Narrowboatboy’s Big, Bad Blog...Narrowboat & Travel blog based on Lancaster Canal

This last week I decided to get some walking in so I have been out daily exploring the abundant tracks and trails that connect the forests around this area that cover the higher ground. I also had a companion to carry out this task, one with experience of all the sights, sounds and smells of the local forests, namely Rosita, a local Jack Russell.  These forest tracks are used frequently by walkers, Mountain bikers and enduro riders. Mainly though, the local hunters use them for seeking out the Cinghiale and deer and are vehicle wide so make easy hiking routes. Connections can then be made on smaller, interesting paths that climb up and down deeper through the woods frequently used by porcupines and hares....and lions and tigers and bears!...oh my! With a dog, a stick, a notebook and google maps loaded on th’ipad I set off on my mornings ramble to find and connect the paths. Using coloured spent shotgun cartridges as markers at junctions I traced and re-traced a...

Harvest 🌓  Having just had the biggest super moon of the year at the end of January it inspired me to look into its influence on the gardening front. Spending more and more time outside digging and weeding as the days get longer it gave me the idea that maybe I should be adopting some celestial wisdom by taking a leaf out of the past. A time when wise old sages like Arthur Aristotle, founder of the veg patch, claimed that the moon was quite important and we should pay a little more attention to it. The old theory goes like this....the moon has 4 phases during the calendar month and if you sow plants in the right lunar phase then they will grow stronger, be more productive, and in turn have more vitality and energy and resistance to pests. Having not been born with ‘green fingers’ or a classic wispy beard my previous method of ‘bung stuff in and hope’ I felt, needed now to be addressed with these new revelations. Around here they seem to pay attention to this ancie...

It had rained heavily over the past few days so it was a bonus to set off from Terontola with bright blue sky above. We headed south on the 2hr train trip to the capital, Roma. No sightseeing today, just down for the match. We wanted to see what sort of opposition ‘The Azzurri’ would be this year as we headed off to the Olympic Stadium in Rome for England’s opening match of the Six Nations 🏉. At Orvieto the train filled up with the local team and the beer and the pre-match banter started to flow. With a rendition of the ‘Tight Fit’ classic “The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ they tried to taunt us but admitted later it was an uphill battle supporting heir national team. They lived in hope so we wished them well at Rome Termini central station and skipped on a few stops on the metro to Flumicini and then walked the rest along the banks of the River Tiber up to the impressive Olympic Stadium. It was a full house for the 70 plus thousand inside and the game went pretty much to p...