My Favourite Finds v18

Not done one of these for a while! Not that I've been unable to find things - I've been to Camden's charity shops and have a few purchases lined up for when I get time and weather for photos - I don't have time to stand around taking pictures of myself anymore and even if I did it's been too cold for outdoor pictures! But photographing shoes is easy and these are lovely. I've been looking for a pair of sensible lace up shoes for a while. These are so comfy, even with my wide, buniony feet, and I could not resist! They're from Clarks, so really well made, too!

 

Clarks shoes, RSPCA shop, £7

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Lucky Duck, 48ft trad stern

Our boat, based in Cambridge, is for sale

Lucky Duck is a 48ft traditional stern narrowboat first registered in 1986, with a reliable BMC 1.8 engine. It sleeps 2 + 2 on a sofa bed, makes a great live-aboard boat and is well adapted to coping with being away from shore power. Easy to handle and well laid out inside with a traditional 'saloon forward' layout, it would be a good starter boat for anyone looking to begin a life afloat, or enjoy some holiday cruising. All systems are in good working order.

Last backed August 2011, BSC until 2016. Hull surveyed 2013 and available for viewing.

Guide Price: £23,500 ono
If you think you may be interested, please get in touch! We'd be happy to show you round.

Accomodation
Starting at the bows, there is a large storage locker, with water tank below, and an outdoor space, with a vinyl cratch cover. Rolling up the the sides makes this a lovely space to sit outside in the summer. In winter there is plenty of room for fuel storage without resorting to using the roof. The two 19kg gas bottles are also out here. 

Entry into the cabin is through a pair of beautiful unique curved metal framed doors with glass panels. The boat is lined with a combination of T&G and plywood, with polystyrene insulation. It was completely refitted by the previous owner, with new wood floors, in 2006. Moving back through the boat there is a comfy living room, with shelving, a sofa bed which folds out to be a double bed, a fold out table and some fixed seating with storage under. The boat is heated by the Morso Squirrel solid fuel stove, with a back boiler to a radiator in the bedroom.

In the kitchen, there is a domestic sized gas oven and four hobs, a very efficient Shoreline 12V fridge freezer, a sink and lots of storage space. All the oak cupboard doors open to reveal sliding drawers, maximising storage and access. There is a wet room with a Morco instantaneous gas water heater (no need to run the engine to get hot water!), a shower, sink, and a Portpotti toilet.

The bedroom again maximises storage space by having a double bed which folds away in seconds on gas struts when not in use. Underneath is a top access wardrobe, lots of deep shelves for storing books and clothes, as well as two chests of drawers, and a step with a lid for even more storage. Part of the space under the bed used to be a desk, and could be easily converted back. Up the step and through the door is the engine room, housing the reliable, skin tank-cooled BMC 1.8 diesel engine, which has been regularly serviced and run. I 2009, we had the engine re-aligned and new skin fittings installed by Fox's boatyard at March. Its relatively short length for this size engine means that it is a nippy boat. 

Electricity 
The battery bank consists of 4 100Ah Elecsol deep cycle semitraction batteries and a dedicated started battery, which are all two years old, but have been well-looked after and continually charged by the 136W solar panel on the roof, which charges the batteries through a top of the range MPPT (maximum power point tracking) regulator. There is also an alternator and a 20A charger which can be used to charge the batteries when connected to a generator or shore power. A 2000W inverter allows you to use mains powered devices when not connected to a shoreline or generator

The boat has a 12V circuit which runs the fluorescent lights, water pumps, fridge and 12V sockets, and a 240V system which runs additional lights, and power sockets. The solar panel means that from March until September, the boat is entirely self sufficient for electricity, This is great for live-aboards, but also means peace of mind if you are leaving the boat for extended periods of time, as you know the batteries will be full when you get back.

