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

Ok, so Iv been a bit lax in the bloggin’ department...have you seen me lately?...yep, Counting Crows...not going with that one though... I’m still here in downtown Tuscany, Italy doing the same stuff but for some reason I haven’t found the time or the inclination to blog about it....I always said that the blog was for ME so why should I care that I haven’t had anything to say....well I have been busy....massive BELM.....but Iv jumped ship to a small niche website called Facebook....I know, stick the red hot poker as far as it goes but it won’t make me feel any better about it....my choice, and less personal but I’m chucking a few ideas and ramblings into a Facebook page to try to promote the apartments that we are managing here under the Tuscan 🌞  Sometimes when I’m lying in a hammock by the pool, wondering where it all went wrong and trying to get some shut eye in the afternoon I think I should be writing summat....I’m feeling guilty now... I’m thinking I sho...

This week I’v had a ‘Masterclass’ in olive pruning with the great olive supremo, Danielle, the go-to-guru when you need anything tree related in or around Cortona. He’s quite a guy to work with and has kept me entertained all week with the ‘banter di l’olive’. Lesson 1: You can’t prune in the rain, that’s the first thing I learnt and my god we have had the rain. So we waited for a sunny day and got cracking with the ‘potatura dell ‘olive’...pruning of the olive tree. We have 250 trees in the Olivetti on grass terraces for harvesting olives in November in Tuscany to make the oil. Now in Spring, the trees need to be pruned and completed this needs to be completed by May 1st.  My mentor told me to get into the middle of the tree and start with the ‘succhioni’s’...the suckers, as the middle needs to be clear and airy and these little fellas suck up all the goodness needed by the tree. The ‘polloni’ need to be removed too, a separate name for the sucker growth on the tr...

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...

I woke this morning to the news that Mark E Smith from the band 'The Fall' had slipped off this mortal coil and I sorta knew what he must have been feeling....I also had not been well in the night and was starting to mull over my demise too. I attended the obligatory Thursday market but this day I did not join the porchetta queue nor did I have my little cup of italian cofee in the corner cafe as my body was failing me this day, so I returned home with only a kilo of fresh oranges and a bag of yellow spuds....not that I would be enjoying them! I needed to return to my bed, to be able pass over naturally and comfortably and with some dignity...i was already cold, rigor-mortis no doubt and I could feel the grip of my self diagnosed disease taking hold of me...,I knew I definitely had the 'Consumption' and I wouldn't have too long left in this green and promised land of milk and honey...and olive oil..and tomatoes...etc etc Even Charlie from Casualty can...

The knights are long through the Tuscan winter months ....so there hasn’t been much to report on but I have been getting a bit of hassle from the great unwashed so I thought I’d better put finger to keyboard and make an effort! Have recently had some endless hours hunched over a laptop trying to remember passwords, login details, checking emithers, proof reading, writing, re-writing, hosting. posting, inserting, cropping, copying, researching, scribbling, squabbling, linking, drinking.....Ring any bells? I thought all this was in the past.....?? But allow us now to be able to shout from the top of our social media platform about the wonderful apartments we have to offer for the summer holidays. It’s been a lot of hard work but we now have hosting and are live on Owners Direct, AirBnB, Facebook, Booking.com and of course our own website. Researching the internet even turned up an extranet?WTF? and the whole caper has been a mind-field; up-loading, down...