Floating Tea Pot

We were cycling in Nantwich, Cheshire on a misty morning last week, about to get onto the towpath of the Shropshire Union Canal. It was busy - Easter holidays and boats were on the move. This one was about to pass below us as we watched from the Marsh Lane Bridge.

We were beginning to think of coffee, maybe stopping at the Basin End (renamed Nantwich Harbour or some such) where there's a small café, or going back along Welsh Row into town. But suddenly before us was a boat that made us pull up sharp and lay down our bikes on the grass beside the path.

My word, just the ticket! In we climbed, lifting the protective polythene over the entrance (this being an unreliable climate) and going down the steps into the long cabin of the narrow boat. It was warm and cosy, and someone was in the galley at the end.

That's the galley at the end - it's all dark in the photo, but Ray was in there starting the coffee.

Here's the boat in the other direction.

We had one of those conversations you usually have in Ireland where you find lots of people you know in common. Ray spent years coming to Ireland fishing with his mates, staying up around Lough Ree to fish the Inny, Dromod and Rooskey, or in Abbeyshrule on the Royal Canal where my friend grew up. Ray knew my friend's uncle (of course), and many of the places we've spent days on Winter Solstice.

You can see more about this boat and its restoration on the Tea Junction website. An interesting story.

After our coffee and conversation we cycled up to the next bridge.

Then the one after that and onto the road where the traffic was completely mad. Much nicer to be on a bike, or even better on a boat on the canal.

This is not a gap year

There has been a gap, however. It's been an odd and somewhat stressful year so far due to a sick parent and too much money given to Ryanair. It's also become exciting as we have a Sale Agreed on our house and it's all systems go trying to get the new place ready to move into. Or at least to camp outside in the camper van - it will probably come to that as the buyers have their house sold and are renting.

This is the state the house is in at the moment:

There's works been going on all around the house putting in the pipes etc for the waste water system - the septic tank is arriving on Monday. Jan and John Paul have been working away with the digger and measuring devices.

And Joe has been keeping an anxious eye.

Health n Safety wouldn't be too happy with this:

Ladders straddling the trench, three legs only on land. But needs must. The sofit (I think) had to be put up so the garage was empty for the guys who are going to be doing the plastering to put stuff. Or something.

And the inside, pre-plaster. This is the kitchen.

And the upstairs sitting room.

Better go and get some fuel in now - there's rain promised, and there's a barrel rolling around in the wind on the lawn. Not sure where that's come from.

Snow, wind and steamed up glasses

So we woke up to this this morning:

From the kitchen window

Ditto

From the bedroom window

 

Up the track

From the road above - our house is pretty much in the middle of this photo

It's now mid afternoon and the snow has gone from the trees. Still plenty on the ground, but it's melting fast. Instead we're now on Red Alert for high winds coming this evening. Hope I get back from teaching flute in Scarriff before it hits.

We were supposed to be going up to the new house this morning to meet the carpenter, but we were delayed by the snow. As always it's the steep hills that are the problem. Anyway, back when we had the last Big Snow Joe bought chains for the car. Time to try them out. It took a good half hour and both of us to work out the instructions, but finally one front wheel had a chain on it. We decided that would be enough and set off. Out we went, slowly, onto the road where the snow had turned all slushy. No problem after that. Off with the chain and onto the house in Derrycon.

We were working in Derrycon on Monday and yesterday, putting rock wool insulation into the gaps between timbers on the internal walls and ceilings. This is the ceiling in the kitchen showing the gaps.

The rock wool isn't for heat retention but as a silencer between rooms, and the difference is tremendous. Walking around upstairs on the uninsulated floorboards was rackety and loud. Insulated bits were quiet. Simple as that.

Not a nice job though. Rock wool isn't as nasty to work with as fibreglass insulation, but it still makes you itch. The first day I wore overalls, lots of thermal underwear and woolly things, a face mask, a hat. I was too hot, but that was easy to deal with. Off with the woolly jumper etc. The main problem was the glasses steaming up because of the face mask - even though there's a nose clip, air escapes upwards and steams you up. In the end Joe and I both had to take off the glasses.

