Following the boaty blogs as I do, I can’t help but notice the huge wealth of cruising intelligence that can be gleaned from postings various. There’s the obvious stuff – where to stop, where to shop, the winding holes that aren’t in Nicholsons, the water points that take half a decade to fill a bucket....and the less obvious stuff like the availability of wi-fi hotspots and the location of recycling facilities. In my more creative, expansive and animated moments, I dream of creating a blog-cum-wiki navigational guide – it would not only allow me to aggregate people’s comments and findings but to encourage direct collaboration, with bloggers annotating maps with cruise notes, photos, pub reviews, specialist shop details, mooring suggestions, useful telephone numbers like taxis, good access bridges for car-borne visitors, etc etc. If maintained with gusto, it would never go out of date and be a striking example of citizen trave(b)loguing.
Our committed cruise bloggers collectively give a great flavour of what’s happening on the cut in their respective areas. Some stuff is really invaluable like Gypsy River’s recent postings on river levels (recalling their brilliant flood updates last summer) while other info just helps to paint the picture, finesse the canvass a little bit, like this post from NB Skyy.
I also love the continuing contrasts in cruising lives and landscapes. Take these excerpts from two of my favourite bloggers, Sanity and Martlet.
Bruce on Sanity says:
“By 9.45 we were off again, heading for Fradley, though in view of the substantial traffic about, we decided to stop a bit short, rather than risk not finding a mooring when we got there.”
Iain on Martlet says:
“On to Castleford, going through the flood lock, tying up on the 48hr moorings east of the BW yard. Apart from commercial traffic, no other boats were moving”
I’d really like to meet Bruce one day and thank him in person for his mellifluous blogging but I don’t do busy, so....Iain, room for one more?
11 June 2008
Eat your heart out, Nicholsons
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2 comments:
Mellifluous, eh? Gosh, I do like it when you talk dirty ;-}}
We don't normally do busy, either; this year just seems to have got out of hand. I hope it'll be quieter after we start South from Stourport for the Severn and G&S.
Look forward to meeting you too one of these days.
Cheers
Bruce
Well we'll do a deal then...I'll keep talking dirty if you keep blogging mellifluously, can't say fairer than that. I wish you quieter times and hope you come north soon!
All the best
GG
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