David Morris – brassedoff.net

Vandals have been playing nicely over the last week or so at Pebley Reservoir. They’ve jammed the draw-off valve for the reservoir in the open position. Consequently, most of the water has run out in to Harthill Reservoir immediately below. Seeing as that’s full, the overspill has to run in to the canal at Kiveton.

Whilst Harthill can support the canal for several weeks and British Waterways reckon the repairs will be effected by the end of April (or early May by now I’d guess), unless we get some serious rain to fill up Pebley, it could end up being a curtailed cruising season especially on the higher reaches of the canal above Turnerwood. (Sorry about the first photo!)

I decided to cycle to work today. I’m quite pleased with myself as a consequence. It’s a round trip of 22 miles which took roughly an hour each way. Certainly not as quick as in the car, but probably quicker that public transport and I didn’t (much) contribute to traffic problems!

My route in took me on the Trans-Pennine trail towards Sothall from Killamarsh, then into Beighton, again on the TPT.

Once clear of Beighton, I picked up another stretch of the TPT across Woodhouse Wetlands a large flat area through which the Rover Rother runs. It was this area that was flooded in 2007 when the flood regulator at Woodhouse Mill was closed to hold back the flood waters from causing more damage to Catcliffe. Cycling through now, you’d never tell though. This trail finishes, for my purposes, at the B6200 (formerly A57) at Fence. From there, it’s all road work, to Handsworth, through Darnall and finishing in Attercliffe. Ideal weather conditions today, and a trip I’ll probably be making a few times throughout the course of the Spring and Summer.

Not much to write about other than the fact we’ve had a great weekend.

It started off pretty badly with the prospect of spending the weekend car juggling because a week after its service, the clutch on Mrs Woolforbrain’s car gave up the ghost after 112,000 miles. I’d limped it to the garage last Thursday and ended up cycling all the way home (that’s a different and equally pleasant story), and wasn’t expecting seeing it back for a week because the garage was fuly booked. This is a local indie garage, not a main dealer. The main dealer wanted £560 for the replacement; our local indie was going to be around £250. No contest really.

Anyway, around noon on Saturday, my mobile chirped. It was the garage owner saying the car was done. One of his guys had stopped until 9pm the previous night to get the job done. Above and beyond the call of duty?! So, we were back to being a two car family.

Today, with the sun shining, Daniel and myself paid a visit to the leisure centre in Staveley for a swim. It’s been a few weeks since we last went. I was able to enroll Daniel in the free swimming for U16s programme which Chesterfield have bought in to. NE Derbyshire are also in this scheme, but strangely not Liberal Democrat-run Sheffield. Not that it matters much because we generally only swim at Staveley anyway!

This afternoon, we’ve been out to our favourite ice cream farm at Bothamsall – Thaymar. It’s not the first time we’ve been. It’s a long way to go for an ice cream, but it is nice! I had a double cone – elderlower / gooseberry and mint chocolate chip. Caroline had the elderflower and gooseberry and wild cherry and the young master had a couple of chocolate and toffee-related choices.

When we got back, we hit the garden again. We’ve planted lettuce and mange tout this weekend, and last weekend, I planted a load of onions. Caroline’s also planted some potatoes in planters and we’ve been discussing where to put tomatoes and chillis. It’s going to be a nice harvest if we get the weather.

Back to school for Daniel tomorrow and a busy week for me. I’ve got a meeting with the new Scimitars owners on Wednesday to discuss the web site, a canal festival meeting on Thursday, a band concert on Friday, boating on Saturday (trips for local dignitaries to mark the unveiling of some new interpretation plaques at Kiveton and a trip there and back for Dan’s scout troup), a day off on Sunday and boating again on Monday as we take the boat back home.

No doubt there’ll be ample opportunity for photographs. Watch this space.

On a different issue, I’m still loving the new Macbook. I’m getting to the stage of finding my way around it now, helped in no small part by Chuck Toporek’s Mac OS X Leopard Pocket Guide (O’Reilly).

Easter Sunday. Caroline was spinning. Daniel was playing games and consuming chocolate. I was at a bit of a loose end so I threw threw the mountain bike in the back of the Picasso and set off for Shireoaks. There then followed a change of plan and I went to Kiveton instead, leaving the car at Kiveton Park Station.

I set off down the canal towpath with the intention of cycling to Shireoaks and back, but was enjoying myself so much that I went all the way to the Lock Keeper pub at Rhodesia just outside Worksop. Turning round at the pub and retracing my steps, at Kiveton, I cycled up to the Eastern portal of Norwood tunnel and back to the railway station. The round trip was somewhere around 18km or 11 miles.

It was interesting to see what work has been carried out especially around Kiveton in the last few months bearing in mind the Festival Rally is next month. British Waterways look to have done a great job on the retaining wall below the station car park, and all the way along the towpath where the railway runs alongside, Network Rail have put in a new fence and cleared back a load of trees. Fortunately, the new fence that’s been put in is concrete post and wire, not one of the horrible 3 metre high galvanised post which are something of a blot on the landscape.

I managed to throw in a brief stop at Nona’s coffee shop in Shireoaks for coffee and a bun (lunch you understand). There was quite a bit of boat activity as well. It looked like Retford and Worksop Boat Club, based at Clayworth, were having their Easter outing so there were three boats heading up to Kiveton through Thorpe Locks when I got there (plus another one that had moored up at Turnerwood on the two hour moorings). It’s certainly nice to see some boat traffic on that stretch.

All in all, a nice way to spend a couple of hours on the bike. It was just a pity I didn’t have the camera with me.

Daniel’s got a nice piece to practice over the Easter holidays. I suspect Kathrine (his teacher) has given him something to challenge him now he’s got his Grade 4 out of the way. This time, he’s working on a piece called Cortege by Ippolitov-Ivanov from Caucasian Sketches. It’s a lovely piece of music and Daniel’s making a really nice sound with it. I’ve tried to record it but I can’t really do it justice with a cheap microphone plugged in to the laptop and GarageBand on the Mac, but here goes…!

Daniel playing Cortege

It was a nice morning, so Daniel, Pebble and myself loaded ourselves in to the car and headed off to Shireoaks for a stroll up the canal. We walked as far as Browns Lock which is the one above Turnerwood Top Double . The short pound is the home of the BW workboat Hare. This picture is looking back down towards Turnerwood, into the sun.

It’s only a couple of months away from the Festival at Kiveton when we’re expecting around 50 boats up this neck of the woods. It will be the busiest it’s been around here for some time. I really hope all the visiting boaters enjoy some of this fantastic scenery and countryside.

One more little gem for my two readers…

I’m writing this on a new laptop. Although I’ve had laptops for years through work, I’ve strangely never had my own. Yesterday I went out to John Lewis’s in Sheffield and splashed out on a Macbook. Only an entry level machine, but I am now the proud owner of a white Mac. I’m stil finding my way around things… what’s the key sequence for forward and backward words in Safari for instance, but I’ll get there.

…just found it – ALT and cursor keys do the job.

I really must get around to fixing the tag cloud for the blog theme as well.

Thanks to my Linux experiences, I’ve managed to put OpenOffice and GIMP on the Mac, so I’ve got familiar office software and graphics manipulation.

Today is also (probably) the last day of the hockey season. The Scims drew against MK Lightning in the first part of a two leg affair last night and travel to MK tonight for the second half. I wasn’t hopeful of a win last night, and we came pretty close to it, so who knows what’s going to happen tonight. If we rumble MK, we could be in the playoff finals in Coventry next weekend.