutes folks and stand by to toast a special person. We've been honouring good people with our Herbie Special Awards for quite a few years now, originally for being a valued crew member then later for selfless acts of Fortitude, Hospitality, and wotnot.  Sometimes these are awarded because of our admiration, and sometimes for our gratitude, like when we gave it to the gang of pals who helped us paint Herbie.

This years winner certainly deserves my gratitude.  Although I have no proof I also strongly suspect that a number of other boat bloggers feel the same.  "Why bloggers?", you may ask.  Let me start at the beginning.  

It being very nearly ten years since I embarked on this malarkey, I've been looking back at the stats that Mr Google kindly supplies about the blog and its visitors. This tells me that this is the 1400th time I have sat at a keyboard  (or a tablet) wondering what to write. After all, why do I do it?  It started off a s a sort of diary, but now it is a way of communicating ideas and information I suppose, and sometimes it's just a bit of fun, trying to amuse or entertain a few people.

What keeps me, and probably other bloggers, going is knowing that people out there read this stuff and like it.  We can look atthe stats for reassurance(179 people dropped in to have a look yesterday, half of them probably searching for Herbie the Volkswagen on Google), but what inspires me a lot more is when kind people take the time and trouble to comment on what I have written.  It also makes me feel incredibly guilty that I don't often do the same. The stats tell me that this blog has collected 2682 comments over the ten years, everyone precious.  

Now we come to the crunch.  One lovely person has contributed no less than 561 of those comments - a staggering number you'll agree. I know because I have just counted them, and each and every time those comments have been warm, friendly and supportive.  It means so much.  I'm sure this same person does a similar service to other bloggers out there as I can't imagine that I have been singled out.  So it is with deep gratitude and affection that we give this years Herbie Special Award to someone we have never actually met.  

She is a boater, a writer (about boats among other things), a blogger, and we like to think, a good friend over the water(in the Netherlands).  She is

Val Poore

(aka Vallypee

aka VallyP)

See her blog here

Thank you so much Val, on behalf of all of those you so generously (and frequently) support with your kind comments.

Huge round of applause as the bloggers rise to their feet.

One last look back beforewe present the Big Award

I am so looking forward to Herbie's Special Award tomorrow as it goes to a deserving winner who has given me a lot of pleasure, and it will give me a lot of pleasure to bestow our (admittedly valueless) award on this lovely person. However until then, please indulge me by letting me reprise an old blog post which gave not only me a lot of fun in writing it, but judging by the comments I got at the time, some others enjoyed it too.

I wrote this one in July 2010. Looking back on it now, I think it still holds true.

Judging a boat and its owner by the roof

Can you tell a boater by his roof, or the inside of his boat from the outside.? I reckon you often can. Let's look at some types - well outrageous stereotypes really.

1. The working boat roof.

It will of course have a short roof, behind a large hold, and the roof layout is non negotiable . Stern rope coiled on the rear hatch cover, mop stick raised (I estimate at 27 degrees) at the handle end to rest on the decorated water can (don't call it a Buckby can because it might not be and you will risk looking foolish), then just a pigeon box and of course a tall narrow engine exhaust chimney with brass rings and a chain. Nothing else.

We all know what's inside this boat. A traditional boatman's cabin with roses and castles and crochet and all that, and a big (sometimes huge) engine in the engine 'ole (note no H's allowed here.) If the engine does more than 200 rpm it can't be right. As for the boater, we can even have a good guess at his attire. Corduroy trousers, collarless shirt, maybe a red neckerchief and a trilby or a cap. Strangely this is the only type of boater that may not want to talk about toilets or batteries much.

2. The Feng Shui roof

This long minimalist roof will have merely it's fixed furniture of mushroom vents, a neat rack bearing poles and gangplank and perhaps a pigeon box and then just two rather expensive ropes trailing from the centre stud to the rear.

