Philosophical musings

It took me a while, on the Oxford canal, to realize that the trip was different from a holiday. Usually when you are on holiday you have an agenda to follow - places to get to, things to see, things to do - that keeps you busy each day.

But when you really have no time constraint things are very different. When you get up in the morning (I like doing than but I know that others don't) you really don't have to go to the next village today. You could do it tomorrow, or the day after, or next week.

So then what do you do with your time? I think the answer is to distinguish between trip days and other days. What would you be doing if you were not on a trip? Well, do those things on the other days.

This is not as simple as it sounds. It is easy to be distracted by your strange surroundings, which look like holiday but have to be treated as home. And, of course, you may have forgotten to bring some essential item that you cannot easily get within walking distance of Allen's Lock. (I haven't got a bicycle yet, but even that is not ideal for collecting large sheets of plywood - especially if it is windy.)

The cat was in the Severn Valley Railway station at Kidderminster - making sure the visitors did not make off with one of the exhibits. (I went to Kidderminster by car, but it is on a canal, I believe.)

Fish and Batteries

The long delay is only partly due to poor internet access while I was traveling.

The most interesting technical thing on my trip on the Oxford canal was battery charging. After a lot of interesting surmises about complex problems I eventually came to the conclusion that my batteries are no good because they take far too long to recharge. The net effect was that I was running my engine for a few hours each day just to add current to the batteries at a rate of about 20 amps. At about 1 litre of diesel per hour that is expensive electricity. I am now searching for affordable new deep cycle batteries.

Another side of this puzzle is the large amount of power used by my inverter (to operate my 230v fridge freezer) even when the fridge is not running. I almost convinced myself that I should have paid the extra £400+ for a 12v fridge. But if I replace the batteries and need less generator hours the power saving from the 12v fridge will not justify the higher price.







The last few days have been very hot in Braunston and the fish have been swimming near the surface where you can see them. I have been amazed at the huge numbers - not just of tiny tiddlers, but also of medium and large fish. They are very hard to photograph as I don't have a polarizing lens for my camera. And there was one enormous fish - bigger than anything I have seen on a fishmongers slab.