I didn't see that black hole!

I can't believe how long it has been since I last put finger to keyboard. We left the boat all in a bit of a rush as plans went awry. Nothing horrendous, initially just our daughter's house purchase etc coming forward by about three weeks. There was work to do on the house once the keys were obtained and then I was kept busy with jobs, or being there to allow others to do jobs.

She now lives in this area of Hull and the above map shows the location of where all the high explosive bombs landed in WWII. The different symbols denote the time period. Opposite her new house a bomb dropped and there is now an area of garages there. It is surprising that any of the buildings around survived, but that may be due to soft ground.

Having previously moved back home from London she now has a two bed house to her self rather than share a small house with three others and have a box room to herself. And she is paying about £200 less a month with the mortgage compared to the rent. It's great 'up North' for so many reasons.

After that Heritage Open Days were upon us! I am the coordinator for our town of Hedon, although we piggy back on that of the Hull Civic Society's Open Days which is by far the largest set of open buildings, talks and walks outside of London. I was also running history walks throughout the week, and just to add to the work load it was also the last weekend of the East Riding Walking Festival and I had promised to guide a 4 mile walk. Anyway those are my excuses for the first month away from the blog and then it is really hard to re-establish getting to write up a blog every few days, and that is what has taken the time to get back her.

I think Heritage Open Days grew from an event in Denmark. It was taken up by the European Commission and is simply getting buildings opened up to the public for free. Now it embraces walks and talks etc and is in 50 countries.

Walking Festival always styles itself for the Wolds but even us in the deep south of East Yorkshire, in Holderness, get involved too.

We have popped back to the boat previously to check out the boat. We left in such a rush, and the pontoons are quite short for our length and it was difficult to keep the boat alongside. However as the moorings are at and angle to the bank the outside berth is better to moor to as it is about a metre longer and this makes all the difference with the length of the centre line and so keeping the boat alongside the pontoon. When we visited there was space on the outside so we moved over to the other side.

Blue Water Marina. We are about middle of the top (north) row of pontoons.

We have found time to come back to the boat for a couple of nights. The weather is set to be sunny but cold, so the first thing on arrival was to light the fire. I saw that the chimney had been leaking a little, and when I went to put the chimney on I was almost relieved to see the obvious point of ingress. On our last visit I gouged out the old sealant of the flue and collar and replaced it with some heat proof cement. I even waited a full day to let it dry before we lit the fire. But on Inspection on this current visit it was obvious that it had just disintegrated. It was a little strange as the same cement I had used to seal the flue into the top of the stove was fine, despite the higher heat. I got rid of the old cement and luckily I had some Heat Mate sealant with me so used that, and fingers crossed it will solve the problem.

I bleed the radiators and the heating started up with no problems. I then took our homemade secondary glazing down on a couple of windows to enable me to put the new licences in the windows. Good to go to October 2020 now, but with the biggest hike in price since we bought the boat! Our composting toilet had completely done its job so it was an opportune time to empty that. Another job done.  I also checked the bilges and all is clear. Then it was time to write this.