January 2nd and we're back in Fenny Compton. We spent January 1st in Cropredy because we like it, and because we felt as though we needed a rest. Oddly, rest did not mean hang-over recovery!! Just rest. But we set out this morning to a sky which slowly turned clear blue with a gorgeous winter sun and misty green fields. We need to find more adjectives! We are running out of wonderful, gorgeous, lovely, etc. Of course we see some heaps of boats and some run down fields and some piles of rubbish, but they are about 2% of what we see. So we started our second new year on Bella looking at beauty. We're not sure we'll ever tire. And we like Fenny Compton moorings. We are moored up now where we first moored in our first hire boat, the Burcott, now four years ago. Then, our friends Jane and Simon joined us for dinner at the Wharf Inn. And we moored up here in November 2007, when Bella had her Blessing service, conducted by Mike (Naval Chaplain) and family, Clare, Peter and Rebekah. So, though Fenny is not in itself a huge place of beauty, it is a place of fond memories. We are please to stop here and may not tire of it, either!
For those who are interested, we clocked up 1160 "clicks" in 2008. Clicks, if you recall, is the combination of locks, lift bridges, swing bridges, other obstructions and miles. Some boaters call them lock-miles. We've managed around 800 travelling miles this last year. But now we are keeping very clear records and will be able to tell you exactly the travelling miles each month. We only used to keep a record of hours of engine time, just to let us know when Bella needed a service. Now that the duty on diesel fuel has changed, we need to keep a record of our boiler hours (domestic use of diesel) and the hours we travel (propulsion hours) and the hours of engine on, but moored up to charge batteries (domestic hours again). This is because there are now different rates of tax on domestic fuel and propulsion fuel. And we were hugely curious as to how many locks we've done in any given period of time compared to miles. So, sad creatures that we are, we've created a spreadsheet to tell us boiler hours, domestic engine hours, propulsion hours, locks (and others) and miles travelled. So the statistitians amongst you will enjoy knowing the totals as we go along. Others have permission to yawn and roll your eyes up to your foreheads...
