Little Venice is a rather posh, but also pretty mooring. Upon arriving, we double moored with another boat, it turned out that our neighbours, Ben & Charlotte had a problem with their engine – it wouldn’t start. It all pointed at ‘dead’ start-up batteries. The good news was: we had the generator and it could finally be put into action! We managed to get the engine going so at least they had hot water for a shower. It turned out as well, that in a few days time it’ll be their wedding and now, beforehand they had to get new batteries… such is the boater life sometimes. Batteries arrived and were installed on time.

And here we go, not quite ‘just married’, but soon to be married: Ben & Charlotte

Natascha went to Switzerland for a short trip and Oliver from Berlin came over to visit Adnan for a few days. They also had to move the boat as in the meantime the seven days were up and we had to move on.

Our next stop was the lovely Meanwhile Community Gardens. The ‘boys’ moored more or less below Trellick Tower, a brutalist style tower block. Natascha once knew somebody who lived there, nowadays it’s a fancy place to live and the flats are sought after properties. During the time we stayed there we kept thinking how it must be to live in the upper part of the building, the view must be breathtaking, the sunsets divine.

But here we are, at the bottom of it, behind the tower and the trees, where the sun soon disappears. Still, it’s a good place to be, soon we have to move on to Uxbridge. The next chapter is ahead of us, Quintessence will soon be taken out of water to have the hull blackened again, then she will get a new lick of paint.

Then the news broke of Adnan having found a fix mooring in Coventry. Not really the most attractive place to live in the UK. But Adnan worked there. So, we thought to give it a go. Better than continuing with cruising every two weeks. This meant though after the paint job we had to cruise up to the Midlands during July.

The soon to be fixed mooring/home.

It was a really nice cruising day, we passed Crazy Camden Town first, then London Zoo, beautiful Little Venice, turned right into Paddington Basin and there we were. Right in the midst of it! It is indeed a very special place to moor up, so central and right next to St. Mary’s Hospital. When we had the door and windows open we could hear the beeping of the various life support machines…

Paddington Station is also just a stone’s throw away, hence it’s rather easy to go to work for once. It was easy to do food shopping, of course and a good launderette was around the corner too. Shame only that the mooring there is another 7 days one only.

If Battle Bridge Basin was swanky, what is Paddington Basin mooring? Futuristic? That is how it looks on a sunny day:

And that on an overcast day (the building on the right being St. Mary’s Hospital):

Mirza, the cousin of Adnan, came to visit us, he was on a business trip to London. He was quite amazed about the location, less about the size of the boat though.

Here we are in Kings Cross again. Slightly nervous as Sava, our cat, disappeared from here a year ago. We’ve chosen a different mooring though, Battle Bridge Basin, what a location!

Et voilà, our view towards the basin:

And Natascha’s view towards the kitchen area:

Gosh, the area has changed so much – all the grubby corners are gone, so are the clubs where we used to go out. Instead the Granary Square looks sanitized, on the one side there is Central Saint Martin’s (CSM), opposite is a plush Waitrose where wealthy students buy their plastic wrapped food. Google UK is about to open their HQ too, who knows what the consequences for the area will be. One thing is for sure, it doesn’t necessarily help the local youth from less well heeled backgrounds. What is offered or available in this area is all very much out of reach for them. This creates cracks in society and the outcome is ugly: social segregation of the worst kind, ghetto vs swanky. One next to each other.

On a windy night, we were watching a movie, our barge was moored on the tow path and we had two other boat moored on ours, we could feel that somebody was jumping on our boat. This is unfortunately an occurrence every now and then but we didn’t pay much more attention. There was a second sudden jump and that was it, Natascha went to see what was going on. There they were, young kids probably from the council estates near by, really young children around 10 – 12 years old, brandishing a rather large knife and cutting the ropes of our boat! Luckily we used three ropes as one was severed already and they were just about to cut the second one, it was half way cut. So we lost two ropes, that’s about £50. Fortunately we had a spare one. And fortunately too, we were on the boat, this would have been a really annoying situation, finding your boat on the other side of the canal and not being able to reach it.