About Us

My photo
In 1977 we hired our first narrowboat from Anglo Welsh at Market Harborough.From that moment our destiny was set. In 2006 we finally purchased our own brand new 57' narrowboat which we named 'Free Spirit'. Our aim is to travel the length and breadth of all the navigable rivers and canals of the UK. This will be our story as it unfolds.

Saturday 26 December 2015

Oh dear seems the three prediction came true.

Now what was I saying about things happening in threes??? Christmas Eve night and Ian's laptop gives up the ghost. Got the startup screen up but that was it. He tried everything he could think of to get it going again, pressing the keys,  numerous restarts and almost resorting to shaking the thing but to no avail. It was dead, deceased, was no more!!! Hmmmm...Looks like I'm going to have to allow him to share mine.  This could lead to fisticuffs!!!
 Smiley

Christmas day, what a truly enjoyable  day. Got up late, cooked a full English Breakfast (photo shown on yesterdays post). Then once the pub opened we joined the masses to enjoy a drink or two. Then back to the boat to cook Christmas dinner, no turkey but chicken breasts with all the trimmings. Lovely!!!!

Off to the pub. He is happy honest.

The Christmas mooring at Coldstone.


Almost the same photo as the breakfast one but this time Christmas dinner.

So today, having had another disturbed night with Merlin bouncing against the side, we set off around 8.30ish. Another windy day which made the locks challenging. Every lock on the Tyrley Flight, Adderley flight and Audlem flight had to be filled and Ian must have walked miles by going backward and forward setting them ahead for me. Even so I rattled quite a few going in. Glad I was descending though because the amount of water flowing down them by-washes was something else! By the time we reached lock 11 I could see how exhausted Ian was. I do so wish I was fit enough to help with them and take some of the pressure off Ian. Roll on end of January when I see the consultant about my hip again. Anyway, we found suitable mooring between lock 11 and 12 and secured Merlin. Only trouble, that wind again. It is blowing side on to Merlin and although Ian has tried to rig a fender from the rope, the bank is so uneven it's not doing much good. Lets hope the met office predicted drop in wind happens earlier then later tonight!

Some photos of the journey,


It;s a selfie


Tyrley flight

Them by-washes, ferocious

Fencing all in place ready for the stoppage starting on the 4th Jan

And these locks certainly need some TLC

Another vicious by-wash on the Audlem flight

By lock 7 Audlem flight.

9 miles and 21 locks

6 comments:

Tom and Jan said...

If the laptop shows the start screen then it's probably a software problem.

Ian and Irene Jameison said...

Thanks Tom and Jan. Ian expected as much so once back on FS will see what can be done. Xx

Alan Montague said...

I just had a problem with my laptop, just showing the splashscreen (black with Lenovo logo on mine) and could not get into the Bios, I removed the hard drive and then rebooted ignoring the error message (hard drive not found) and then was able to get into Bios and reset defaults, refit hard drive, all fine after that, could be worth a try.

ditchcrawler said...

Thought you would have a bag of "essentials" that you take with you for boat moving now, fenders, best windlass, hooks etc.

Ian and Irene Jameison said...

Hello Brian, Unfortunately we haven't the room for all those things. If we were returning to the same base and back to our car it would be fine but because we have to rely on a lift back, space is limited.

Ian and Irene Jameison said...

Thanks Alan. Will give it a go.

Blog Archive