Am I too old to pretend I am a steam train?

I went on a lovely linear walk this week – part of the Lancashire coastal path from Glasson Dock to Lancaster. It was a beautiful autumn day – cold and crisp with watery sunshine.

I used to do a lot of linear walks. Mandy drops me off, meets me half way and then picks me up. In my time I have done the Pennine Way, Coast to Coast, Cotswold Way, Ridgeway, Cleveland Way, Hadrians Wall, most of the Southern Upland Way and many others. There is something that is very good for my head, walking with the dogs with my airpods plugged in, listening to podcasts or music, and watching the world.

Unfortunately both the eleven year old dogs and I have slowed down as we have got older, and Ziggy in particular has cancer and is not able to walk very far. She still suffers from fomo and mostly refuses to let me go without her, so this time Mandy picked her up early. Lulu and I then completed the walk at a slightly faster pace

There is talk with my sister in law of us attempting the North West Way over the next year. That is a serious 205 mile walk, incorporating some of the most dramatic parts of the Ribble Way, Pennine Way, South Tyne Trail and Hadrians Wall. I will have to get fitter if we are to attempt it. One of the problems is that when we are on the Narrowboat most of my walks are flat. Canals only go up and down hills when there are locks.

Even the coastal walk this week was flat. It followed a disused railway line that once carried goods from Lancaster Port (Glasson Dock) to Lancaster. I like disused railway walks because I can pretend I am a steam train and imagine how once it would have been to travel this route surrounded by smoke and soot, through this lovely countryside. It is probably a good thing there was just me and the dogs on this walk – no one to get embarrassed when I said “choo choo” as I was walking.

Maybe I need to put the trains to one side and get back to walking with others in the hills. It would be good for my heart, my head and maybe my social skills.

October 3, 2025 0

Going for a walk in Kirkham

Kirkham is the nearest town to our village in Lancashire. The Aldi is our nearest proper supermarket, and Kirkham is where I go for my hearing aids, and for the dentist. For trains it is our nearest station. It is a pretty little market town.

Most of the time I just drive through it, paying little attention. This week I read an article about the town in a magazine, and decided it had to be worth a walk. I am a great believer that the best way to learn about places is to travel slowly, whether on a Narrowboat or on foot.

The first surprise was to see what looked like a bus shelter, just sitting by the road, and housing a weaving loom. It turns out that Kirkham was once a thriving mill town, and this was the last loom ever used, after the last mill closed in 2003. Apparently in the mid nineteenth century Kirkham was the biggest town in the area, several times the size of Blackpool.

Then I discovered the old town square, a huge mural, a fascinating church, even a Tardis.

My walk took me along a footpath called Remembrance Way which was recently put in place, with wild flowers and sculptures, and along an ancient track which once would have headed up to a fort in Roman times.

It just goes to show that there are many interesting things to find almost anywhere, if you just open your eyes. Every day is a school day, and I like school.

May 23, 2025 0

Is buying or selling a house more stressful?

Mandy and I have moved house twelve times since we have been together. It has become a joke amongst some of our friends who say they never know where to send the Christmas card. I often claimed that it had just become normal for us. People would ask me why I never wanted to put down roots. I would say that we are just good at setting up a new home anywhere we go.

But this time feels more stressful.

As you know we are retired and spend more than half the year on our narrowboat. That certainly feels like home when we are there. But we want to keep a house for the winter, when it is muddy. We want to keep a house for when we get bored of the boat or are too infirm to open locks. We want to keep a house so we have somewhere with a little more space for our stuff.

And this time, instead of moving for my work, we are moving closer to Mandy’s family and friends, from Scotland to Lancashire. This week we have been spending time in both as we look to sell and buy.

The sale process has been fraught. We have been “on the market” for two years and twice we have thought the sale was happening. The first time the buyer turned out not to have the money after several months. The second time, the chain of buyers fell apart at the last moment. We have waited and we hope that in two weeks we will be moved out. It has been stressful, and the solicitors are still throwing out last minute complications such as whether we can find some paperwork the council signed off when we did work on the house seven years ago. But the removal company is booked and we have begun things like cancelling utilities. We have not enjoyed selling the house at all.

We have tried to keep buying a house less stressful but we have failed. The idea was not to look at houses until we were sure the sale was happening. Our plan instead is to live on the boat while we look. But last time we were confident and found a lovely house. Of course that has gone after the failed sale, so this week we have been looking again, with our fingers crossed on the sale. This weekend we are driving round Lancashire viewing our shortlist of houses. This should be an enjoyable time. It should be exciting to find our new home. But for some reason we are not feeling excited. Perhaps it is the worry that the sale could still fail. Perhaps it is the worry that we will make a bad choice. We are not enjoying buying the house at all.

