Waxing Lyrical

As I sat and wrote the previous posts, I was snatching glances out the windows of the trains on the way into London. I watched Westcliff, Chalkwall and the Leigh parts of the estuary pass by on my right from my backwards facing seat (you get to enjoy the view recede and it stays with you for longer from this position).

The estuary and Thames river side (the flood plain) of Essex is an insanely varied and attractive landscape ... if a little flat here and there. Even the bits being crossed by the army of pylons, looking like giant automaton striding across the land away from Tilbury power station, casting their wires back from man to man like explorers not wanting to get lost in a blizzard.

People moan about pylons, (and I understand why, if where you live is virgin land and thus far unspoiled). However I’ve known pylons all my life, from the ones strung along the Thames near my parents home in East Ham, to the ones strung across Wanstead park, where my first forays into camping and survival started and to my nans old home near Frinton on Sea ... these pylons were special, they were the first ones I ever heard buzzing and hissing in the drizzle of a wet afternoon.

We  travel by train every day, and ride past all those places that were treat days for me as a kid, and it just doesn’t seem to lose its charm. I know it’s only been a week or two, but there is something about the mud flats on the foreshore between the pier and Leigh in the morning that bounces the light around even on a cloudy day. And then there’s the clouds and the land of Kent across the estuary, giving perspective to everything, and there’s intense blue skies in every shade the sky sees fit to impress us with. I’m almost going to regret not seeing the same skies run through with low Autumn and Winter sun and golden dawns, and vermilion sunsets and sun rises

 We haven’t even had a high tide yet, that little treat is yet to come (and every stage within the tides range). And therein lies the reason the train journey is such a pleasure, (why all train journeys are such a pleasure). The tide changes, the light changes, the crops in the field change. For instance: early flowered Rape has gone over, but in several fields we go by its only just coming into flower. Salt marsh pasture is turning a very dark green, but shimmers to a white green when the wind lays it low, spring leaves in woodland and golf course trees have lost their spring growths delicacy and have now hardened off to their summer fullness. The Hawthorns blossomed like a second wave of Blackthorn all along the slopes below Hadleigh Castle. Some of the Hawthorn was the less common pink variety or possibly the even the Midland variety which is natively pink (crataegus laevigata, for those interested in such things ... as I am). Amongst the long grasses of the salt marsh there is a multitude of what I think is yellowist yellow, Meadow Buutercup dotted in clumps, splashed like paint flicked off a brush, to some pattern of seed dispersal known only to the wind.

The ponds and rean/reens, in the rural parts of salt marsh reclaimed from the estuary are full to the brim from last years rains, and these carve up the marsh in places from Benfleet through to Tilbury. They are straight lines of glistening water verged by long grasses and reeds, penning in cattle or horses here and there. There is an odd order to things even in the wilder parts ... I know without a shadow of doubt that the entire area is almost entirely the product of man, except of course the underlying structure of flat land suddenly edged on both sides of the river by a gentle slope that mark the edge of the flood plain, (visible if you know what you’re looking for even in the heart of the city of London).  

Wherever there is water there are birds, either in flight in mini flocks flitting from shrub to shrub or clump of reed to clump of reed or in little mixed clusters bobbing about on or promenading by the water. Where the train line runs the inland route, the added elevation gives sweeping mobile vistas over a distance of five miles or more gently down slope to the rivers edge, where until recently we walked. This land is variously marked by hedgerows or roads cutting straight lines across and through tracts of land turned over to isolated homes or farms. At the edge of our side of the river from Canvey to Tilbury you see the signs of industry, the rivers edge sprouting machines and gantries many meters high, higher by far than the pylons mentioned above.

