Tag Archives: Thursday

Turning The Temperature Up. 28th November

Over the last week or so, Mick had noticed that Oleanna’s heating hadn’t been coming on when we’d expect it to. Snow in Goole as seen from our webcam suggested it had been quite cold, along with the sensor in the engine bay. This needed checking out. So on Thursday Mick caught the 9am train down to Goole, arriving 20 minutes late due to signal problems near Brough, £2 back on his fare.

I was left in Scarborough to bring in the weeks shopping and await the delivery of a new cooker hood for the house, along with chasing up quotes to replace our lean to.

It was chilly down in Goole. Mick opened up Oleanna and fired up the heating. He thinks that the temperature sensor he’d added a couple of years ago isn’t working. This connects to the Aldi Boiler and because we’ve never got round to drilling holes through cupboards and drawers, it gets positioned out side the electrics cupboard when we’re not onboard. There is a thermostat on the Aldi boiler controller, but that sits inside the electrics cupboard where it tends to be that bit warmer than the cabin. The solution for now is to leave the electrics cupboard open so the boiler controller will hopefully notice if it gets below a certain temperature and then fire up the central heating. Our gas boiler has the advantage of being able to work off electric when we’re hooked up, so there’s no danger of us running out of gas and the gas can be left turned off in the locker.

In Scarborough I somehow missed the delivery driver. Or they didn’t even bother to knock on the door, maybe not even come up the street. Delivery to be attempted again on Friday.

Tilly and I spent time tidying up the bedroom. Our listing on the SJT digs list was in need of updating, ready to go out to actors coming to Scarborough in 2025. Some new photos were needed, the original one of our bedroom was quite pallid and dull. With a jollier duvet cover on the bed this would make a difference. I just needed to tidy up and keep Tilly out of view. All easier said than done. The sun shone, reflections showed laundry baskets piled high with our possessions on the landing. Tilly managed to get inside the wardrobe and flash her white bits through the glass, but after numerous photos we succeeded. I now just have to get the accounts up to date to check we’re charging a suitable amount.

Mick ran Oleanna’s engine. Then checked the temperature of the battery terminals where he’d just recently shortened the chunky cables to the Bully Boy batteries. The new crimps were holding well and the temperature was good.

Mick went to find Alastair, who was busy welding. We’d left several jobs for Alastair to do for us, so Mick just wanted to check in. Today could have been an oil change day, removing that job from the list, but it was too cold so Mick left it on the Alastair list, hopefully next week.

**When we get a repaint, we don’t want the same to happen again**

When getting quotes for a repaint I’d been asked by one place if we could take photos of the locker lids at the stern. Our stern lockers have wooden tops that slide and lift off. When Oleanna was new we quickly noticed we couldn’t help but mark the paintwork opening and closing the lockers. We keep all sorts in them, the tiller, spikes, chains and nappy pins are in there they tend to be opened twice a day when we’re cruising. The lids were reduced in size a fraction to try to help with this, but after 8 years the marks are embarrassingly bad. A suggestion made by Paul Balmer to reduce the lid size and have a wooden surround that they sit in is a good one, so any bumps happen to the wood rather than the paintwork. Mick took photos, lots of them.

His next job was to find the big container of Fertan we’d bought back in April. It took some hunting down as it had been beavered away in the port side bow locker, paints tend to be kept on the starboard side. Then some Uhu glue was wanted back at the house and I knew exactly where a couple of tubes of it were on the boat.

All jobs for the day had been ticked off, Oleanna’s cabin warmed up a touch, it was time for Mick to lock up and head back to Scarborough.

This week has been all about cake! Great British Bake Off final, whilst I knitted away at a pair of ‘Cake’ socks using a cake of yarn I’d just wound. Then a cherry cake was made to use up some frozen fruit from the freezer. On Wednesday Frank must have heard me cracking the eggs from two miles away. Whilst the cake was baking I got a message asking if the kettle was on and if there was any cake! The recipe said to leave it to completely cool, but needs were such that we consumed the first slices whilst still warm. A second slice was had to see if it improved as it cooled. Thursday Frank returned, quality control of the now fully cooled cake was needed. Our consensus, it was crunchier and tastier whilst still warm.

