Bumble Hole

Here I am Rune

Distance 4.3 miles

Total 881 Locks 40 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1266.4miles

 

A bit of a late update today since I’ve been a bit tied up watching two excellent games of Rugby (in preparation for the main event of Ireland v England tomorrow afternoon. Today’s cruise went pretty much according to plan from Merry Hill to Park Head to view the south portal of Dudley Tunnel and then back here to Bumble Hole. The initial plan for tomorrow is to go back to Hawne Basin to refuel and to get a gas bottle and then return here to Bumble Hole. It all rather depends on what the weather decides to do tomorrow as to whether the plan comes to fruition since the forecast is for quite strong winds which may make manoeuvring in the basin a bit difficult, we’ll have to see how things pan out.

'Rune' at Park Head

Last day at Merry Hill

Here I am Rune

Distance 0 miles

Total 874 Locks 40 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1262.1miles

Right, after another ‘day of rest’ today we are definitely on the move tomorrow. If all goes to plan the lunchtime stop will be Park Head to view this end of Dudley Tunnel and then afterwards on to Bumble Hole for the overnight stop. Nothing of any great note to report today simply finished ‘provisioning up’ to see us for the next week’s food. Have quite enjoyed mooring at Merry Hill but have to admit that I’m now quite keen to be on the move again.

Another day at Merry Hill

Here I am Rune

Distance 0 miles

Total 874 Locks 40 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1262.1miles

Another standstill day today (and probably another one tomorrow) to enable me to complete all of the boaty sort of tasks. We now have a pretty much full water tank, enough coal for another 12 days, most of the rubbish disposed of and stocked up on shopping. Even if we’d been moving we’d probably have given this morning a miss since it was pretty wet, not really stopping raining until after lunch.

At the moment the cunning plan is to stay here until probably Saturday then move to Bumble Hole (via Park Head to see the other end of Dudley tunnel) and then head back through towards New Main Line on Monday as we’d like to travel along Wednesbury Oak Loop to the Bradley Workshops (where they make the gates for the Locks). This can only be done during business hours Monday to Friday since the winding hole at Bradley Workshops is only available at the time, as we found out last time we travelled the Oak Loop we could only go as far as the first winding hole or else we’d have had to reverse about a mile back from the workshops and narrow boats are a real pig to reverse.

Merry Hill (and washing machine disposal!)

Here I am Rune

Distance 0 miles

Total 874 Locks 40 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1262.1miles

As expected, today was quite hard work and I haven’t completed all of the tasks yet, we still need to get some more coal. Probably the most difficult task was getting rid of the old washing machine. It’s funny how when you don’t live ‘conventionally’ i.e. home address with a car, everything becomes a bit more difficult. If living in a house you just go onto the Argos website, order your washing machine, they contact you to tell you when it is going to be delivered, turn up at the appointed hour (well sometimes!) drop of your new machine and, for a fee, carry off your old one, job finished. When living on a boat the first problem is that they won’t deliver to anywhere without a postcode. That was the reason we had it delivered to the shop (even though it said on the website that washing machines weren’t available for in store collection). Overcoming that hurdle and getting the machine delivered and then carrying it up to the boat the next issue is how to get rid of the old one.

This wasn’t as straightforward as I had hoped it might be. To begin with the scrap metal places who accept such items won’t collect from the towpath (again you need an address with post code). To overcome this I put the washing machine on the cycle trailer and took it to the scrap metal yard. The problem then was that they needed a car registration number to accept stuff delivered from the public to the yard. I explained that my car was 200 miles away in Torquay but I could give them a registration number if they needed one. No this wasn’t acceptable since the yard is covered by CCTV cameras and the car must be seen coming into the yard. I asked if I took the Washing machine back to the boat would they collect it? Answer, ‘no we only collect from houses with a postcode’. They explained that it was all to deter theft to which I pointed out that anyone stealing washing machines to take for scrap really wasn’t very good at crime since my little one weighed 48 kilos (for which I was eventually given £3) and certainly wouldn’t make much of a living at it. After a bit more banter they finally agreed to accept it but, ‘….just this one time…’, I’m rather hoping that I’m not going to be making a habit of taking washing machines for scrap!

How to shift washing machines on the cut!

Merry Hill

Here I am Rune

Distance 0.7 miles

Total 874 Locks 40 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1262.1miles

Today was a day of fairly hard work if I may say so. Started off up the Delph flight (7 today plus the 1 we did yesterday) with the crew still suffering from a bad back so had to do all the locks myself. Once again luck was on our side since they were all in our favour so there was no preparing the locks before entering. Weather wasn’t too clever since it would best be described as ‘changeable’, and it was changing almost by the minute, sun followed by hail/sleet followed by rain followed by sun, no sooner did I put my raincoat on than the sun came out again and I would be sweating in it. 

We got to Merry Hill in time to collect the new washing machine from Argos but getting it back to the boat wasn’t exactly straightforward since the shop would only allow their sack-truck to be used in the car park. I had a contingency plan of using my cycle trailer to haul it up the hill to the boat, and this method worked quite well. We then needed to lift the washing machine onto the boat, again with the crew suffering from a bad back this became a one man operation but with astute use of the gangplank this was achieved. Machine is now all plumbed in and ready to go for its maiden wash tomorrow morning, if all goes well the old washing machine will be on its way to the recycling depot before lunch. In fact the old cycle trailer is in for a fair bit of use tomorrow since we are going to need to refill with water (about 250 litres I would guess) we have two elsan cassettes to empty and probably about 40kg of coal to go and get, and that doesn’t include carting the old washing machine off to the recycling depot, it’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.