Sunday, February 27, 2011

Rain Stopped Play

Arrived Crick Marina Saturday with plans to leave early Sunday morning to sail to Coventry, then northwards up the Ashby Canal. We plan to take about 3 weeks for the round trip, to include some walking.


Sunday morning dawned bright so we set off after early breakfast about 8.30 with the intent of chugging down to Braunston because the weather forecasters promised us a decent day till early afternoon.  But true to form they got it wrong and rain stopped play about 11.30, so we are holed up at Norton Junction.  Still never too early for a sherry!!  Flo had dinner in the oven by noon and I had had a couple of  glasses.  Not now bothered about the weather. 


Depends on weather how we proceed tomorrow.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

First Birthday for Bacchus

Eighteen months ago we had never been on a narrowboat in our lives.  Having retired 5 years previously and spent time travelling in various parts of the world we just thought that spending time seeing the UK by narrowboat would be enjoyable.  So, after having two short holidays on a hire boat, one late summer and one in the depths of a January winter, we decided  that we enjoyed boating enough to take the plunge and buy our own. 

 We collected Bacchus from the builder in Evesham in March 2010 and chugged to its new home in Crick via the rivers Avon and Severn and Birmingham and Worcester canal.

After attending our first, and so far only, Crick Show we left for our first long summer trip in June 2010.  Taking 7 weeks to go down the Grand Union to the Paddington Basin, down the Thames and home via the Oxford canal.  We were fortunate with the weather, glorious sunshine most days, and met many really nice people.  We were surprised at the level of life on the Thames with all types of craft passing by, from the big white plastic jobs to somebody with a couple of oil drums lashed together to make a raft.  Personally I would have opted for the plastic. 

One year on and 497 hours chugging time clocked up we are now looking forward to a new seasons travelling.  That is having put the boat back together after winterising, calorifier refilled etc, only to discover that the Webasto heating system was not working.  With 2 weeks left on the guarantee we had an engineer sort out our problems and are now good to go.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Please be patient

Flo and I have been following nb 4evermoore's blog and thought it might be an idea to try our own. Having never blogged, or attempted the equivalent on other sites, such as Twitter, it's a bit of a learning curve.  So please have patience and if you would like to offer advise it would be more than welcome.