replacing the pedal assist sensor on a Swytch bike

I put a Swytch electric conversion kit on my bike last summer. It's very useful, though the claimed range is substantially greater than the 22 miles I actually managed on test (a ride from Bradnford on Avon to Bath and back). I was worried that two things would prove problematic for an electric bike on the towpath; mud everywhere, and getting adequate power from my solar panels to keep the battery charged.

Apart from a few gloomy weeks in the depths of winter, I've managed quite well at keeping the battery charged. And the electrics have proved robust in a hostile environment.

All except for the pedal assist sensor. This has clogged up several times, stopping it from working; which meant I've had to strip it down and clean it. 

Swytch do have a few different sensors, but they're all out of stock at the moment, so I decided to put an unbranded sensor on in place of the faulty one. This one came from Amazon and cost me £20. 

Its plug is compatible with the original connector, and now the motor's working as it shuold!

St Brigid's Eve; celandines and mistle thrushes

Happy St Brigid's Day! Here she is with some oystercatchers, known in Gaelic and Irish as 'Brigid's servants' - Gille-Brìde, or Giolla Brighde, depending on which side of the water you're on. They saved her life once, by concealing her in seaweed when she was being pursued by blokes with evil intent. We don't get oystercatchers on the canal, though we do see the occasional sandpiper and egret. But yesterday's bird, on our walk in the woods, was the mistle thrush calling at Smelly Bridge.

very velvety new antlers on this roebuck

a dormouse box

King Alfred's Cakes, because they look burned. They make good firelighters.

coming out of the woods, there's Eve!

 

the first celandine!

midwinter on the canal

Moored up at Diggers, between Bradford on Avon and Bath, in the Avon valley. The boat next door is Kestrel, an old working butty.  At dawn, the song thrushes are singing their winter song, and cormorants fly along the valley from their roost upriver. A pheasant is BOCKing from the woods, and a deer barks now and then. 

Every day I've been down to the post office to send off orders, even in the drenching rain, which my sou'wester and new-to-me Rohan raincoat kept out, though the rest of me got very damp indeed. But now that the post-in-time-for-Christmas deadline is passing, things are quietening down. 

Being so busy sending things off for other people's Christmasses, I've not done anything for my own, which is always low-key anyway; I was always quite happy to be working at sea over the Christmas season, when the fun was serendipitous and incidental rather than mandatory, which is what spoils it.

La cordonniere est toujours le plus mal chausse. This year, I solved the problem of not having sent cards to my friends, by marking St Bridget's Day instead, a time when the world is beginning to wake up again. I think I'll keep that up.

Kennet and Avon Canal 2026 Calendar

The 2026 calendar has arrived! I've gone back to focussing on the wildlife along the canal this time. There's old friends like the badgers in the woods around Bradford on Avon; and now the beavers that have arrived in the area, livening up life on the river. 

The calendars cost £10, and you can get them from my Etsy shop, or Devizes Books, or Noah's Pantry in the marina in Bradford on Avon. And I'll be at the Floating Fayre in Bradford on Avon on the last weekend of November.

Wolcum Yole, like Welcome Yule but in Middle English

I've been busy (at least, what I call busy) getting the pictures together for next year's calendar; and at last I'd got enough, which is to say, twelve.

So I got to work formatting them, and had just about finished when I got a call from the printers (Minuteman Press in Bristol, excellent folk). They'd got my Christmas cards ready.

Turned out nicely (by the way, you can find them in my Etsy shop here). I called the picture 'Welcome Yule', partly because the boater whose boat this is has obviously just brought the firewood in, and is about to have a reviving glass of Jaegermeister while the kettle boils. And partly as a nod to the medieval carol of that name, that appears in Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols, which I first heard while driving home for Christmas after one of my seafaring trips. I'd come up from Dorset through snowy hills, and this came on the radio and it was perfect for the moment.

Candelmesse, Quene of Bliss,
Wolcum bothe to more and lesse.
Wolcum, Wolcum,
Wolcum be ye that are here, Wolcum Yole,
Wolcum alle and make good cheer.
Wolcum alle another yere,
Wolcum Yole. Wolcum!

Welcome Yule

I'm not drawing the pictures for next year's calendar in any particular order, and the latest one is for December, as you can perhaps tell.  

I thought it would be fun to do a winter version of my earlier picture, 'La vraie liberte c'est le vagabondage'. And I was right; I had great fun doing it. Thinking of a suitable title for it is proving hard; keeping the french theme, I thought of 'toi, prends ta flute, Robin', a line from the French carol 'Patapan' that we sang as first formers at school, walking into the assembly with candles and being all angelic, or at least as angelic as a ragtag of 11 year olds can be.

But maybe just 'Welcome Yule'. 

Anyway, there it is. Here's the summer one for comparison

 

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.