Day Six Wednesday Sept 28, Birmingham to Kingsbury Water Park, 46 lock miles (11 miles, 35 locks), 9 hours. From Birmingham along the Brum and Fazely canal, dropping away from the town centre along the Farmers’ Locks under Birmingham’s distinctive BT tower, we now have the canal system virtually to ourselves. It’s a hard, delightfully … Read more …
Day Five, Tuesday September 27, Waring’s Green to Birmingham Gas Street Basin. 14 miles, no locks, 5 hours. Quite how I thought we might be able to make it all the way to Gas Street in Birmingham yesterday, I’m not sure, as today we found ourselves moving surprisingly slowly through the southern suburbs of Birmingham … Read more …
Day Four, Monday Sept 26, Rowington Hill Bridge to Waring’s Green, 26 lock miles (seven miles and 19 locks) in six hours The ducks may stay slim, but that’s not very true of homo sapiens on the canals. Have you noticed just how many of our fellow canallers are becoming obese? (OK – the photo … Read more …
Day Three , Sunday Sept 25, bottom of Hatton Flight to Rowington Hill Bridge, 27 lock miles (21 locks and six miles) in seven hours. After a first-class night’s sleep – our guests on Molly May’s huge cabin bed at the front of the boat, and Sue and I at the back in what we … Read more …
Day Two, Saturday Sept 24, Long Itchington to bottom of Hatton Flight. 21 lock miles (10 miles and 11 locks) in five hours. Day two, Saturday, and after what Sue and I – doffing our hat to an American friend’s pronunciation – like to call a lee-jer-ly breakfast, it’s down the short Bascote Staircase (how … Read more …
Day One, Friday Sept 23, 2011, Stockton Marina to Long Itchington, 1.5 miles, 10 locks = 11.5 lock miles, 2½ hours. Stockton marina is perfectly positioned for a (reasonably) leisurely week-and-a-bit-long meander round the Warwick Ring, so we allow ourselves an easy early-afternoon Friday start on the Molly May, which since spring 2010 has been … Read more …
One mustn’t take life too seriously. If this form of house extension appeals (and it’s a lot less painful than having a Conservatory built…) then Steve Hobbs is your man, at Cotswolds Shepherd’s Huts. Read more …
The last moments seen right of nervous good health back at the end of July… I’ve been waiting to post these thoughts for four months as my left arm and hand’s ulnar nerve has begun, at last, to heal from a very nasty uncharacteristically (honest) alcohol-related, zero miles-per-hour crash in Dublin at the end of … Read more …
I thought I might post here a contribution I made this week to Climate Progress, a site I read daily and consider the best current blog on the science and politics of Climate Change. The post was in response to some (partly but not entirely justified) sharp criticism of a BBC piece by my old … Read more …
It’s not the most comprehensive of packages, but Deutsche Welle in Bonn have done an interesting job of summarising a panel on the journalism of climate change which I ran, together with Mary-Jayne Rust, in Bonn in June. With some 1400 participants registered, many from developing countries helped financially to take part by the German … Read more …