We ended our blustery day before Somerton Lock having been advised by two passing fellow boaters that the lock was a monumental experience.
Pearson’s Companion called it ‘Well, very deep’. (Seemingly less is more in descriptive terms then). We moored where the clouds looked like cartoon cotton wool puffs and tall, dark, lime – coloured grasses tapped at eye level on the ‘dining room’ window. The rain started. The forecast looked very April-esque.
The next day we found ourselves in thick rain in Somerton Deep Lock. It was a sickly dessert to our bitter main course of that morning: another mechanical failure. Mark had had a premonition of this failure and had wisely ordered The Spare Part. How grateful we were that this problem had not occurred in Deep Lock but just as I was applying the windlass to the sluice and so we hadn’t actually entered it.
Later that same day we found Dream Maker Party Boat aground on a hidden tree approaching Upper Heyford. The shipwreck hadn’t stopped the party and all passengers were maintaining their spirits as best they could with beer and wine supplements. Silber was able to pull them from the murky depths and free them to continue their voyage for which the company were grateful. And giggly.
Whilst at Banbury Mark cycled to Maplin’s on our new fold up bike which is a jolly handy thing. He was on a mission to get a solar device to feed our phones and camera and my Kindle and this he found in the shape of a ‘Freeloader’. Here it is sucking up the sun’s rays on top of the boat cocooned by the lifebuoy to ensure it doesn’t slip off. It has so far successfully charged the Kindle…..
We are yet to decide on the right rooftop solar panels for Silber but they will come. Lots of people seem to use wind turbines too (stick one on the wish list along with the compost loo). Energy consumption is an everyday discussion now we live on a boat, ‘unplugged’. We charge our laptop via the inverter as we travel (although the inverter also can be used when stationary) and this seems to be a daily necessity.
The phones can also charge this way but hopefully the Freeloader will now take on that task. We do use the laptop a lot: email contact, playing stored music (transferred from cd collection) writing this blog, specific net surfing when coverage allows (no more leisurely website hopping) and downloading daily photographs from the camera. We may also watch a dvd on it. When you live in the plugged in world you aren’t so aware of how much juice things consume. I have learnt that items with raw elements eat an awful lot of juice so we use the gas grill for toast instead of the toaster and the hairdryer is only for special occasions (maybe weddings and job interviews. So I won’t get married or find a job). We’ve never had a TV so no power loss there and we only used the vacuum cleaner we inherited with the boat twice before giving it away so no consumption there either. (We now have a sturdy bristled brush that looks very Victorian and a dustpan. We are on a mission to find a bamboo carpet beater – if you’ve finished with your’s maybe we could swap it for some sticky buns, a foot massage or a severe haircut with a battery nose hair trimmer. We await your call).
Next – We head towards Oxford, passing Bedouin Camps, ever nearer to that big River Thames!
Thanks to Donna, Mark (and Inky) for writing, and permission to publish, this.