Out on the canal network there has been plenty of water. In recent years we’ve spent November on the South Oxford. The amount of rain that fell a week ago had Banbury turn into a lake, the new moorings by the new cinema and Tooleys up by a foot, the bus station under water. Even higher up the canal Cropredy found itself become an island all roads cut off and the 300 boats moored at the marina needing their mooring ropes loosening overnight. Levels have been high elsewhere, towpaths being over topped and navigations closed, they are only just starting to return to normal levels. I hope everyone and their boats remained safe after Storm Bert.

On another note should you have ever stopped in Berko and enjoyed a pint or watched a Mikron show at The Rising Sun, take a look at this link. They are seeking financial assistance to help pay legal debts they have incurred over the last three years after a noise complaint was made by a neighbour. We of course do not know the other side of the story, but it would be a truly miserable world if such pubs ended up closing.

0 locks, 0 miles, 2 trains, 0 oil change, 1 slightly warmer boat, 1 caput sensor, 2 locker lids, 1 bottle fertan, 2 tubes Uhu! 1 upstaging cat, 50th pair of socks, 2/3rds cake gone within 1 hour, 1 sunrise appointment, 54 Christmas cards, only a few hours left to add your name to the sockathon list, 2 sock shots from New Zealand, £1450!!!

Socking Along

Well my fundraising for Dementia UK has reached £1360 which is absolutely brilliant. THANK YOU!! And there is still some sponsorship money to come in for the 53 pairs of socks in my original challenge. Yes a year has 52 full weeks and knitting a pair of socks a week throughout 2024 would mean that I could stop when I reached 52 pairs. But that would leave a couple of days overhanging and as the 53rd pair will be for someone who’s birthday happens to be right at the end of the year I obviously had to include them.

However in the last few weeks I’ve had quite a bit of interest from a Boat Women group on Facebook, people wanting to be added to a waiting list. Then whilst at a friends house the other evening I had requests for 3 more pairs. So currently I have an extra 22 pairs to knit, not all this year I hasten to add! I might allow myself the first week in January off.

I’ve decided to keep my list open until the end of November for anyone else wanting to sponsor a pair. I don’t want anyone to miss out and it would be great to be able to use up more of the wonderful yarn that was donated by indie dyers.

If you thought you’d missed out and would like a pair, speak up NOW! Or forever have chilly toes.

I’ll need your shoe size and a word to base your socks on. This could be anything, a season, mood, era, colour, just so long as it’s not blue as I’ve just about run out! You could even request socks to match your boats livery. I’m happy to add your name to my list, then get in touch shortly before I’m about to cast on the first stitch for you to make a donation to my Just Giving page. Mental reminder to self, must extend the closing date of my page.

https://www.justgiving.com/page/pip-leckenby-1704636205453?utm_medium=fundraising&utm_content=page%2Fpip-leckenby-1704636205453&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=pfp-share

Pair 49 are currently on my needles so as it’s week 47 (I think) I’m a couple of pairs ahead of myself. So there are nine days left to put in your request to be added to my list. More photos of finished socks have been added to the Sockathon page

Anyhow, boat news. On Tuesday our webcam showed us that the world of Goole had gone white with snow. We’d been expecting some here in Scarborough too, however it missed us. Mick can tell how cold the engine bay is whilst sitting in front of our fire, the temperature had dropped to 2C.

On Wednesday morning we woke to a little dusting of the white stuff. Whilst we lay in bed with our morning cuppas Mick had an alarm from Oleanna saying the power was off. It came back on briefly, but went off again, all before the marina was open. Was it just Oleanna or a more wide spread power outage?

I checked all the Goole facebook pages I’d joined when there was the breach on the Aire and Calder, no mention there. Should Mick jump on the next train to Goole to check things out? The next train was cancelled.

