250 hours.

Before getting into the heart of Birmingham I had about a kilo and a half of blackberries. I then just boiled them down, strained the juice and saved the liquor for until I had got some other ingredients. I found a recipe on line that needed a minimum amount of extra things so last night I made the syrup up. It was just a sugar, a juice of a lemon and a cinnamon stick. I just used a teaspoon of cinnamon which I think was a little too much. I must say that it isn't too bad at all. I reckon that more sugar and less cinnamon would make it better. I got about a litre and a half of squash out of it so worth doing really.

It will be next week that I can go and get some more brambles to experiment with.

I read a little more on the Baskerville Basin in my blog yesterday. It seems that the canal that lead off from Cambrian Wharf to the terminus at Newhall Street had a lock going up that accessed the Gibson and Baskerville Basins. In looking I found an old photo of  the Farmer's Flight of locks.

This is a view from 1913 down to Newhall Bridge. You can just see the two arches of the bridge.

This is how it looks today. The buildings have completely changed. The lock looks just the same and the roving bridge that lead to a company's arm has changed to a cast iron bridge. Oh, and the horse has gone too.

After the rain finally decided to depart and it brightened up a little I set to to do the 250hr service. I ran the engine for a while to heat the engine oil. I also left had it in gear to warm up the gear box oil as that also needed changing. I still haven't managed to suck the oil directly out of the gearbox but by dropping it into a tray and sucking it up from there is almost as quick. I replaced the oil filter without spilling too much and I must say that the puppy training sheets cut up into squares make great rags for catching any spills. I have wondered what the numbers on the oil are all about. The Beta takes 15W Sae 40 oil. Apparently the first number stands for the viscosity of the oil when cold and the second figure is for the viscosity when the oil is 100C. Everything went well and I checked the connections and tightness of bolts etc. I had a bit of a scare when I turned the engine on as the oil pressure alarm wouldn't go off. I turned the engine off and checked that the oil just hadn't been dumped in the bottom of the engine hole. All was well so I tried again, and luckily all was well as the oil had now got round the system I suppose.

As the sun came out I went to the bow and set about ridding the deck of the remaining rust. I had bought some Fertan rust converter to use in the engine hole so I thought I would give it a try. It certainly seems to make the bare metal shiny so we will see how it goes when I need to paint it.