Ranking
Whist reading some of the other boating blogs, such as Bones, I realised that there is a bit of competition in terms of the top 100 boating sites.

I'll have a bit of that action, so there is a new counter thing in the side bar. It seems to only work off unique queries, so there is no point me sitting here refreshing my browser, I'll just have to be patient (not always easy....). Of course I may get bored soon and remove it, we'll see.

Current ranking? 293 :)

Update! Now at 179 - legend in my own mind......

And so to Venice
Little Venice that is. Since moving IRIS to Willowtree Marina in september, I haven't had the chance to take her out. So this weekend it was the inaugural trip into London. I've been looking forward to this for some time, since I first saw the canal boats in Little Venice a few years ago.

Mary and I set off late on saturday morning, it is meant to take about 3 hours to get there, but I wanted to leave a bit of margin for error. The day was sunny and pleasant, with the leaves turning. As a bonus in this shot, can you spot the heron?



The trip took us through a variety of landscapes, some of it surprisingly pretty considering we're in a city.





A novelty was the aqueduct over the North Circular road (A406), I like the idea that IRIS was momentarily suspended like a 16 ton sword of Damocles over the unsuspecting motorists below.






The closer we got to the heart of the city, the more we saw a variety of interesting buildings along the way.







We made it to Little Venice. I was actually expecting to go on and moor in Paddington Basin, given the popularity of the place, but just as we were going by the visitors moorings, a boat left, so we nipped into the space left. Here is IRIS at the mooring for the night.



...and here is a more general view.



We left IRIS there for the night and went back to North London, via a couple of pubs to watch the fireworks at Alexandra Palace.
The next day we were joined by friends Helen and Greg (veterans of the Newbury trip) and Helen's parents Jan and Michael. Michael is ex-merchant navy and is a pilot for a UK port, so I was happy to let him take over steering duties for the first half of the trip. Greg steered for the second half, giving me the chance to strut up and down the deck in what I hope was a Nelson-like manner.

This shot shows Greg at the helm, with Michael and I waiting for any paparazzi that might be lurking.



Here we are going over the North Circ again...



One constant theme of London boating seems to be the urban jellyfish, or Tescos carrier bag. On the trip down we had to try and clear the prop a couple of times to remove debris, and finally when moored up I got a chance to use the weedhatch for the first time. I was quite pleased with the amount of rubbish around the propellor, as it did explain why the boat seemed to struggling.



We made it back just after dark, using the light on the front of IRIS. Now I know I can moor at night, all sorts of nocturnal missions are on the cards.

Finally, people sometimes use the expression 'ducks in a row' which I find faintly annoying. I couldn't organise ducks, but how about some geese?