Just gone 10am he gave the Marina a call. It wasn’t just Oleanna, Mick got to talk to Laird and he was having difficulty getting into his office due to the lack of electricity. Mick quickly left him to get on with things, no point in getting a train, our inverter would inform us when the power came back on, this was 3:15pm.

The heavens opened in Scarborough and the world became a very white one, over a proper inch, maybe even two fell during the morning. Very glad we didn’t need to go anywhere. Once it had stopped Mick swept the paths in front of the house. Tilly headed out to assist, but soon changed her mind. I couldn’t see my paws and She’d suggested I should get them painted a different colour, maybe a dark red! I wasn’t up for that. Maybe she should knit me some bright socks to wear out in the snow. I don’t fancy trying to put them on you though Tilly!

The image for our Christmas card has been chosen and worked on, a little bit different from past years. Veg box ordered, Duck ordered, Christmas booze arrived. I’m going to run out of things to do in preparation for Christmas before November is out! Well that’s what comes of not doing panto and not being able to get on with a decorating a dining room due to having a lodger.

Another visit to the SJT last week to see the touring production of John Godber’s Perfect Pitch. The play was commissioned back in 1998 by the SJT and premiered as part of the 10 x 10 Season. It was also my first design for The Round. It played in rep through the summer with Comic Potential (Alan Ayckbourn) and Love Songs For Shop Keepers (Tim Firth). A couple going caravanning for the first time to a site just south of Scarborough, having their idyllic weekend broken by a couple who pull up close by. The play has been updated and sections rewritten meaning the caravan can now be just off stage, saving on set build and touring costs. Back in 1998 we also had real grass that required watering and grow lamps on through the night to keep it alive. I’ve now seen several productions and still no-one has beaten John Branwell in the part of Grant.

More quotes have come in for both boat and house. One boat yard’s excuse for not having got back to me in two weeks was ‘That boat doesn’t need repainting!‘ Well that’s because the photos I sent were when she was a matter of weeks old, she’s done at least 7000 miles and most probably over 5000 locks since then. Still to hear back with a price from them, think he’s already lost the job.

Anyhow, keep warm everyone, well until the weekend when we’ll be leaving doors open and admiring the blue bells coming up!

0 locks, 0 miles, 53 to 75, 5 house quotes, 6 boat quotes, 2 more to come in, 1 appointment, 3 Morse episodes, 1 extreamly bored cat, 1 focaccia, 2 veg boxes, Tilly Too keeping the snow outside, 2 boaters nearly ready for Christmas.

The Last Ding Ding. 24th October

Viking Marina

It may have been the person who heads off in a vehicle at 6 something in the morning that woke me up, but it gave me a chance to check emails and see if we’d had any substitutions on a Sainsburys order going to the house this morning. A few bits but nothing drastic. I then closed my eyes for a while longer.

In Scarborough Mick took the shopping in, had time to pop things in the fridge and freezer, hopefully we’d thought of just about everything that we’d run down on the boat. Then he caught a bus to pick up a hire van. Beerhouse matched the price from Enterprise for a two day hire. He stopped off at Pets at Home for a big bag of cat litter, so that Tilly’s toilet would be stocked up. Time to drop this off at the house and pick up boxes and crates we use to move along with the cat caravan. A visit to the dentists and then he was on his way back to Goole.

**There wasn’t much point in putting two crusts back in the freezer was there!**

Finishing things off on the boat meant I should use up the one egg and the last few slices of bread in the freezer. A plate of eggy bread was very nice and would see me through till the evening.

The latest sockathon socks had their photos taken and added to the queue for editing. These will go in the post just as soon as there is time. Then the packing continued.

Mick arrived with the van, sorted out getting us plugged in with Laird. We made sure we made note of the meter reading as when we came to leave at the beginning of this year we ended up having to tell Laird how much power the Victron inverter thought we’d used as the meter reading didn’t make sense to any of us.