There is a thing I have observed inwardly many times, as I have taken to the higher places overlooking the flood plain, and that is this: The works of man seem so small from a distance, even more so when you have stood next to great edifices of concrete, or massive structures of steel and been a little in awe up close. You stand back, look at the unending sky miles and miles across before it blurs with the land, and see the land itself losing all form, except for the base structure of hills and undulations, once in a while the indistinct straight lines of a transmission mast, pylon or chimney ... yes we are still there, but in the overall scheme of things, very small.  

All things being equal, you have to wonder why you need to travel so far and so wide, when you have all this on your doorstop.

Research

In other news more relevant to the reason for all this DIY, I find myself in the pleasant position of being pre-Olympic and start of school holidays quiet at work. This in turn means I’ve had time to find some stuff out, such as a likely departure port from Turkey to Cyprus. This does still leave a large gap in the plan. The gap being the breadth of Europe...ish, but on the positive side I have an idea where the jump off point to Cyprus is.

I’d like to say I found this gem on my own by trawling through travel companies itineraries or a tramp steamer captain berthed and gone ashore from ye old Tilbury docks, but I would be talking more bollocks than usual and lying to boot.

The truth is some several months ago I subscribed to http://www.motorhomefacts.com/ . What can one say; Motorhomefacts is the font of all wisdom. There are other sites dedicated to Motorhome, caravan and camping tours and travel, but by far and away the most international one in English that isn’t C&CC (Caravan and Camping Club) is the one above.... you even have to subscribe and pay money to use it.

I dropped in my question regarding ferries and within 24hours I had five useful responses, including a link direct to this website http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/trans/Ship/cyprus_ferries.html , once I have confirmed that they are still operating and the vehicle types they can carry  (I have no reason to doubt that they aren’t, or that our Moho is too big, but better safe than sorry) I will pencil in the relative positions on the map and start working backwards from Turkey and across Europe. I then have to find local weather information so we can plan our route around extremes of hot or cold, altitude, sceneicness (that’s a real word you just don’t see it very often), and dodgy bits.

A couple of other gems I’ve picked up from the forums regards pan European travel is the possible limitations of your vehicle insurances in some of the more eastern countries. I haven’t gathered all the information clearly but it appears that standard insurance won’t cover you through Bosnia, and that you have to buy insurance at the border. It also appears anecdotally that there is real insurance at the border and then there is a man in a peaked cap saying give me 100 Euros so you are insured... which apparently isn’t the same thing. And if rumour is correct there is a way of avoiding Bosnia altogether by catching a boat along a bit of coast (more research needed). The insurance tomfoolery reminds me of my younger brothers experience of flying into Minsk with an Embassy note but no visa and finding that the local Russian immigration agents wanted a $120 payment in cash for admin; for a laugh my brother and his Co Pilot played dumb and took the Mickey by offering to pay by company credit card instead, insisting that that was the way they paid ad-hoc fees... needless to say their joke back fired and they were arrested and held until they paid the cash fine, which they knew was totally bogus and just an official on the make.

These little gems of research are vital, you can’t plan for everything, you can’t account for bad luck, and bad people, but you can plan for bad weather, evacuation, mechanical failure etc. Up a few lines I said I didn’t trawl the travel sites to find these nuggets, however I did trawl the forums, so I suppose I have worked on this properly. I’ve just removed the sales person or booking agent twat element from the process (there’s plenty of time to deal with live people and possible half truths further down the line)... everything is easy on paper... (except radiator measurement and mounting instructions).

The light at the end of the tunnel I mentioned in the post below is not just a light we can see in some vague distance; it’s becoming a light we can shine into dark crevices to find our way. A week ago that felt like it was a long way off, but not anymore.

I won’t use the word optimistic; the housing market is flat, money is tight, the end of the world is due on the 21/12/2012, which is coincidently exactly three months prior to our proposed departure date... an apocalypse would rather put the kibosh on things. So no; not entirely optimistic but I feel I’ve opened the research door properly. We are by no means the first people to undertake this adventure, and I guess a seasoned campaigner would look at this blog and think “bloody amateur s”. Hopefully though I can pick that seasoned campaigners brains and make our adventure all we hope it will be.

