Category: Continuous Cruising

Living on a continuous cruiser on the UK canal system under CRT rules.

Slack Signal

The three network… It’s a law onto itself at the moment. Since Christmas, it’s been having it’s problems.

2G Speeds at 4G prices

Having been moored above the lock close to Cropredy called Varneys’ for over a week and had plenty of time to experiment with the phone, boat location and settings of the SIMs on my phone. I can conclude that for the mast that provides for Three for this area, Three is selling a 4G connection, but providing 2G/3G speeds.

GenerationCellular technologyAverage data speed (download)
2GHSCSD15-20 kbps
2GGPRS30-50 kbps
2GEGPRS/EDGE130-200 kbps
3GUMTS384 kbps
3GHSPA3-5 Mbps
3GHSPA+5-8 Mbps
4GLTE15-20 Mbps
4GLTE-Advanced50-80 Mbps
4GLTE-Advanced Pro60-100 Mbps
5GNR150-200 Mbps
(https://commsbrief.com/mobile-data-speed-with-2g-3g-4g-and-5g-cellular-networks/)

— Average download data speed for GSM/UMTS mobile network evolution —

Here’s a picture taken from the Speedtest app on Googleplay.

Three download and upload speeds 3G not 4G.

A lot of the time, it was providing about 2-4Mbs, which is 2G. All the time it was doing this, it was showing the 4G symbol. As we can see from the table, 4G connection is upwards of 15, nothing like what I was getting.

Pretty dodgy.

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Easter in Cropredy

With salmonella. Picked the car up. Looks like someone has run into it. Greg, the owner of forge farm, where I moored th boat whilst I was away left a note on my car before I left. Aparently one of his workers has some information about it. I’ll be following that u when I don’t feel so ill.

It has a small dent on the offside rear wheel arch.

The boat

Is fine. A little more condensation on the windows, otherwise exactly the same as when I left it.

I spent a couple of nights at forge farm before moving down off onto the network.

Easter blues

Or so it seems on the canal network. It’s Saturday of the long weekend and they’re having to restrict the locks by the afternoon. This is due to lack of water. I had to move the boat down for the same reason, it was sideways and the water wouldn’t empty out of the bath and draws were falling open.

I’m not much of a fussy boater, but this is one of the things that really fucks me off. Probably one of the reasons I didn’t stick around on the Kennet and Avon. Having your whole world view rotated by 30°, used to piss me off. Now it’s something I can really do without.

Anyways, come 8am Saturday morning, the boat was sideways, even though I’d pushed it off a ledge further out into the channel the night before.

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Mooring at Aynho Wharf

Not a bad stop.

Close to the amenities.

I tend to moor away from the road, probably 2 min walk up the towpath which suits me better.

You get better solar, the mobile signal is better and you don’t get intrusions from the odd idiot coming over the bridge beeping their horn.

As I wake up, I can look out across the field.

The sound of the trains are blocked by the industrial units which stand between me and the dual railway tracks.

Moved up

I moved slightly up, by about 14m. The sound of the trains woke me up. It was only the length of the boat. When you enter into ‘line-of-sight’ of the trains, you get all the noise.

People say you get used to the sound of trains. I’d rather not have it in the first place.

I’m now here behind the sheds and I can’t hear a thing apart from the odd noisy duck.

Mooring at Aynho Wharf
Mooring at Aynho Wharf
View toward Cherwell from Aynho Wharf
View toward Cherwell from Aynho Wharf

Although I get a tad less solar, it’s worth it.

Mooring at Souldern wharf

There’s one more stop about a mile south from Aynho. It’s close to the village of Souldern down a windey farmers lane.

Walking down the canal, I took these pictures.

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Things are going down…

Like me on the Oxford canal, heading in a southward direction.

Not only that, but in many other areas of life in and across the world.

My life as a trader

You may or may not know that I spend a lot of my spare time looking at markets, reading economic journals and placing occasional trades on conventional and crypto assets. A day trader, you might say.

Taking in some of the moves in those markets, and predictions for the future leads me conclude that things are definitely moving, in a downward direction.🔻

I believe that life in the UK and the economy under the current prime minister is not viable, and given time will implode. Even in the last few days I read posts about Crispen Odey, one of Kwasi Kwarteng’s close friends, making 145% on UK bond crash, (below).

Relying on ‘trickle down economics‘ at a time of financial tsunami? It’s supplying those at the top with more incentive. Doesn’t make sense unless you want the top 5% to benefit significantly more at a time when they really don’t need any more.

This is the value of government 10 year gilts (debt bonds) going back to 2004

Even if you don’t understand this graph, (which I’m not going to explain), you can see the movements are pretty drastic.

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It’s been a while…

Hello from Crop and the Fairport Convention.

And I’ve been busy at Cropredy’s ‘Fairport Convention’.

Not an intentional stopover in as much as more of a co-ordinated arrival.

Due down

This way after my engine stop up in the Northern reaches. Cropredy is kind of the first real stop on the section of canal that I now habit.

Crabridy

Or Cropredy is some people call it.

It has many things to recommend it, especially if you happen to drop in when the festival is on, which I did.

Being on the boat, I was able to enjoy it from start to finish without charge, or accommodation charge, to be more clear.

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