Highs and lows of lockdown year 2020

To comemorate it’s passing, I’m mounting a late vigil here on the blog.

Many people say they won’t miss it.

It started with some large wildfires and bad environmental stuff and worked it’s way up to a global pandemic!

No need to be frustrated though… The solution is here!

Look at it from above….

3 months on and into 2021. I’ve had a look through and gathered what I thought might be some of the best (and worst) parts of my 2020.

The lows

Welcome to the Nasty Nexus

The highs

Covid on the Cut – Grade 3

Photo gallery

Take a brief look at my photo gallery for the year.

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Bitcoin – Narrowboaters buying guide!

Yeah!

Just because you live on a narrowboat doesn’t mean you can’t buy Bitcoin!

Hell no……

Not wanting to be boring or obvious, but things are changing in the asset classes of finance.

Gold and the Dollar

An asset is something someone who has capital (money), to put their capital (money) into in the hope that the value of that asset will increase over time.

Traditional hedges have been the yellow stuff and the greenback.

Since the start of the pandemic, gold especially has seen it’s once unchallenged status as ‘safe haven’ removed.

Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffet dropped his holding in Barrick Gold Corp just last week, stating, ‘It’s not what it used to be’.

I’ve witnessed this myself. Gold’s disconnected entirely with risk events, like pandemics or wars, or anything else you care to mention.

The main risk event on the horizon at the moment is this one

Inflation

As the vaccine roll-out increases and punters return to everyday life as pre-pandemic. They will have large stores of cash, to spend on, whatever.

This increased spending on – whatever – will lead to a spike in inflation as shoppers hit the streets looking to spend, spend, spend.

Bitcoin is not a traditional fiat denomination.

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Shackerstone -> Market Bosworth

Bosworth, as they call it…..

There is a market but it’s closed… in these COVID times…..

New Job

So I’m working in the local test centre, testing individuals for COVID. It’s long shifts, then a few days off.

I’m writing this on one of my days off.

Tomorrow, I start work again. 7.30am start. 8.30pm finish.

It’s called a LTS, or local test centre. It takes about 15 minutes to get there in the car.

Downdraft

As you can see from the picture, I’m moored opposite a faux Dutch style housing estate.

The houses are three story, which has had the unexpected effect of creating a downdraft for my fire.

A downdraft can be caused, according to Geoffrey at Homefire stoves, wherever there is a taller structure than your chimney stack standing between you and the oncoming wind.

When the wind blows over these houses, the fire doesn’t do so good.

Bosworth

Bosworth MArina
Bosworth Marina

Apart from that, Bosworth is just Bonnie. Close to the waterpoint. 10 Minutes walk up to the village and village shop. Right behind the Bosworth Marina, where I dropped in yesterday to buy some calor.

£29.75 for 13kg compared to the £36 I paid at Weltonfield Narrowboats. What a joke….

There’s a slight chandlers and other everyday nik-naks on sale. Beer and whisky…. Lot’s of these marina boaters get drunk, slip off the pontoons and find themselves in 12ft of water. It’s a common cause of death the people at Barton Turns marina said. They’d had at least 2 ppl who’d died that way. But Barton Turns marina is a big marina.

Still. Deep water and alcohol don’t mix well.

At least if you fall in on the cut, you can stand up and walk to shore!

Here’s another picture of the boat.

Bonnie Lady in Bosworth
Close to the amenities

Locked down in Shackerstone

Been here for going on a month now.

Movement is not encouraged on the canal networks at this moment.

Only ‘essential’ travel is permitted. This basically means when your toilet needs emptying, or your water-tank needs filling.

Traffic is down to 0.

Very few boats moving around. 0 this week so far.

Empty narrowboat water-tank
Empty water-tank

This is how my water-tank looked at the end of last week.

That’s about a day’s worth of water in the bottom.

I couldn’t really move because the canal was iced over.

Moving whilst there’s ice isn’t really advisable. Some ppl get shirty when you move past their boats when there’s thick ice. Some ppl get angry even when it’s thin ice. ‘It might damage my boat’.

It’s better to let it thaw out. Plus, thick ice makes it difficult to navigate.

Luckily, when I moved down to get water, a boat had gone on before me and it was just a case of following his trail of broken ice!

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Bosworth -> Shackerstone

Sorry it’s been such a long time since my last installment.

Since then I’ve moved the boat 3 times from it’s previous location near the village of Dadlington, where it was quite nice with good wifi and solar.

The three things you need really are 1) parking 2) good phone signal 3) solar to make a mooring semi-decent.

It’s taken a while to find out the next place to stop on the Ashby.

The place I’m stopped in now is in a designated area of special scientific interest. Which means you can only moor in ‘selected spaces’.

Shenton to Congerstone.

Are places I passed through and either the parking wasn’t there, or they had bad mobile or non-existent mobile signal.

The current location is maybe 8 miles or so from Dadlington, the location of my last blog.

Rather than make this journey all in one stretch, I decided that because the weather was bad, it would be better to split it in half.

Shallow canal

The Ashby is shallow compared to other canals I’ve been on. Even the Kennet and Avon is deeper from what I can make out.

I’d say the depth is about 4-6ft. Never any more than that.

Bosworth Field along the Ashby canal
Bosworth Field along the Ashby canal

Progress is restricted by the depth of the canal; the dynamics of the water meaning that progress above a certain speed isn’t physically possible.

Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be tootling along on this one….

Continue reading “Bosworth -> Shackerstone”