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.
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