Inside, all will be spacious and calm. Either light oak or ash. Gentle curves will describe outlines of the granite worktops and sage green dralon will cover the comfortable seating. There will be a wine rack. Miscellaneous belongings of any type will not be seen. Near the rear entrance will be a large instrument panel with LED displays and winking lights. Below this will be a cupboard with lots of bottles of brasso, boat shampoo and all types of polish. The boat will probably have gas central heating, but if there is a stove, it will be diesel fired, for there is nowhere to keep firewood.

The owners, a recently retired couple will almost certainly wear smart fleeces, or if wet, Berghaus waterproofs. They will be pleasant but reserved. On muddy days they may choose not to cruise. A gambler might do well to bet on the boat being built by Braidbar boats.

3. The Garden roof

This has two sub groups

a) the Britain in Bloom roof - a long row of large pots of petunias.

b) the Bob Flowerdew roof - miscellaneous tubs, boxes and growbags festooned with tomatoes, courgettes, and the like. ( I was going to call this the Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall roof, but to be fair, that would have to have pigs and chickens).

Inside the boat will be homely and probably cottagey and in the case of b) probably a bit untidy. The owners of a) and b) are likely to be quite different from each other. a) being fairly conventional folk of at least middle age, and b) in their thirties and much more Bohemian and very possibly vegetarian. They will be happy. At locks and landing places they will get their ropes tangled.

4. The Eco warrior roof

This roof functions primarily as a power station. Older installations will be crowned by a wind generator on a pole. The guy ropes for the pole will prevent any sensible use of centre ropes for boat handling, but this is not important for owner of the boat will almost certainly live aboard and not move much. He or she will not have a television because the noise caused by vibrations of the pole will render the TV inaudible. He or she will either be young and go out a lot, or old and deaf.

Later Eco installations will of course have solar panels on the roof. The more the merrier. The annual mileage travelled by the boat will be inversely proportional to the square footage of solar panel. The owner will have no fear of electrical gubbins and will spend all of his spare time on the internet or in attempting failed DIY projects.

Both types will of course have a roof area dedicated to stacks of logs for firewood.

Eco warriors are , or like to think they are, good at DIY. The inside of their boat will have lots of wire and pliers and a stack of bits of plywood.

5. The Steptoe roof

This is very common on the Southern Grand Union. This roof looks like a local waste amenity only not so tidy. The majority of the objects placed there are either broken or rotten and are piled so deep that there is not the remotest chance that those on the bottom can be retrieved. There will be many spent leisure batteries. Interesting gems of bric a brac, a marble statue or a rare item of militaria nestle among the rubbish, waiting for Antiques Roadshow the make the owner rich.

Rich is the last thing this boater will be. Little does he know he is sitting on a fortune in scrap lead from all the old batteries. Any money he does have is spent on feeding his six Staffordshire Bull Terriers. As the boat will not have a functioning engine, it will never move from its towpath position, so the owner will have claimed a nice piece of ground alongside the towpath where he will light fires and sit through the long evenings with his fellow moorers. He will be friendly to all who pass and call out merrily to passing boats in language that no one can understand. The inside of the boat will be exactly like the roof, only damper.

6. The family roof

This roof will have separate areas. One for sunbathing, one for bicycles and wheelbarrows, one for vegetables (see Garden roof) and one for firewood. Inside the boat will be homely and a touch spartan but will have books and jigsaws. The crew will be large and they will travel the waterways like romanies of old. The children will be home educated and fit, able and intelligent but have no GCSE's. They will posses the rare attribute of being able to entertain themselves without electronic aids. When they grow up they will be entrepreneurs.

As for Herbie's roof, like most others it is a mixture of the above. A compromise between the needs of rope handling and storage, and soon I hope, solar panel. That's what started all this roof stuff off. How can I fit in a solar panel, a roof box (for coal, camping chairs etc), a gangplank and boat poles, Buckby cans and a flower pot in a tidy enough way to allow for good rope handling?

