Stories about boats and waterways
It’s time for my 2017 Grand Tour to begin! Firstly I had to put in to Hillmorton Wharf for a fix of my leaking fuel pipes on the boat’s Lister Petter LPWS4 engine, then it was off – very gently – to Braunston. This’ll be a bit of an amble for the first few days as I’m scheduled to meet someone at Kilby near Leicester in the middle of the month.
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What better day than April 1st to upload a new item for the channel, in which I take a look at some top news stories that might be doing the rounds about narrowboating and the UK canals. Ahem.
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Cast your mind back to the videos I did about buying a narrowboat and you may recall a brief mention of “share ownership” – that’s what this vlog is about. How do you own part of a boat, who else owns it, and how does the system work when it comes to using the boat?
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There is a surprising amount of unused bits of canal across the UK, in varying states of decay. In this vlog I take a look at two separate projects which are digging out and restoring parts of the original route of the North Oxford canal.
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With only a few weeks to go until I set off on my Grand Spring Tour, I’ve decided to go through the boat and check I’ve got everything I think I have. So in this video I’m rummaging around in the port side well deck locker and taking stock of what’s what. I’ll do the starboard side locker in the next vlog!
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I’ve had a few people ask how you get TV while out and about on the canals on a narrowboat so here is my quick guide to watching telly. It’s mostly just like watching TV at home but you have to muck about with the aerial when you move the boat.
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What’s it like to go out shopping for a second-hand narrowboat at a brokerage? In this video I accompany a viewer, Paul Bush, on his journey to ABNB at Crick (where I bought my boat) and chat with him as he looks over two possible canal boats.
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Can a decently-sized solar array provide enough power for day to day living on a narrowboat during the winter? There’ll be sunny days, there’ll be cloudy days, there’ll be rainy days and maybe even snow – but can the panels pull in the power? In this video, I do some sums.
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Oh the weather outside is frightful … but hopefully it’ll be much nicer in the Spring so I’ve begun planning my adventures for this year and this video is the gist of my musings.
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We’re right into the middle of winter now and unlike last year, this time it’s quite cold with overnight temperatures in the Midlands (where I’m moored) dropping as low as -7C. So although I’ve talked about my stove and the radiator system before, this is a dedicated video on the subject of narrowboat heating including various types of stove, diesel-fired radiators and insulation. Plus – there’s a very special guest apppearance from Mads and Jökull from Sail Life!
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