In order to place the correct size piece of insulation into the wall or ceiling they of course had to be cut. This involved measuring. But neither Joe nor I could see as we'd had to take off our glasses. We developed a method where the one up the ladder measured the gap and handed the tape down to the other, finger gripping the 40 cm mark or whatever. I was working in inches and Joe in centimetres - I could just about see the inch marks but not the centimetres.

When we got home after the first day we'd completed the study and some of the ceiling in the hall:

But we both had really itchy eyes. Boiled and cooled teabags on the eyes helped, but we were going to have to use goggles, especially as we'd be doing a big stretch of ceiling next.

The trouble is with goggles you steam up as with glasses, but years ago when I had a moped we used to put a bit of washing-up liquid on the visor of the helmet to stop this. Indeed it does stop you steaming up. Instead everything is smeary. However I did discover an interesting side effect. I have astigmatism, so writing and numbers are double or in triplicate. If I look at the figure 1 it's unclear whether it's a 1, 11 or 111. But with the smeary goggles the numbers magically revealed themselves.

Still steamed up in the end though. Amazing how much you can see even when half your vision is blocked.

Still a way to go. Let's hope the wind allows us out tomorrow.

Ta Daaah!

We have a new house. The outside, anyway. We love it. Here's the tour. A fairly traditional front:

Then round the corner to the gable end:

The somewhat ecclesiastical window has our bedroom behind it. A friend of ours visiting from Wales, who's training to be a Baptist minister, said it made him feel very at home.

The drainpipe is not an unusual feature but was a temporary measure.

The one below was taken a few weeks ago when the plaster was still wet and the edging to the flat roof had yet to be finished. Joe's doing a bit of guttering fixing up there. 

This is one of the views from the roof terrace - posh name for the flat roof, but it will have decking and a glass surround. Not sure if it's my eyes or if this is a bit out of focus.

And here's the south-facing side. All that glass for the solar gain. The upstairs glass has a sitting room behind it. The downstairs will be the kitchen. And there's a rainbow growing out of the roof! Only just noticed that.

And last week the insulation went in. It's cellulose, another name for shredded newspapers, and it gets everywhere. This is Adrian with the last bag of the stuff. You have to wear face masks when going inside as there are tiny bits of newspaper floating through the air. I like the idea of my walls being filled with all those newspaper stories.

Inside it's tricky to get a clear view of some of the rooms - there's piles of plasterboard obstructing everything. But here's an idea. Downstairs sitting room:

Upstairs sitting room:

All we have to do now is sell our present house. We've had two sales not go through as the buyers haven't been able to sell their own houses.

In the meantime I have two lovely gardens to work on. Lots of black polythene down now. I'm going to plant potatoes in there next spring. I've already put in overwintering onions and garlic.

Cover up

We took the scenic route to get to the north east over the long October weekend so we could put the covers on the boat - we're leaving her up near Carrick-on-Shannon for the winter. We were in the camper van which has an astonishing amount of storage space, especially if you use the shower area as a very big cupboard. Out of the boat came duvets, cushions, memory foam mattress toppers, tea cosy, wooden spoons, charts and books, all carried across the handily laid shortcut across the gap between pontoon and grass.

Putting on the covers takes longer than you expect, even when everything goes according to plan. It's these things that make it so tricky:

Shock cords that are easy to pop over the knobby bit that sits just under the rubbing strake (undoubtedly it has a proper name but I can't even think what to Google to find it) when you're standing on the jetty, but devilishly difficult when you're kneeling on the deck and feeling for said knobby thing while trying to stretch the elastic over it.

Joe began that job up at the bow where there's a nice broad deck, but when I offered to do a bit he said yes rather too quickly. The closer you get to the stern the narrower the deck, difficulty compounded by the stanchions linked by chains that hem you in ever tighter to the coach house roof. There are many of these shock cords.

The job was almost finished in a stiff breeze and sunshine, but the black clouds approached. Hurry hurry.

Not quick enough.

But finally the back was zipped up and the final touch of the piece of twist wire secured the zip.

At which point we decided we needed to put on a spring to stop the boat drifting back and scraping herself against the pontoon. The spare line was in the cockpit.

All wired up again.

Deck shoes still inside.

All wired up ...

You get the idea.

But finally all done. Winter Solstice tucked in for the winter.