Exterior
We repainted the boat (taken back to bare metal) in 2011, and refreshed in Summer 2012, using Craftmaster Grand Union Blue on the sides and International Atlantic Grey on the roof. We don't know who the boat is built by. Best guess is a Colecraft hull with a bespoke, one off cabin. The roof is double skinned as it seems to have been extended from a cruiser stern to a trad stern at some time in the past, and a new roof put over the whole lot. The hull was blacked in 2011 with two sprayed on coats of International Intertuf.  There is some minor, historic, pitting on the hull which the survey picked up, but this has not advanced  at all in the five years since the previous survey, so are not of concern. All mooring lines would be included in the sale. There is a double skinned chimney.

Bilges/Ballast
The boat is ballasted with shingle in the cabin bilge and with moveable paving slabs for adjustment in the bows.

Mooring
The mooring is unfortunately non-transferable, and Cambridge City Council run a waiting list for the moorings we are currently on. However, there are other moorings in the Fens, with public transport  and road connections to Cambridge. The river Cam is connected to the rest of the system via the Ouse, Middle Level and Nene, and we'd be happy to help with route planning and moving the boat. 

 

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Breakfast on the Go

I travel to and from London a lot and it's nice to have a proper breakfast but sometimes I am in a rush, and I hate buying things at the station - so expensive! So, I've started bringing a 'breakfast jar' filled with something healthy and tasty, made up the night before.

Yesterday morning's breakfast on the train:

Layers:

--top--
honey
muesli
greek yoghurt
banana slices
honey
muesli
--bottom--

yum!


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River Cam - Gold Licences

When I posted about the licence fee changes coming to the Cam I suggested that Gold licence holders would probably have to pay additionally to visit the Cam, but I wanted to confirm this with the Conservancy.

Well, it seems that they will indeed be doing that, but not until 2013. So this year, your Gold licence will still be valid to visit the Cam. (see the Press Release). Hope to see some of you visiting before the additional fee comes in next year!

This issue is also featured on p92 of this month's edition of Towpath Talk, along with links to us, Pippin and Valerie!

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London Adventure 2

Some more photos from our trip to London last week. It was a distinctly river themed day - we started with a wander round Shoreditch then headed London Bridge and walked along to the Design Musuem at Shad Thames, stopping to look at the moorings there on the way - they even have a bike barge! Then it was down to Greenwich for a picnic in the park. We took a Thames Clipper back, picking it up opposite Poplar Rowing Club (now there's a bunch of loonies, rowing on the Tidal Thames, out where the Clippers go so fast!). 

A great day out!

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Cooking on the Solid Fuel Stove

One of the great things about living afloat is that most boats have a built-in slow cooker in the form of a solid (or diesel) fuelled stove. During the winter, if you want to stay warm, and you don't have central heating then it's pretty much on all the time so you can always slow cook soups, stews and casseroles when it's cold. 

I don't use this method of cooking often enough but when I do get around to planning a meal in advance, it's great. The other day I cooked a clootie dumpling on the stove, and at the weekend my friend was visiting in the evening so I had the afternoon to leave a stew cooking. 

At lunch time, I went out and bought the ingredients. I went to A Waller & Son, butchers on Victoria avenue for some beef skirt (perfect for casseroles and stews) and then to the Radmore Farm shop on Chesterton Road for the veg. Both shops are no more than 5 minutes from home - we consider ourselves very lucky to have such great local shops close by. 

Ingredients:

beef skirt/stewing steak

red onion

carrots

swede

butternut squash

potatoes

beef stock

red wine

rosemary

tomato puree

lemon zest

Fry the onions in a big pan, then add the beef to seal the meat. Fill pan with chopped veg then add stock, tomato puree and wine (I'm not giving quantities here because it depends on the size of the pan but I used roughly 1 part wine to 4 parts stock). Add a sprig of rosemary, put the lid on and leave on the top of a ticking over stove for 6 hours. Or use a slow cooker if you're not lucky enough to live afloat! When ready to serve add lemon zest, and more chopped fresh rosemary.

It was very nice - the meat was all soft and fell apart easily. We ate it washed down with cider from the big jar of Weston's Old Rosie that our friend brought over. Dangerous stuff at 7.5%, but very tasty!

