Boating season 2018

It’s mid April, over half way through the holidays and finally we’ve got aboard Mostly Harmless. Bless her, despite a rotten winter it looks like the shower is the only thing to come off badly. So we can’t leave the water pump on. The weather is cold, wet and very windy. Mr and Mrs Physics look like they’re in for a tough night and neither have their boating legs yet. Boating legs are when you can walk across a tipping boat without feeling sick and land legs are when you can sit on a land-based loo and not feel that the world is swimming around you. After 7 years as boat owners boating legs normally arrive pretty quickly but not today, as it’s April and the last boating was a rubbish September.

Mrs Physics has given up being on the SQA AH team and marking to go boating this year. Unfortunately this coincided with Scottish Canals closing the Forth and Clyde canal at Twechar and Bonnybridge so no access to the Falkirk wheel, Edinburgh or the Kelpies. It looks like Mostly Harmless might be heading back down South for a proper boating experience.

View from the window 21:30

Update Mr Physics is running the engine and the shower is worse than first thought. It’s never been right since it was taken off the back of a lorry and into the River Carron.

No kingfisher sightings but the gooseander looked good. We’ve also got the newly painted Antonine and Campbell Christie who are also stuck this side of the bridges.

At least the relaxing is taking hold. Pictures will be added when it’s light and the decks have been cleared of algae.

winter growth
view from the bank

Come on Scottish Canals, the Scottish Government and the engineers, if you want to charge boating licence fees similar to England we expect to be able to get boating.

Maybe the Scottish Government and Scottish Canals can check out the SQA Higher Engineering Science folio pieces. This year they’ve had to construct a bridge over a canal as their folio piece. Scary how that’s a bit of déjà vu.  I bet several of them have a suitable solution- ask them.

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