It Never Rains it Pours.

Pinch Punch First day of the month, so the saying goes. I could have Googled its origins, and maybe later if I pique my own interest then I will... but right now I’m suffering from can’t be arsed. Can’t be arsed to do much of anything today. I’m on a weeks annual leave; throughout which I was intending to decorate the kitchen diner at the rear of the house. I found a couple of mildew spots on the wallpaper above the skirting boards and the room generally looked a bit tired, and because there are two different wallpaper finishes in the area it doesn’t feel like a fully integrated space. With this in mind the plan is to join the two areas with a common finish, lighten up the room and make it look more family friendly with new wall finishes and a new laminate floor (the existing one tends to a red coloured timber effect and is too dark).

The problem with decorating is that you can’t always be sure of what you will find. I started peeling wallpaper and immediately realised that the mildew that was visible was only a tiny proportion of what was there. I’d assumed condensation at the coldest and most exposed part of the house, what with the extension being open on four sides (if you include the roof.... which you should). Within fifteen minutes I realised that the mildew ran around the entire circumference of the room under the paper, which did seem odd, though given the amount of rain in April I kinda convinced myself that it was nothing to worry about... as you do. As I was stripping off the paper anyway I saw no issues. However I did have a slight sinking feeling that all was not well, when I found an area of mildew that is fully inside the central heated part of the room, and decided that I needed to bite the bullet and dig a little deeper. There is no point doing a bodged job if you’re selling, especially with something like damp, because depending on how rapid it is, your bodge or cosmetic cover up could be exposed by a surveyor with the resultant loss of sale, or compromised in a couple of weeks and then you won’t sell anyway.

I found a spot on the skirting boards that looked easy to fit a chisel behind and gently pried it away from the wall. At this point I had a proper surprise; all the skirtings are MFD (medium Density Fibreboard), and were stuck on the walls with “NO Nails” (which is entirely fine and a very good finish with no drilling). I slid my hand down behind the skirting and found the wall behind the skirting was damp and sticky, so I went to another area and tried there with the same result.

To get the skirting off I had to remove the existing laminate flooring, and as I was ditching it anyway it was effectively re-ordering the program of works. Much to my dismay, under the laminate I found the ceramic tiled finish from the kitchens dinners previous incarnation. Between the tiles and the laminate and been placed sheets of damp proof underlay, waterproof underside/wicking fabric surface. So on balance almost the right materials to protect one surface from the other and from the walls. However the fabric had been laid the full width of the room, thus allowing any condensation on the cold tile surface to travel to the edges of the room via the wicking layer where the fabric makes contact with the plaster of the walls. This allows the damp into the plaster, which allows for the growth of mould blah blah blah.

So you’re thinking, excellent damp source found problem solved. Unfortunately not; I also found a crack in the old tiled surface near the French windows onto the garden, and an oddly raised tile that had always left a tiny dump in the floor near the doors, that we had assumed  was either a nail or tiny off cut of underlay or laminate that had gotten stuck under the floor and the installers just couldn’t see the point in undoing it all and taking it out; assumption truly is the mother of all fuckups. Should you be tempted in future to assume stuff, feel free to have yourself whipped naked through the streets of Aberdeen for your stupidity. The bump I discovered was the size of one of the ceramic floor tiles, it was raised from the rest of the floor by maybe 3mm, it had a crack through the grout side to side. The crack in the grout followed the tiles out to the wall edges (and that sinking feeling was back for round two). The other significant point of order was; what had raised this one tile?. So with no effort whatsoever I lifted the tile from what appeared to be a mound of crystalline cement (cement that damp allows the salts to leach out and form crystals or Secondary Efflorescence I was taught many years ago in Industrial studies... at this point the use of phrases such as "Oh Bollocks", "shit shit shit, fuck shit", "fuck" and "fuckit", become entirely acceptable).