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London Adventure 1

James recently finished his first long school placement (he now has a few weeks back in lectures until the final one) and I finished writing a paper, so we decided to celebrate by staying over in London and having a day out together.

I was at UCL working until 5, when James took the train down to London. We dropped our things off at our hotel in Liverpool Street - we stayed at a great hotel, part of the expanding Tune chain. Their business plan is a really good quality, clean, compact room with no frills - so you don't pay for TV, wifi, soap, towels etc unless you want to. This means that you can stay in a stylish central London hotel for the price of a scruffy B&B.  Book in advance and you can stay for as little as £40 for a double room.

So, once we had checked in and dropped off the bags, we were free to wander about London and explore the East End to our heart's content. First, we stopped off in Brick Lane for a cheap and cheerful curry then wandered south towards the river. We emerged from residential Wapping onto the river just near the Hermitage moorings downstream of Tower Bridge. We sat on a bench just there for a while, dreaming of one day owning a historic sea-going barge, and how lovely it would be to moor on the Thames. They even get a residential address - 16 Wapping High Street! They sometime hold open days there, which might be interesting to visit. 

 

Next stop, a few minutes down the Thames Path, at Fish Wharf, are the stone benches designed by my friend Priscilla. We always stop there if we are in the area. Three years after their unveiling they still look wonderful, a tribute both to her design and the work of the apprentice stonemasons who made them. I had also been reading the book James bought me for Valentine's Day: Just My Type, about fonts, so I was on a bit of a font-hunt. Having learned that the City of London uses Albertus on all its signs I set out to photograph one.

Then we headed into central London to wander around Theatreland and Soho. We stopped to look in the window of Arthur Beale's incongruous chandlery on Shaftsbury Avenue, mostly frequented by those looking for ropes to use in theatre sets. We stopped to get some treats in Patisserie Valerie - an eclair for James and a cup of mandarin sorbet for me. After that, our feet were tired so it was back to the hotel to get some rest ready for another day of exploration.

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Lyra Loves...

Something to make you smile today, no sappy hearts to be found here! 

Lyra eating spinach: one of her favourite foods.

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Cracking!

On Sunday, we decided to forgo a trip to the waterpoint, but our new neighbours on nb Silicis had to make the trip down there. Being the helpful sort that he is, James offered to go along and help them break the ice and moor up when they got there. They were the first boat to break through the ice and it made a fantastic sound! 

This photo pretty much sums up the rowing options over the last few days!

In the evening as temperatures dropped again, we were cosy indoors with pie and mash and Hustle on iPlayer.

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Locked in the Ice

It's rare for the Cam to freeze over completely and even when it does, the flow keeps it from getting thick enough to remain throughout the day. But last night, temperatures in Cambridge dropped to -13.8 degrees below freezing and the river was properly frozen over, not just a little skim of ice but centimeters thick (for canal dwellers that probably sounds thin, but for us river dwellers, it's rare to see it this thick!). At 11am it was still bank to bank and not showing signs of melting!

The chunks on the surface are from some of the Blues rowers who were breaking up the chunks at the edge, and skimming them across the surface. the sound of the ice breaking, skimming over the surface and hitting the opposite bank (or boats) was so noisy! I don't think they realised that the noise traveled so well through the ice and to the hulls of the boats!

This morning, James went off to coach an erg session, leaving me snuggled up in bed with Lyra. He stopped back afterwards to pick up a hat and them went to help (big) James with some gardening. On the way out (I didn't realise at the time) but he locked me in! So I had to ring around my boater friends to find someone who was about and close enough to come and let me out - we have a combination padlock. Thankfully Charlotte on Felicity was close by and unlocked the door for me!

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Snow Fun

Cambridge has been looking especially beautiful in the snow, and Midsummer Common has been a Mecca for snowman building fun. On Sunday evening we went to the waterpoint (it was getting a bit urgent!) and it was suprisingly not a problem at all. The snow was fluffy and sticky rather than slippery, but I did clear it off the steps as best I could to avoid them becoming dangerous.

But the cold weather has also brought more sadness, with another body being found in the river today, this time a woman.

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