Pumping out in October sunshine

Friday evening, Dromod, eating pizza at Harkins. Saturday morning we moved the boat to that dreaded part of the harbour, the pumpout station. We hadn't tried the Dromod pumpout before, but I wasn't hopeful. Would it work? Would we remember which way to set the lever on the holding tank? Would there be shouting? I was expecting No to the first question, but if yes then No to the second. Yes to the third whatever.

So up came the seat in the saloon.

Aoife retreated to her bed at this stage, tail down.

Joe was ready, holding tank pipe secure in the hole in the deck. The card had been put into the slot in the pump out machine and credit taken. The readout in the little screen prompted me to press the button on the right. And away we went.

 Stuff was coming out. I pressed the button for another eight minutes. Stuff was coming out. Then no stuff. Joe reckoned it was pumping water from the river now, so time to switch The Lever. There was to be a system. I'd switch the lever and Joe would tap on the window once for OK and twice for Not OK. I switched to the left. There was a wild scuttering on the window pane. I switched it back to the centre and scrambled out of the boat.
'What??! You said you'd knock once or twice.'
'I panicked. Try the other way.'
Back in the boat, switched to the left. Four knocks on the window. Back to centre. Out of the boat.
'So what this time? You said ...'
'I know! I'm not sure.'
'The noise changed. It sounds like it's really doing something.'
'OK switch it back.'

So this is the record of what we did. The centre to start, then switch to the right.

The answers to the questions turned out to be Yes, Kind Of and No. The best result ever. Hire boats having to use the pump outs is, I'd suggest, what's made the real difference.



The astonishing weather continued into Saturday. Here's Winter Solstice in Drumsna shortly after we pulled in. It was late morning. By evening the harbour was chocka. I'd say people are putting off lifting out their boats, keeping their fingers crossed it continues like this until the October weekend.





There's a curious phenomenon in some of the Leitrim harbours, especially noticeable in Drumsna. People were drawing up in cars, filling containers with water and driving off again. The Shannon, of course, is the border between counties all the way up the country, and here it divides Leitrim from Roscommon. Much of this part of Roscommon doesn't have a clean water supply - there's been a boil notice in place for the last couple of years in some areas. So people come to Leitrim for their drinking water.

Wonder what will happen when water is metered.

Perhaps at least then the glorious new body of Irish Water will sort out the Cryptosporidiosis problem in Roscommon. I suspect the put-upon residents are not holding their collective breath.

Cat-on-a-boat

This was a visitor to Winter Solstice on Saturday night. We were in Richmond Harbour in County Longford in a village that is signposted as Cloondara and Clondra. These signs appear right next to each other on the way into the village. Whatever the spelling it's a sweet spot on the river, although slightly marred by the noise of the traffic on the N5 (just need to go and check that's the number of the road). Tis indeed the N5, which passes through Tarmonbarry also spelled Termonbarry.

The cat was very vocal and had no worries at all about the small dog. Aoife gave it a couple of sniffs then went and put herself to bed. The cat was too confident by half for her. It settled down for a nap once it had checked if there was any food available (there wasn't ).

The weather was unbelievable for the end of September. As we left Richmond Harbour I was stripping off clothes ready for the lock. Yes I know that sounds odd but it can get very hot down in the slime of a lock with the sun beating on the boat and no breeze.

Once we'd done the cycle / car thing, had ice creams, brought the boat to Dromod, we gazed in wonder at the Mediterranean-like lake.

Joe and Aoife watched the boats in the harbour:

We went to order pizza from Harkins Bistro, the little restaurant right beside the harbour. I just opened their website to get the link, came back to the blog when music came from nowhere. I wish they wouldn't do that. It's startling to say the least.

The great thing about the all-new pizza menu at Harkins is that they do gluten-free ones. Amazing! So a pizza apiece and a house salad. We said we were on a boat right there and they said they'd bring it down to us. Half an hour later (they'd warned us they were busy) and I look out of the boat to see the owner and a waitress.
 'The plates are very hot!' said the owner. Jesus. Rush into the boat for the oven gloves. I wasn't expecting this. Takeaways normally come in boxes. The salad was in one of those wonky bowls that are higher on one side than the other. Some service.

Here's the bistro, umbrellas up, outside tables busy.

The pizzas were good. So was the salad. And look at that sky.

Sorry to go on about the weather but really.

Cold at night though. The range is lighting tonight for the first time this year, even though it was sunny all day. I suppose winter will be here soon enough.