Retirement with No Problem

Moored Ashby Canal

A beautiful day today full of lovely warm winter sunshine, and no wind…

Just perfect for a rather lengthy walk around the area from Daddlington through Sutton Cheney and Market Bosworth also taking in Shenton Station, the southern most point of the Battlefield Line Steam Railway, which is part of the original Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway opened firstly in 1873.

It is obvious that not many people walk in this area, at times very difficult to find the correct footpaths through the fields.  Sometimes today it was very hard going crossing soaking wet loose tilled fields.  My boots grew not only upwards but all around!  Looked like I was sporting a sort of huge snow shoe, except it was mud!!

But by this afternoon, tilled fields seem to give way to pasture, and the going got good…

I felt a bit guilty when I got back five hours later… Vic had been working hard on No Problem.  Still we have the problem with the chimney, still we have tar spilling down the side of the boat.  Doesn’t matter what we seem to do we can’t cure it.  It’s to do with the tar from the wood we burn going up the chimney, cooling then spilling out and running down the side of the chimney pot.  There are sort of two chimneys, an plain inner one, and a pretty outer one.  What is spose to happen is that when the tar reaches the top of the inner chimney it’s suppose to fall back down into the chimney, but it just won’t do that, no matter what we seem to do it spills out and down the outer chimney.  Anyway today, he has the inner chimney just poking out above the outer one to see if that will do the trick!  Hard to explain to those who do not have a narrowboat!!   Anyway, I hope tomorrow not to see any tar running down the side!

He also waxed the outside paintwork.  It really could do with a repaint to be honest, but he has done a grand job today.

Some good news on the diesel front.  In 2006 we have been threatened with an increase of probably 3 times the cost of our diesel as the UK may loose its exemption that enables the duty on it to be reduced for certain uses.  Narrowboats and leisure cruising happens to be one of those uses.

In Gordon Brown’s pre budget speech…

“The UK has a number of exemptions from the Energy Products Directive that enable duty to be charged at a reduced rate on oils where they are put to certain uses. These exemptions are due to expire at the end of 2006.

While more information will be required to inform the case the UK makes to the European Commission, the Government is minded to apply for an extension of the derogations for fuel used in private air and pleasure craft navigation, liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and natural gas (NG) used as motor fuel, and waste oils reused as fuel.

The Government will issue an initial regulatory impact assessment on the effects of ending the derogation for private pleasure craft early next year. This document will then be used as the basis for further information gathering and discussions.”

This is very good news to our ears indeed.. trouble is, that although we do travel along the canal, I guess two-thirds of the time our engine is running and using diesel, it is used not for leisure but for heating or for charging our batteries.. so different duties are used by the same tankful!  It would be impossible for us to have constructed one tank for ‘pink’ diesel for heating and power and one for ‘white’ diesel for our leisure cruising, and anyway if the boatyards had to stock just white diesel the cost of it would be huge.. no match for Tesco and Asda!