So my initial thought that the laminate floor was suffering from the effects of condensation through a poorly laid vapour barrier between it and the tiles, and subsequent transmission of condensate water through this medium to the plastered walls appears to be only one aspect of why the rear extension appears to have damp around pretty much 360 degrees. It’s looking like it’s got very little to do with the method of water transmission from the source of the fault (though one should actually be happy to have found mould/mildew this early) which now appears to be a cracked floor slab, that may or may not have a damaged DPM (Damproof Membrane) same eight inches below, which in turn is wicking water from foundation level, into the cement of the floor, and then via the laminates membrane to the wall, and this brings us full circle.

I can’t decorate until the damp is sorted. I can’t ascertain whether the damp source is a cracked slab through just bad luck, or whether we have a bigger issue with subsidence, and so I have had to call in the insurers to assess the damage and tell us how to proceed.

Does it affect the plan to go travelling? In the long run no. It’s either an aggravation and expense for us and a delay in putting the place up for sale, or its an aggravation for us and an expense for the insurance company, before the place is put up for sale. I’m trying hard to think of the worst case scenario, and how it would blow us out of the water? But I can’t find anything that is going to stop us, only things that are going to delay us or make us move our schedule around, and as long as all the steps necessary are complete before March 2013, then I think you’ll find that Thunderbirds are still go.

Hunting and Fishing

Things must be ramping up, two posts in the month so far. Last week saw me fettling with the stock of my sixteen year old bull-pup Falcon Pre-charged air rifle. Over time, 16 years by my reckoning, the stock has shrunk just a fraction. Over time this has allowed, a fraction of movement of the entire action (about 0.5mm) around a central fixing point. That sounds like nothing but take that 0.5mm of play in the barrel and then run it out over a twenty five metres, and you will find your shots going wide.

It took an evening of making snooker cue chalk dust, then carefully covering the under surface of the Inter-mount block (on my rifle that’s the bit that holds the barrel, cylinder and the scope rails all in one) and then rubbing the Inter-mount gently but firmly against the inside face of the stock to find the high points.

Once this was done several times, to ensure all the high  spots were visible by virtue of the absence of chalk dust and the glazed appearance of the timber where the Inter-mount block had created friction, and everything else was covered in a fine green dust, I had to gently rub the high-spots away with a very light sandpaper, and very light touch; while avoiding sanding any of the edges of the inner groove where the action should sit square.

When the stock felt tight against the Inter-mount, I applied a light coat of specialist stock oil to the inner face of the stock to encourage the timber to swell a little and to form the tight seal between the stock and it’s Inter-mount. And finally the stock was sat overnight to dry before final tweaks and re-mounting of the complete action and scope.

All that remains is to borrow a Black and Decker Workmate and do the re-zeroing of the scope… though I’m in no real rush, what with other activities going on. Once the rifle is zeroed and I’ve had some field target practice, I will add the rifle to the inventory of travel kit, and items that need to be covered by insurance.

The air rifle, the fishing rods, a proper shrimping net and a few foraging field guides will join us on our travels and hopefully they will all be put to good use feeding us.

It all sounds quite novel and romantic when you write it down like that, but the facts are, that if you set out in the morning or the evening to hunt bunnies for the pot, you had better be ready to fail and have bought a pack of bangers and a packet of Smash in the event of a hunting failure. Likewise with fishing, shrimping and even gathering plants, there are no guarantees.

Foundations.

We, that’s Amanda and I are preparing for a new adventure. As part of that adventure and as a way to communicate with our nearest and dearest we have decided to blog our various steps.

The blog will start slowly, with infrequent entries as we prepare. This post is a footprint, the first of hopefully many.

Right now, we aren’t even going to say what adventure we are preparing for. What we will say is; Once you have sodded about for two hours creating and formatting the basics of a blog, you’d best post something to make sure it actually works. The 7P’s apply.