Still Life

 Even on those cold, grey, short winter days there's always some uplifting beauty to be seen along the river.

Winter days on the water

When it's grey and overcast as well as cold with hardly any wind then it must take a lot of motivation to get out on the water.

However when the sun comes out, everything looks better, and the juniors were out in force

 The local wildlife seem to have found a safe sun trap.

Langstone cutters out for a winter row at Emsworth.

A couple of boats were running engines in the Elephant boatyard, later heading out under motor, good opportunity to charge the batteries and maybe go over to Cowes for lunch

A perfect early morning for rowing, morning sun, river like glass and not a breath of wind

 

Changing seasons

Changing seasons seen from the view point in  Old Bursledon where I took the original blog header photo

 

Very different with the stark contrast in winter

 

Bizzar conversations or technical overreach

 Mrs BB -  "Alexa play U2 Still haven't found what I'm looking for"

Mr BB muttering under his breath - "You'd know where it is if you'd put it away properly Alexa"

Alexa - "Sure"  then proceeds to play Beyonce.

Winter Flugel

 I've written about friend Greg and his fast Memory 19 sloop The Flugel several times - just type Memory into the search box over on the right to bring up all the Memory posts. 

Here she is safely ashore at Nettley SC for the winter, which hopefully will be less eventful than 2022

The previous trailer was wrecked when a neighboring boat fell over during storm Eunice.  That was a a write off now replaced by the substantial and rather useful four wheel trolley "Whizzy" which should cope with the 2500lbs displacement very well.

Sincere Thanks

 I'd like to say a big and sincere thank you to those who helped Joseph with his World Scout Jamboree fundraising appeal. Especially Patrick who was the first and apologies I clearly have an out of date email for you.

If you haven't helped there's still plenty of time  and please the biggest help you can give is to publicise to your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram contacts - Joseph's Facebook here

World Scout Jamboree - South Korea

 If you’ve enjoyed reading Bursledon Blog during the past 14 years I have two favors to ask.

•  Please share this appeal with 10 friends or family and ask then to share with 10 of the people they know 

• If you can please chip in a contribution on Joseph's  GoFundme 

 Joseph is a Hamble Sea Scout and qualified for a place to attend the 2023 World Scout Jamboree where 40,000 scouts from all over the work will meet in South Korea.

Wight Views

It's only a few miles away but we haven't been to the Isle if Wight nearly enough in recent years so it was nice to revisit old haunts and some of the quirkiness of the island.

Below was the shared garden where we were staying adjacent the floating bridge and opposite Cowes

Unusual view of the landmark Cowes Hammerhead crane.A trust was formed in 2006 seeking to preserve this iconic tribute to England's early industrial design engineering and as a symbol of the importance of Cowes' engineering and shipbuilding heritage, the view from the alley between these presumably Victorian workers houses seemed to capture the historical perspective.

Riverside residence near Newport, makes a change from garden gnomes and windmills.

No one is going to mistake the address of the Odessa Boatyard.

The Walled Garden cafe in Newport is WW2 themed throughout, lots of less explosive memorabilia inside well worth a visit.