A Rogue Mariner on the upper Thames

[Music] [Music] well I think it's time for a coffee the reason I've come to the River Thames it's not just because it's wonderful and peaceful and the heart of England and very nostalgic because I was a student in Oxford and then lived there for an awful long time so I'm fond fond memories of the River Thames but it's also going to give me a chance to show you how I now set up the boat so you can see I still got the same cover it's getting on a bit now it's canvas cover and I really like it in warm weather but when it gets damp and cold in autumn which is just beginning now it can really never ever dries that's the problem you package way wet and you put it up again wet in the morning and yeah so I'm probably going to change it for a synthetic cover and I'll let you know what I do when I get around to that as you know from my previous video I use my waterproof bags that I have all my gear in also as buoyancy for the boat or additional buoyancy for the boat because the boat wouldn't sink even with with no additional buoyancy at all but it's good to as I've added a lot more weight it's good to actually have things tied down low that are lighter than water that will help to keep her afloat if on capsizes or get swamped which has happened so you can see underneath this side wort my to waterproof bags this one here the black one is what I now use to keep my bedding in and as you can see it's strapped down with the rope to keep it in place just take it out there it is this is a change from the previous bag so I had this is now an author leave roll-top back at one end and in it first of all I have my waterproof which having their own waterproof bag to keep everything else dry if they're wet and then there is a pillow my mattress I wash bag my sleeping bag sleeping bag just to make sure it stays dry is in a second waterproof bag this is because I had the year of the capsizes and we learned that some roll-top bags are not quite as waterproof as you might hope not to be I tend to sit down inside the the tent right on the floor which gives plenty of headroom obviously at the moment I've got one side open because it's such a lovely evening but that doesn't necessarily happen now my sleeping bag I've changed I used to believe that you should have synthetic bags too so that they didn't get damp with seawater and then never dry and just be rubbish and obviously is a synthetic bag you can wash but I now actually have gone on throw down bag because I found these down bags which are a black bag and what I really like about them is as I shall show you quite far from the fact that being down they pack this is a three-season bag unless you can see it Pat's face more but the great thing about this is it has a nice big square foot look it's not a mummy bag it has all the the mummy bag sort of stuff at the top it's got a hoarder NIC and all be pulled in tight around your head to keep you warm in the night but it's a much easier to get in and out of than a mummy bag and I think you know this is a business really is a bag like this for for sailing and I just try and keep it dry there it is Black's I'm not certain these are still made but I feel it's called the cosmos 500r but I've got two of these and I use them all the time now I find they're much nicer in warm weather as well as in cold weather they seem to work on a wider temperature variation than synthetic bags do put that down on top of the mattress pillows are really good they much recommend pillows this is a firmer s camping pillow watershed of an American company what it has is this seal all the way along the top and there's a trick to opening it and inside here I have all my clothes these upgrades happened because in 2016 I had two cat sizes which I made videos about and after that all the equipment was rather tested to destruction and some of it was found wanting and it's really annoying when all your clothes get sodden and salty and you just can't be doing with it these are expensive but dingy cruising it's so cheap compared to yachting if you've ever owned a yacht you wouldn't begrudge buying a bag like this for your dinghy I do recommend buying decent kit for a dinky don't don't sort of treat dinky as something that has to have cheap and crummy kit you can afford the decent stuff because you're not paying for moorings and you've got the opportunity to come somewhere like this so people say Roger why don't you have a yacht it'd be really nice to have a nice big yacht and a nice big cabin and you could keep her in a marina somewhere and you could have sure power and you could go down and you could show her off to all your friends and you could maybe have a barbecue on the pontoon she's the sort of thing people do but look if I had a yacht there is no way I could bring her here this river is less than two hours drive from my home it's about an hour and a half it's probably one of the nearest places I can actually come to to launch my boat so it's its price and I've actually never launched her here but I do tend to sail in the sea look at it this is just wonderful I could come here in winter and put the boat in the water and have a little sail when it's far too wet and miserable to take the boat into the sea and isn't this what it's all about just finding a quiet mooring and bedding down for the night isn't that what we want I think the trouble is with yachts people want something impressive they mistake what sailing is all about they think sailing is about the thing about buying a yacht and what you've got to do is to have this thing and if you look at yachting magazines they're almost always about the thing about the yacht about the equipment you can put on her they've been really about what you actually do they very rarely describe experiences because in the end the truth is that most yachts spend virtually all their time tied up in marinas they don't go anywhere because going anywhere is difficult and expensive and actually boring because you just motor up and down the same bit of river before you get out to sea and then you have a little bit of a sale and then you come back and then you move to back up the river and you have to lock back into the marina if she's a marina protected by a lock and that's the problem you've got something impressive but you're not really using it if you have a little dinghy like this she's not very impressive I think she's very beautiful but you have experiences and life is about experiences it's not about having something that impresses other people trust me in this this is the philosophical bit of this video make sure you have experiences have something simple that you can take places that are interesting and don't worry about owning things that are impressive okay so let's do some cooking I'm just going to get things out of tins I always keep a number of tins on the boat so that I can cook up a meal quickly if I need to and tonight I need to because I've spent far too long filming things you'll remember I have two boxes the cuisine box and the canoes this is a French boat so things called French names the calm booze is the store cupboard so today it's going to be a curry and rice so I'm just waiting for the rice to cook and then I'll heat up the Marks and Spencer stew but in the meantime it's beer o'clock it's nearly midnight there are alves hooting in the fields around and we're very near the head of navigation on the river just by a little village called Kelmscott and I came here because I recently been sailing on the Mary quite a van just north of La Rochelle in France and the idea was to cruise around and explore lots of waterways there but what actually happened was that the because of very low water levels it's been a really hot summer this year 2018 particularly in in central France so many of the locks were closed and it was all very problematic but we did manage to explore quite a lot and here's a fascinating area they called it the Venice fair or the Green Venice anyway we haven't found that one of the main locks was closed we took a shortcut up a small little basically a drainage ditch between two fields for a kilometre in order to get onto another canal that was to the north of the main river that was choked with weeds so we had to bow all the boat or my friend Mary bow hold the boat most of the way to a little village called Maya which is lovely little place right in the in the center of the the Mary Poitier van and that was about it after that we relaunched into the sea and then had a holiday sailing all the sounds between the ill DeRay and the yield all a wrong in in that area France shall marry Teang but this weekend I'm on the River Thames [Music] lovely morning morning [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] this is Kelmscott heart and center of the Arts and Crafts movement where William Morris and Rosetti bought this house and there William and his wife Janie lived then she fell in love with Rosetti and William Morris went off to Iceland and left them together in the house and this is also the house where in news from nowhere the people of the book arrived in this lovely anarchistic vision of the future and this is the culmination this was back of that book it's still a very special place come stopped very very unspoiled [Music]

Channel: Roger Barnes

Views: 576,637

Keywords: iMovie, inland waters, rivers, sailing, camping, selfsufficiency, bushcraft, arts and crafts movement, william morris

Id: NbPgP6wIF44

Length: 29min 18sec (1758 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 03 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/the-sheep]

Very inspiring!

What kind of boat is that?

[u/hellohappymonday]

Amazing!

[u/Timo8188]

He has got it right.

[u/Entaloneralie]

That was excellent, thanks for sharing.