SteveO

Great account and photos. Thanks Peter!

We have an unlocked Huawei "mifi" router which I bought from Amazon for around £40. I buy prepaid data SIMs which use the Three network and which come with 3GB data and last for up to 3 months for around £12 a pop. We also have a plug-in signal booster, which allows me to get reception in poor signal areas. If you buy a portable router, make sure you get one with a socket for the booster. Prepaid SIMs are very convenient - you can top them up when the data runs out or just pop in another SIM which, paradoxically, works out cheaper. Being unlocked, you can use a SIM for the network of your choice. You can check signal coverage at your intended destination via the service provider's website. The only one I ever had problems with was a Vodafone SIM, which required me to go into the router via the Admin login and change confiiguration settings. I also found Vodafone very difficult to deal with, so gave up in the end. Just a word of caution. If you plan to use a laptop with a mi-fi device, make sure you set the wifi connection to "metered" otherwise you can rapidly blow your entire data allowance in minutes if Microsoft decides that you need a background download.

I got myself fairly badly dehydrated a few years ago whilst sightseeing in Washington DC on a cold December day. You tend to associate water loss with sweating and heat, but you can also use a huge amount of water through the nose and mouth in very cold weather. Fortunately Nik spotted what was happening - I was out of it by that time - and plied me with water and soft drinks.

Another day - well a weekend really, spent with my brother and sister and our partners. We lost our dad almost 2 years ago and our mother back in August. Our mission was to start the gargantuan task of clearing out the family home, where we were brought up and where our parents lived from 1967 up to their demise. To say that it was a difficult task is an understatement. The sheer amount of "stuff" they had accumulated over their lifetimes had to be seen to be believed and it was squirrelled away everywhere. Going through their personal effects was quite an emotional business and we all felt. at times, as though we were erasing/dismantling the lives of two of the people who had meant the most to us. However, we consoled ourselves that we still had our memories of them, and that these were more important than mere possessions. After four trips to the dump and another four to the charity shop, we had finally broken the back of the task in hand. On Sunday, we discussed the scattering of mum and dad's ashes. Dad had previously made a few suggestions for a suitable location - somewhere on the Broads, which he loved or from the top of Helvellyn - he always had a good sense of humour! In the end, we agreed that it would be appropriate to lay them to rest by the "Thinking Stone" - a large slab of millstone grit at the western extremity of their village, which overlooks the upper Shibden valley, with panoramic views over Calderdale, where my dad was born and spent most of his life. There was no time like the present, and it had stopped raining so we carried their urns to the location and scattered their ashes together in this beautiful location in a simple but moving act of respect. Lightened, we headed back to the house and prepared to go our separate ways. My brother to S, Wales, me and Nik to Kent, leaving our sister in Yorkshire. A weekend of emotional "highs" and "lows" and a lot of hard work, but it was great to reconnect with family.

We should be able to join from up t' north. Fingers crossed that my Portable WiFi thingy will work.

Got up this morning and made Mrs O a bacon butty for breakfast in Windmill Lady's not very palatial galley. I was surprised by a beautifully marked bengal cat, which was sitting on the port side deck, peering in through the galley window. He waited patiently there for several minutes and was rewarded by a few bacon scraps. He seemed to be quite at home on the boat, which I know many cats are not, All too soon, he was off on his way, having brightened the start of my day.

Sorry we missed it. We were contesting the Sene Valley Golf Club quiz with friends. 10 gruelling rounds of 10 questions. We narrowly managed to avoid winning by 1 point.

Clever piece of kit, Add a couple of strategically placed rotating brushes and you could get your bottom scrubbed as it goes. Sadly, I think there would be a long queue of worthy folks who would do anything to avoid lot more smelly diesel-powered boats scaring the birds and generally spoiling the peace and serenity of Hickling broad and Horsey Mere. Still, we can dream,

Enjoyed the 20 questions but looking forward to the quiz tonight too.

Water was very high earlier this week. It may be something to do with the big white shiny thing in the night sky at the moment.