I am naturally a very positive person. I am confident it will all work out for the best. But I don’t this stress. Maybe it is because I no longer have the stress of work, so this seems like a bigger deal. Maybes it is because it is summer, and we would rather be back on the canals. But we just want to hide in our narrowboat.

First world problems eh?

July 5, 2024 0

How is the narrowboat?

I’m back at the narrowboat tonight. Over the past few weeks it has been taken out of the water and blacked (bitumen painted on the hull to protect it), It has new sacrificial anodes (zinc plates under the water to prevent electrolysis pitting the steel). It has had the roof stripped back to metal and repainted with 7 or 8 layers of primer, undercoat and top coat (the sun and my poor repairs had made the roof flaky). The engine has been fully serviced and the coolant system pressure checked after we overheated last summer. They have investigated a leak in the central heating system and dampness by the water pump.

So my job this weekend is to check the work, and to make sure that everything else still works, especially the heating now that cold weather is coming. I am looking forward to being back, even if it is just for a couple of days.

We are currently looking at moving house from Scotland to Lancashire, and as part of that we may have to live on the boat before Spring, which we have not done before, so it is fairly critical that it is warm. We can heat the boat in one of three ways. We can use the webasto boiler, we can use our “bubble stove” diesel fire, or we can run the engine. The last of these is not really an option while we are in a marina overwinter, but the other two techniques should be OK. Often people assume that narrowboats are cold in winter because they just have a single skin of metal, but in fact they have such a small airspace that they warm up very quickly. The only challenge is first thing in the morning, when I need to run from my warm bed to press the button on the webasto controller, before returning to bed for 30 minutes while it warms up.

Hopefully everything will be fine. And then there is just the bill to pay to the boatyard for their work. The saying is that “boat” stands for “bung on another thousand” and it is not far wrong! It is worth it though.

November 24, 2023 0

When was your very good year?

I was listening to Frank Sinatra’s ”Very Good Year” this week, and it made me consider which has been my best year. Frank talks about meeting girls at 17 on the village green, 21 in the city and at 35 in their limousines. He then talks about being in the autumn of his years and feeling like a vintage wine. The song became an enormous hit and is still amongst the ones he is most famous for.

When I was 19 I had left home for university and was living in London. I was loving the independence and the freedom to make my own choices. I was doing some studying but also spending a great deal of time at the student radio station. My future was open with so many options. It was a very good year.

When I was 22 I left Uni, started a career in IT and married Mandy. We were just kids and knew so little of the world. Many people told us we were far too young but we were so in love and so excited about the future. It was a very good year.

When I was 26 we moved to the Netherlands. We had two very young children and spoke no Dutch. But instead of being scared, we were excited. Everything felt new. I loved my job. I had remote access to the computers with a 2400 baud modem – 27,000 time slower than the speed I have in this remote cottage in Orkney. It was a very good year.

When I was 37 I joined the Halifax Bank. I had spent many years as a consultant and working for a “real” company felt fresh. Our boys were 11 and 12 – old enough to do almost anything, but before they turned into surly teenagers. We lived in Yorkshire, such a great county for countryside and straight talking people. I learnt to ski, to fly, to dive. It was a very good year.

When I was 48 we bought a house called Monkroyd, in Todmorden, on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border. It was the house I had dreamt of as a child, a Victorian mill owner’s mansion. It had secret rooms, open fires, two large cellars. Mandy was back close to her family in Burnley. I was commuting to the great city of Manchester. The boys had left home and we were enjoying our space. It was a very good year.

When I was 55 I was leading a very large team running payment operations for Nat West. It was my perfect job and a great way to end my working career. Fascinating challenges and a leadership team that could meet any challenge with energy and positivity. We were living in Scotland near Edinburgh, my favourite city in the world. I also got a chance to spend a lot of time in India, my favourite country in the world. It was a very good year.

I am now 57 and Sinatra’s “autumn of years” is probably appropriate. Despite a stuttering start in lockdown, retirement has been amazing. After many years of making choices that narrowed future options, suddenly we can do anything we want, whenever we want. Mandy & I have spent so much time together and remarkably we have found we still enjoy each other’s company.

I have had so many very good years.

Which was your best year? Let me know.

November 12, 2021 0