A couple of unforgettable days.

Before the 2015 Herbie Awards reaches their thrilling climax, we look back once again over our ten years with our trusty boat.

Possibly our most magical night on Herbie was on June 13th 2009, at least that's what the blog record tells me.

We were moored on the Great Ouse not far from Earith on a tiny GOBA mooring just big enough for our boat.  We had already been away from home for some weeks and we were really getting settled into life by the water. As dusk fell, we sat quietly just watching the scene.

 The night was warm and sultry and we sat out on the bank in a tiny clearing with bushes behind and either side of us.  As we looked out over the river, a barn owl flapped silently back and forth over the opposite bank, and unknown creatures made strange noises in the bankside vegetation.  The river itself was still, like a mill pond and the odd fish plopped at the surface taking the evening rise of flies.

Just as the sun was disappearing here was a loud swirl in the water, right under Herbie's rear end, only a couple of feet from us.  Another swirl, bigger this time, and a beautiful seal poked his head out of  the water, looked lazily at us for several seconds, and then just as quickly was gone.  There's a lot to be said for just sitting still in the countryside.  Sooner or later you become a natural part of the scene and the wildlife goes about its business as if you weren't there.  Magic.

Some day's are memorable for rather different reasons, like the day in November 2010 when we were tootling up the River Stort and this happened.

Pretty spectacular don't you think? That'll teach me to keep the water and oil topped up.  The thing that our passenger, Rainman, found amusing was that the first thing I did was to reach for the camera to take this picture. Blog before boat, that's my motto. At the time I had a sneaking feeling that it might turn out for the best because I could get a new engine. Luckily although the engine had temporarily seized, it was under no other stress and the time and once it had cooled down and we'd topped up the fluids, there seemed no harm done.  Well, it's still going nicely five years later at any rate.

I think it was possibly the during previous evening that something happened that we still laugh about today.  We went into a pub for a meal. Possibly the Moorhen pub near Harlow.  Nothing special there, just a chain pub doing cheap food.  After perusing the menu I opted for fish and chips and Rainman the same.  I don't recall what Kath had.  I offered to order at the bar, which was only two or three paces from where we sat.

" A flagon of your finest ale and two fish and chips please."quoth I.

"Very well my liege, would that be with ye garden peas or ye mushy peas?" enquired our host.

"I don't know," I replied, "I'll go and ask."

I took the two or three steps back to our table and asked Rainman to make his choice, which he did with commendable decisiveness, asking for garden peas.  I did a smart about turn and returned back to the bar, the whole round trip not exceeding ten seconds quite possibly less.

"What did he say?" asked the man at the bar, finger poised over the computer touch pad.

"Um, er, I can't remember!" I was forced to admit, while all around indulged in fits of the giggles.

Aah the old Alzheimers is on its way. How come I can remember that after five years, but I couldn't remember Rainman's answer for five seconds?

Tomorrow, I'll put down a few words about ten years of blogging, including a favourite post before we announce the big award on Christmas Eve.

Locks- Awards for the best and the worst

I know I am not alone in my identification of the worst lock, on the Grand Union at least.  By the worst, I mean the one which although just about passable is most nearly impassable.  Some frustrated boater had scrawled on one of the lock beams "THIS LOCK IS A DISGRACE"  . We were heading downhill and arrived at the lock in its empty state.  Nothing unusual about that in locks in the general area of the Chilterns because so many of them have signs requiring you to leave them empty because the lock walls leak into the surrounding land.

So we closed the paddle which had been left up to drain the lock and proceeded to fill at the other end while Herbie waited patiently to be let in. During this time we sometimes put the kettle on to make a cuppa.  This time we had time to cook a Christmas turkey if we had wanted to.  The bottom gates leaked faster than the top gates could fill.  It took ages and some brute force from both of us to eventually shift the top gate.  In a way it would have been better if this lock was totally impossible to operate because then CRT would have had to come out and fix it.  So where is this Award winning lock?  On the run down towards Winkwell.