The sun was out, the port side of Oleanna to the bank. Time to get some masking tape out, sand paper and the touch up paint. I’ve been planning for years to repaint the grabrails, but there simply wasn’t enough time to do a proper job, I’d need several more days of just drying time to do that. So today I taped off lengths of grabrail, sanded back the old paint and around the undercoat, then applied a coat of topcoat. Hopefully this will stop any rust forming over winter and I know I can do a much better job given more time and not being in Goole. I say not being in Goole, because even after just one day we’ve already got a layer of dust on the roof! So the paint I put on today is more than likely to be anti slip by morning!

The angle of the sun brought to my attention the rust around the mushroom vent above our bed. I’d suspected this would be the next mushroom that would need attention and if we’d had another big pan I’d have been tempted to work on it at the same time as the one above the sofa. But blocking off two mushroom vents wouldn’t be so good for ventilation, plus we’ve only one big pan that I could spare. A bucket will be positioned underneath it for winter just in case.

Items were loaded into the van. My sewing machine, bags and work boxes were pulled out from under the dinette and back steps. When I took the back steps out I took the opportunity to give the floor a good sweep finding the connector we thought we’d lost for the pram hood back on the Caldon.

Mick put the pram hood back to how it should be and he also took some time to remove the tunnel light and horn bracket at the bow. I don’t believe the bracket was ever undercoated as it started to bubble with rust within a year, the tunnel light also needs replacing as that has been rust coloured for a similar amount of time, plus the horns need a bit of sorting too!

Things needed pulling out from under the sofa, This meant Tilly got to explore the secret passageway via the lower route as well as from the top. This always scares me as I’m afraid to close the sofa up in case she was just in the wrong place and I end up chopping her in half. She never listens to my concerns, she’s just too eager to squeeze through any gap!

The kitchen was all packed up, I weighed out enough rice to go with the last of the chilli tonight so nothing needed to hang around apart from breakfast stuff. Even Tilly was in finishing things off mode, the last pouch of pink food served up for ding ding this evening.

Quite a busy day all round.

0 locks, 0 miles, 1 boat hooked up, 1 van, 30 litres cat litter, 1 delivery, 1 van 3/4s packed, 1 grab rail touched up, 1 smile removed, 1 pram hood back as it should be, 0 pink food left, 2 glasses of wine enjoyed.

Freedom! 17th October

Opposite Sainsburys to above Cooper Bridge Lock 1, Huddersfield Broad Canal

Sunshine! Wonderful sunshine, just a shame we were still coughing. Last night it had rained, more so than it had during the day. We got ourselves ready to push off and awaited our plus 1.

A couple walked up, warning us of a very leaky lock ahead for us on the broad canal. They’d ended up doing the lock backwards as they’d been afraid of the water sinking their boat. Quite new to boat life they had plenty to talk about. Paul arrived so we made our excuses and pushed off, we hoped to cover quite a few miles today to catch up on ourselves.

Paul walked ahead to lift Locomotion Bridge. Key of power turned the barriers are manual, then a press of a button has the road lift up and above for us to pass under. Four cars held up and a few cars turned round.

Onwards to tackle the Broad locks. Today Paul and I would work the locks and leave Mick on board to negotiate the cill and getting round from behind the closed bottom gates. Above the top lock was a mass of duck weed, this would mean we’d need to open a second gate as just one was likely to not go fully into the recess due to the amount of weed in the way.

With Oleanna’s bow tucked in behind a bottom gate, stern over to the other side she fits down these locks quite well, care required when you first start to empty them to make sure the stern is clear of the cill. Paul and I would stay until Oleanna’s bow had crossed over from one side of the lock to the other to go through the open gate, then one of us would walk on ahead to start setting the next lock.

Gradually as we worked our way down the duck weed got less. Long pounds we’d catch a ride for, shorter ones my walking pole came in handy. A few locks were full already, one with two paddles left up. One wound down easily, the other was very awkward and wouldn’t budge. Paul tried. We opened the gate fully so should he have to force it and then step back he’d be landing on dry land rather than the canal. It shifted thankfully and we could carry on our way.

The leaky lock we’d been warned about was leaking, closing the stern doors would help keep Mick’s legs dry and hopefully give the stern a bit of a rinse off at the same time. One of the locks was very Very full, constantly being topped up from above, water flowing over the top gates and then in turn over the bottom gates. Once empty it took Paul and I quite some umph to get the bottom gates open, but we got there in the end.