£10 for an overnight at Salhouse, with water and rubbish disposal seems better value than £10 per night at Ranworth island where there are no facilities other than goose poo and hot and cold running mozzies.

Personally, when overnighting at Ranworth , I prefer to mud-weight.

So the next time we see a Volvo estate followed by the aroma of frying chips, we'll know who is driving. If the government gets its way on disallowing the use of red diesel for boats, I think there will be a few folks on the Broads who will change to chip oil instead of spending the £1.30+ per litre that duty paid diesel will cost.

Felbrigg is one of out favourite NT destinations. We too love the walled garden, which we have visited several times. Last time we were there it was midsummer and the hens had baby chicks - very cute. The staff used to try to keep the chickens out of the formal garden, but they now seem to have given up on that idea, which is all to the good in my view. I can vouch for the restaurant too, having sampled the NT cream teas from their on several occasions. They also do a great jacket potato with cheese - another favourite of mine. As well as the house and gardens, there are some lovely walks round the estate, taking in the ice house, an orangery, a lake, which is difficult to see from the house and the estate church. Glad you all enjoyed!

Looking good. Have you still got an air-cooled hull or has all the planking/ribs etc been sorted now? I have still got a bottle of Shepherd Neame Brilliant Ale for you, so you can pour a libation over the bows before she goes back in the water.

All set to cool down overnight. Tomorrow should be much more bearable. Apart from a lunchtime BBQ, I spent my day breaking in my new Adirondack chair, which I built from recycled decking boards. It was very pleasant in the shade, catching up on my reading, with a cold glass of lemon squash.

Sorry I had to bale out. We had company and I got told off for being antisocial.

Sainsburys are still knocking caulis out for £1. Don't believe all you read or hear.

Lovely photos, Very atmospheric skies and beautiful boats. Thanks for sharing.

I am sure that, if you strip an old British bike down, re-machine the critical components and re-assemble it carefully adding refinements such as electronic ignition and 12 volt electrics, you would be left with something that worked way better than it did in the old days. But much of the kit available at the time was so woefully poor that if you wanted a bike that was a practical proposition, you had to go Japanese or German. So much of our industry of the 1950's and 60's was killed by a toxic combination of poor labour relations, misguided and inappropriate government interference and management who were firm in their collective belief that you can make chicken soup out of chicken sh*t - hence the many, many years of under-investment in design, tooling and manufacturing process development. Where we have managed to break out of this mind-set, we have achieved great things but it is telling for me that manufacturing now forms only 10-11% of our GDP and much of this is controlled and managed by overseas companies.

In response to requests, here are some photos of the boat.

I don't think that many of the old British bikes were particularly well built or even well-engineered. I once read an article about the Triumph Meriden factory where they described the process by which crank-case castings were carefully moulded, fettled and mating surfaces ground flat. They were then chucked into a metal-wheeled hand-truck and trundled 1/4 mile over a cobbled surface to the assembly shop. I graduated to an Ariel Red Hunter which was a nice enough bike but plagued with gearbox trouble. When I took it apart I found that a selector shaft had broken. Looking at the shaft, which was about half an inch in diameter, it had two 1/4 inch cross-drilled holes in it at 90 degrees to each other and a about quarter of an inch apart. Guess where it broke? Other British bikes I had were a James, with a Villiers 197 engine - bomb proof but heavy as hell. An Ariel Leader - went like stink on the odd occasion when you could actually get both cylinders firing and a BSA Bantam - great bike, Fortunately the engine was designed by the Germans and the design taken by the Allies as part of the WW2 reparations. The same engine also went into the Yamaha 125 and a 2 stroke Harley Davidson amongst others.

My first motorbike was a cub. It was difficult to start, slow, leaked oil, broke down frequently and was generally unreliable. Nostagia can be wonderfully selective.

10ft long, 4ft 6in beam fibreglass construction. Comes with all the gear - ready to go. Can be viewed in Horning. £275 . pm me if interested.

10ft long, 4ft 6in beam fibreglass construction. Comes with all the gear - ready to go. Can be viewed in Horning. £275 . pm me if interested.