getting horsedrawn narrowboats under Newbury Bridge

 The town bridge in Newbury, built over the River Kennet, pre-dates the building of the lock that was the first to be built on the link between the Kennet and the Avon. So there is no towpath under the bridge; and horsedrawn boats going upstream would have to pull in before the bridge, the horse led round the path to the other side, then the towline drifted down to the waiting boat using this float. 

The float's now in the canal museum on Devizes Wharf, where I saw it, and thought it would make a good subject for a picture.

walking round Andy Goldsworthy's Hanging Stones in the Rosedale valley

On Thursday, we went up to the North Yorks Moors for a bimble around the Rosedale valley, where some Andy Goldsworthy works have been installed in old buildings in a six mile circuit.

Sunlight and rainclouds were chasing each other across the hills, and thunder rumbled to north and south; and we were hit by sudden squalls of hail and rain, but managed to sit most of them out in the buildings on the trail. There was decidedly lots of weather.

It was good to be back among northern hills again; it's been a long time since I've walked in heather and bilberry, and had grouse fly away grumbling "go back, go back". The working of the landscape and the stone of the walls and buildings was as interesting (to me anyway) as the sculptures, tbh.

Towards the end, I managed to slip on a bank and get horribly muddy, and had to wash off my skirt and coat with a tuft of grass dipped in the stream, which still ran red with the iron that was once mined here. 

I left the mud on the rucsac, though, to remember the day by

lots of partridges, for shooting, alas

will we get to that distant building before the next squall hits us? Nope

a siskin!

even more weather heading towards us. Youo'll have to imagine the rolling thunder

lots of hail

that was handy, a nice table for eating our lunch

there was lots of looking out of doors, as well as the looking in bit

a mole joins in the art with this shameless rip-off of a Richard Long idea

this room was decorated with the local mud, just as I was about to be

this is indeed a hanging stone

 

a Flycatcher at Wootton Rivers

Moored up above Heathy Close lock, at Wootton Rivers, east of Pewsey, we watched a flycatcher dashing out from its perch in a tall ash tree, to grab insects out of the air, then return to its perch, easily identifiable by its upright posture and startlingly big eyes, like the dogs in The Tinderbox. The first time I saw one (flycatcher, not supernatural dog) was on a still and misty autumn morning when it was perched across the canal from me, and it spooked me rather. 

In the background is a grey wagtail, about to snaffle a banded demoiselle. And a Southern Hawker dragonfly bumbling by. Our boaty neighbours rescued a pair of these dragonflies from the canal, but they died anyway, and I collected them for reference. 

...but they went black shortly after. Too late, I read that their bright colouring is maintained by some sort of active biological process. Keen bughunters do thing like killing them quickly and dropping them in acetone, or other such things that I've neither the resources nor inclination to do.

Anyway, it all makes a good subject for this picture, which will hopefully be one of twelve for next year's calendar if I pull my finger out. 

Easily distracted, though; I've been out foraging elderberries, for making cordial. It's very late in the season for them; some trees are completely gone over, and the unpicked clusters of berries are shrivelled and hanging limply. But I found one tree that was still only just past the peak of fruitfulness, and it yielded over 2 lb of berries, which, when boiled up with enough water to cover, and some mace and cloves thrown in, yielded 2 pints of juice. Very cheerful stuff, and good for keeping lurgies at bay.

waiting for the white horses

Midsummer in the Vale of Pewsey. With Avebury just over the hill, and Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge just to the south, there's lots of folk in the neighbourhood to do observance to the season, be it hanging out in the stones at sunrise, partying all night to excessively loud rave music while coked up to the eyeballs (fortunately, nowhere near me), or just enjoying being in whatever moment happens to present itself.

Here's a horse that's been providing the locomotive power to a traveller, who'd stopped off overnight.

And midsummer's dawn with a cup of tea, outside my boat.

 

I've been waiting for a new print run of tea towels. Last Friday I had an email to tell me that they were on their way to Devizes Books, and just after nine o'clock on Monday the tracking updated to 'out for delivery', with the delivery slot being 11-12. The mapping thing showed the van resolutely still in Basingtoke, though; I guess the tracker wasn't switched on, which was a bore, because it's fun watching the progress of a delivery van across country and timing my arrival at the drop-off point to meet it.

As it happened, we'd just been into the Post Office to send off orders and pick up a parcel, and came out from Sainsbury's to see Jo at the bookshop opposite, waving and pointing to her phone. The tea towels had just arrived.

 

So that was a big relief.

safely up the gangplank

Straightening a bike's forks

Here's the Elswick Hopper I got last week. Lovely bike, but the front forks had been pushed back by a collision at some point, so, though it's rideable, it bothered me, and I wanted that extra stability you get when there's lots of rake on the front forks; an old Omafiets I once had would ride perfectly happily no-hands..

 

I had to remove the front wheel and mudguard, and chainguard, and the rear brake rod assembly. 

Then I cut a 38mm hole in a lump of wood, this size approximating to the 1½" tubing of the bottom bracket.

 

....and then I cut the piece of wood in half, so I had two semicircular openings

 

....and cleaned them up with a half-round rasp, so that they fitted snugly on the bottom bracket. I held them loosely in place with some bungee, then secured a piece of timber to the front forks with a couple of screws, like this

...and used a car scissor jack to push the forks forward, taking them a little way past the point where they aligned with the headset, because they sprang back a little when the jack was released.

And there they are, nicely aligned! I had to tighten up the headset bearings a bit, because they'd slackened a little as the bearing cups came back into alignment. 

A summer morning in All Cannings

June in the Vale of Pewsey. Here's the sun rising over the Alton Barnes white horse.We're moored near All Cannings, and it's one of those rare places where you can hear the dawn chorus uninterrupted by traffic noise.

In this clip you can hear  the blackbird and wren, and a few other birds too... 

The whitethroats are calling all along the canal...

...as are the reed warblers, and, increasingly, the sedge warblers. Similar sort of calls, but the reed warbler sounds more like a clockwork tank rolling along, while the sedge warbler is more like a steam-powered fax machine that's just about to blow up

they can be tricky to tell apart, but I know this one's a reed warbler

if it quacks like a duck...

the hemlock water dropwort is everywhere, too. I had to chop a path through it to get ashore. And then wash my hands....

An A400 Atlas flying past. Salisbury Plain's on fire again; artillery practice on parched ground, happens regularly

oxeye daisies and the Alton Barnes white horse