Mick had been using the bow thruster to get out from behind the gates, it hadn’t sounded too happy at one lock, that was because the fuse was about to blow. So he took the opportunity of the very full lock to head to the bow and change the fuse in the bow thruster locker. We still have a spare, just in case and will seek out another as soon as we can.

No new notices had appeared in our inbox from CRT this morning regarding the Calder. But Mick checked on line the existing thread that seems to get updated, yet not sent out as an email.

17/10/2024 03:04 The following flood gates/locks are closed;

Ledgard Flood Lock, Anchor Pit, Cooper Bridge, Thornes Flood Gates, Wakefield Flood Lock, Longcut/Thornhill Flood Lock, Battye Flood Gates, Greenwood Flood Gates.

Ahh! This would hamper our plans for reaching Dewsbury today! River levels were checked and yes there had been a big spike overnight, just starting to come down. We hoped things were improving and might be good before we reached the end of the Broad.

Lock 6 is called Ridings Lock and the bridge at it’s tail is called Ridings Bridge 9. Paul has wondered why the elaborate bridge which currently leads nowhere was called Ridings. Maybe a three thing. Riding comes from a Norse word which means a third. Maybe with the bridge being 9 and the lock being 6 this was a possible reason. I wasn’t fully convinced so later had a look at old maps of the area.

No sign of a posh house anywhere. Deighton up the hill was quite a working class area of Huddersfield. To the south of the canal was Fieldhouse Fire Clay Works. I then spotted between Deighton and the canal Riddings on the map. It looked to be fields, nothing more, maybe Riddings became Ridings at some point?

Riddings, according to the Yorkshire Historical Dictionary An assart; a piece of land cleared of shrubs and trees, found principally as an element in minor place-names from the twelfth century.

**Catching a lift on the lower longer pounds**

Onwards down the locks. Last time we were here the level in the pound between Locks 1 and 2 was quite low, today that didn’t look as if it would be a problem plenty of water coming round every bywash.

At Lock 1 the end of the Broad Canal, where it joins the Calder Hebble Navigation Oleanna pulled into the duck weed filled lock. A check of the river level board showed to be red. Paul walked up and over the bridge to see if the flood gate ahead might just be open. Sadly it was well and truly closed. There’d be no more progress today, not unless the levels dropped and the flood gate could be opened.

Time for lunch. Mick called CRT, if the flood gates reopened this afternoon, Paul would stay to help. After a lot of explaining and a phone call back we were told that the flood gate was more then likely to remain shut for the rest of the day. No point in Paul staying really. We’d confer later on this evening as to whether it would be worth him returning tomorrow. The stretch between Coopers Bridge and Wakefield is quite hard to check by foot or bike to keep the data for the Waterway Routes maps up to date, so Paul was hoping to hitch a ride with us.

As we’d be staying put we pulled back away from the sea of duck weed. A low bank and some friendly cover. Rules recited, surprised She remembered them! The back doors opened and Tilly was set free for the first time since leaving Marsden and the first quality shore leave since we’d arrived at the top of Diggle. This was well and truly worth SHOUTING about! Three hours of Freedom AT LAST!!!

About an hour after we’d moored up, Oleanna started to move. The lock above was being emptied. A boat came into view, I popped my head out of the hatch to let them know the river was on red and the flood gates were closed ahead. A bit of conferring was done, they then reversed up behind us, joined by a boat they’d been sharing the locks with.

During the evening the levels looked to still be coming down, a quick confer with Paul, we’d carry on as planned until we heard differently, hopefully we wouldn’t!

9 locks, 3.5 miles, 1 destination for yesterday almost reached, 1 lift bridge, 4 held up, 2 much water, 1 stubborn paddle, 1 sunny day, 1 river on red, 1 fizzing pylon, 3 hours freedom, 1 very LOUD cat, 1 chocolate boat biscuit each, 1 plan made, 12 fingers 4 paws crossed for tomorrow.