The Herbie Award for 2015's Worst Canal Lock
goes to the charmingly named

Sewer Lock

Maybe it was the contrast with Sewer lock which only a couple of days later made me recognise the  smoothness and ease of operation of our winner for Best Lock.  I mentioned it at the time and pre-empting the proper award ceremony here's what I wrote.

You don't get down to this lovely neck of the woods without paying the price in terms of hard graft lock wheeling. I suppose it might be doing me good, but sometimes it feels more like it's finishing me off. The prize though for Best Lock (maybe I should save this for the Herbie awards but what the heck) goes to Lady Capels. It was such a nice change to find gates that don't swing open after you have shut them, and paddles that wind smoothly and lightly and balance beams that don't require full on brute force. And as a treat, you get to cruise through the elegant Grove Park afterwards with it's lovely turnover bridge.

So that's it.  

Best Lock Award 2015 goes to 

Lady Capel's Lock

Strange ain't it how the worst one had an unattractive name and the best one had a pretty name.  Pure coincidence I assure you,  I don't have photos of either of these locks, but here's that lovely turnover bridge I mentioned just round the bend from Lady Capel's.  What a cracker.

Well Christmas is drawing ever nearer I need to get on and draw us towards this year's special award which will honour someone for something or other.  Not much of a clue is it? Suffice it to say that the recipient is totally unaware and that in accordance the The Rules, it is someone who hasn't won it before.  If things go according to plan I'll make that announcement on Christmas Eve.  In the meantime I'll try to keep us amused with some tales from our ten years on Herbie.

Interlude - A few Memorable Photos

While you sup your half time drinks, I'll show you a small handful of the thousands of pictures (mostly terrible) that I've taken during our ten years on Herbie. Perhaps I should say our first ten years!?  This pictures may or may not have much photographic merit but they sure bring back memories.

I remember the evening when I took this.  We were tied up outside the Rushden and Diamonds place at Irthlingborough on the Nene.  The internet signal was useless and I was trying to post a blog entry so the old laptop sat on the roof struggling to get a signal.  Down below, Kath and Marilyn were relaxing and Rick I suppose was off somewhere inventing something or fixing something like he does.

This next picture is a family favourite, showing a very young Jacob (our Grandson now 18) doing his most important cabin boy duty as we cruise out of Little Venice on a summers day.

with this exceptionally mild winter we seem to be having, we could easily forget it isn't always like this, as this next picture shows.  Herbie was down at the Fox at Hanwell.

I had to include this next one, which I took as we cruised alongside Nb Leo on a rehearsal for the Queens Jubilee flotilla thingy.  Katherine, who owned Leo at the time, immediately asked for a copy which she had enlarged and printed to hang on her wall.  She didn't realise a how deep under water her bow was dipping.

(By the way, Katherine is currently recovering from a broken hip, and we send our best wishes for a speedy recovery).

Here's another favourite picture showing a certain gentleman who has not only put lots of time, effort and skill into Herbie, but also taking risks like this.

Yes, it's Rick painting Herbie's tunnel bands.  Of course it would have been a more memorable picture if he had fallen in, but you can't have everything.

Perhaps our best trip in all the ten years was our cruise down the Nene, across the Middle Levels and down to Bedford on the Ouse.  The weather was mostly sublime and the countryside as good as anything else England has to offer.  Here's Kath and friend at Cogenhoe

and some typical scenery somewhere on the Nene.  If Mr Constable had been there he'd surely have whipped out his brushes and scored another hit.

and lastly a couple of photos to counter those people who still might think that canals are all grimy and full of supermarket trolleys.

The "road" out of Braunston

and the canal through Grove Park on the GU

Now that we know who won Strictly and SPOTY we are free to concentrate on the remainder of the Herbie Awards starting with our next post when I reveal the best and the worst individual locks we have encountered this year.  Stay tuned.