London continued...

Hello again. We left off writing last October after our arrival at St. Katharine’s Dock, London, unsure of how long we’d be staying here. We soon decided that, while the opportunity is available, it would be prudent to top up our ‘cruising kitty’. To that end, we now plan to stay in London for quite some time while A goes back to IT Consulting. It was a long winter looking for work, with a number of false starts and delays, but, now a regular paycheque has started once again and it is good to be able to plan for a few purchases and be able to deal with boat repairs without worry.

We had planned to spend a couple of years in Europe and we are still doing that, just staying in one place for now. Our longer-term cruising plans are still on track and we will pick up again when the time feels right although we may now bypass the Med. It may not be much of a loss with everything we’ve been reading about draconian taxation, rules, regulations and exorbitant berthing fees there. Instead, we plan to do some land-based Europe travel as well as see more of the U.K., all the while continuing to live on our boat.

It was hard to watch the departure of our new cruising friends that overwintered with us here in London. They have now all gone and it left us feeling quite bereft as the marina now has many empty slips and feels deserted. We envy them their summer out cruising, but, know that we will be back out there again with them eventually. We look forward to seeing two, or, three boats who will be returning to London in the autumn after cruising Scotland and Norway for the summer. A few short-stay cruising boats have been coming and going, but, the summer crush hasn’t yet started, maybe because the weather hasn’t been very summerlike. We had a wonderful few days at the end of March which we timed just right for a four day trip to Edinburgh. April has been the wettest in the U.K. since records began. It has been cold, dismal and wet. Whenever there is the slightest break in the weather, we try and take advantage of it for either a day trip, or, a boat job.

Most of the major boat jobs have been put on the back burner for now until we restart cruising again. We have laid-up the engine and wish we had the space to take off and store our sails inside, but, that won’t be possible. There are a few jobs we’d like to get done though, like our never-ending brightwork which, after our snowy winter in Norway, had deteriorated really badly to the point where we are going to strip totally back (again) about ½ of it and leave it to mellow to its natural, silver patina. We’d like to maintain that beautiful, traditional, varnish-look on some of the more protected areas though and will be trying to touch it up, weather permitting. It’s seems impossible to ever get a long enough stretch of good varnishing weather here. Another job we plan to tackle is replacing our diesel stove so that, if successful, we can have a decent source of quiet heat for next winter. We plan to install a Danish Refleks heater to replace the old Dickenson which just never worked for us (burned great, but, absolutely no heat).

Now that boat jobs have slowed down and we’re not busily planning for daily cruising, we have had time to plan and enjoy a few day trips. Although we’ve seen a good part of the U.K. already, there’s always more to see and now that we no longer have a car, we’ve found foot travel to be a wonderful alternative. A website for the Saturday Walker’s Club was recommended to us and it has proven a wonderful resource (http://www.walkingclub.org.uk). They have a list of 220 walks that can be done within easy reach of London. Most are off-road walks and they wind through fields and woods on public footpaths and byways. We decided on a top twenty list that sounded appealing to us and have already done about seven, or, eight of these walks. We usually travel by train, then, walk about 8-12 miles broken with a leisurely pub lunch. Travel in the U.K. can be difficult with just a simple day out requiring a few hours of planning. The free, detailed walk directions by this club are a pleasure as they spell it all out including how to get there, history of the area, what to see and where the best place is to stop for lunch and afternoon tea. Just print, go and enjoy. Highly recommended. A few highlights have been:

1) Winchester – a hidden gem, with so much history from its ‘plague pits’ (where the plague victims were buried) to the house where Jane Austen died, to the Cathedral and many other historic sights

the famous 'Round Table' of King Arthur fame is in Winchester

2) Cambridge – heaving with tourists, but, so scenic and fun to walk in the footsteps of Woolf, Byron etc…

3) various London walks – a number of these take you to hidden places where it’s hard to believe you’re still in the City

4) seaside walks – there are many wonderful coastal walks, most of which we’re saving for the summer, but, we did do a lovely, flat walk along the Kent coastline near Herne Bay

5) Chartwell – a visit to Winston Churchill’s home of forty years

bluebells in the woods on the way to Chartwell

the gardens at Chartwell

Sheep in a field on the way to Chartwell. I don’t mind mixing in with the sheep, but, we had to go through a field with many cows/calves and one extremely large bull in it whose close proximity made me nervous. Glenn says I was being a ‘cow’ard about it, but, actually, I’m just a little ‘cow’ed by their presence.

We plan to continue with the walks, but, soon may diversify to do some cycle routes as well. This month, we plan to purchase some folding bicycles to facilitate this. On our four day trip to Edinburgh in March, we rented some to see if they would work for us and although horrifically expensive to buy, we have made it a priority to get them. It will allow us to go further/faster and extend our travels. We will have to make room for them on the boat somehow as they will be invaluable later when we’re back cruising for shopping and laundry trips as well as sightseeing.

On the Union Canal towpath near Edinburgh with the folding bikes. We did twenty-five miles on them (to Falkirk) and found them adequate for riding and easy to travel with on the bus and train

The Falkirk Wheel, a boat lift on steroids, a fascinating engineering marvel that replaced eleven locks.

Here are a few photos of some of the other trips we’ve enjoyed recently:

1. Canterbury.

gate to Canterbury cathedral

inside Canterbury cathedral

2. Edinburgh

Edinburgh castle, with a wonderful display of spring daffodils.

Edinburgh castle again with the view from Princes Street Gardens at its base.

A typical streetscape in Edinburgh’s ‘New Town’. We stayed in this area in a hotel that looked much like this row of terrace houses. We immediately picked the hotel when we found that Shackleton used to live there.

3. Rotterdam – we paid a visit to Rotterdam in February, not the best time to visit, but, we wanted to look at a boat for sale. The boat turned out to be a big disappointment, but, we had a great four day visit anyway, despite the weather which was freezing, windy and with a mix of rain/snow. We needed to rent a car to get to the boat and this was a bonus as it was so easy to get around that we saw most of the country with just a few days of touring.

At the Kinderdijk windmill site, near Rotterdam. Note the hood to keep out the freezing sleet.

At the old harbour in Rotterdam.

4. Copenhagen – don’t have any pictures from Copenhagen as we forgot the camera, but, it was a destination that we’d had on our list for a long time. A was working there for a few weeks and G visited for a weekend. It is a lovely city, very clean, bicycles everywhere and very walkable. One of the perks of A’s job is that she will be travelling and this means warm, dry hotel rooms with hot water and decent showers! It seems like such a luxury now when we have these basic amenities. A will be heading off to Bonn, Germany for her next assignment and maybe we’ll be able to spend a weekend there exploring the Rhine.