Category: Narrowboat

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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Happy new-year

It’s a case of moving up and down. A little bit of hanging around.

But I’m on the way back up again.

New Year

After getting frozen in at Nell Bridge for 2 weeks in the middle of December, I headed down to where I’d just come from, and where my last post was from, Aynho wharf.

Flood boards

The Great Western pub is about a 3 minute walk.

For New Year, it seemed like having considered what few options I had, a local thing would fit the bill nicely, and seeing as I could move the boat accordingly. That’s the option I took.

I visited 2 pubs on NYE, The Duke in Clifton and The Great Western Arms in Aynho wharf.

The owners have recently changed in the GWA and the place was a little empty.

Still, I had no complaints, they dished out the prosecco.

The Duke was a different affair. That was busy. By chance the Sunday was quiz-night, and in keeping with that, they had a New Year’s quiz night when I dropped in. Being a free house, I was able to work my way through the 4 guest beers they had on draught!

CAMRA award winning real local ales according to their website.

Nice 🤭

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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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Between Nell Bridge and Tarver’s Lock

Having a look at happenings since I last posted. Maybe 2-3 weeks ago.

I’ve decided to start making more youtube video’s, partly to pass the time, partly because there are some things which can only be expressed in video’s.

I noticed that when that guy pulled the machete on me a couple on months ago now. The police have still not got back to me on that. Useless.

Video never lies

Well, it does. Quite a lot in todays age of deepfake and photoshop manipulation.

My video’s never lie, is what I mean to say.

They are good and wholesome.

You can subscribe to my youtube channel here.

Premier rush

Is the Adobe software I am learning to use to edit and arrange video’s, titles and text.

I’ve done a lot of work with Adobe products over the years. I used to use the Dreamweaver and Photoshop pretty much all the working day back in the ‘naughties.

Since that career faded, I’ve not done much with them, but my Adobe account remains active and this Premiere Rush got good reviews as a starter video creation software for youtube, so why not give it a go? The full version is called Adobe Premiere.

So far, I’ve done a couple of videos. I’m kind of pleased as I am learning to do different things and achieve the effects that I want to, (if slowly), but it’s all coming along.

Chanterelles on the towpath

It is often, living along the canal, that you find forage-able goods, there to be gathered along the banks of the canal.

These chanterelles, I found on the side of the towpath between the canal and the river Cherwell near Nell Bridge Lock.

Chanterelle from the towpath
Chanterelle from the Towpath

It’s kind of big. It looks tasty. To me. I had some chanterelle mushrooms in the past. They were worthwhile.

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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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