I think this week’s weather has been about as perfect as it can get. Each morning I have woken up to a hard frost, with ice coating the roof of the boat. The sunrises have been stunning, with the light glittering across the fields and the water. During the day the sun has warmed us to T Shirt temperatures, and then in the evening as the light fades, it has got cold again, very quickly, with amazing skies full of stars and planets.
We have been able to heat the boat with our bubble stove (a diesel stove rather like a wood burner) or with our Webasto diesel boiler. The Webasto was 14 years old and beginning to fail, so we had that replaced this week with a brand new one with a three year warranty. It was expensive (BOAT stands for “bung on another thousand”) but will keep our central heating and water hot for years to come.
The air space in a narrowboat is really small and so heats up quickly, despite the single glazing, single skinned walls, and drafts. We have spent many happy hours this week feeling toasty warm in the boat, while the world outside freezes.
Most of this week we have been moored back in our marina, where we have access to a car and so have been able to get things done, but tomorrow we are back on our Spring journeys, heading north through the industrial centre of Stoke on Trent. I am looking forward to seeing the old kilns and factories, as well as the beautiful Staffordshire Countryside.
We came back to our narrowboat this week. We stayed a few nights in the marina, checking we had everything we need, and then set off to one of our favourite moorings – Tixall Wide, on the Staffordshire and Worcester canal.
Tixall Wide is a beautiful place. When the canal was built, the wealthy landowner would only allow it to go through his estate, so long as it looked like a lake. Now, nearly three hundred years later, the fancy house is long gone, but the lake remains. It is home to all sorts of birds, including a couple of pairs of kingfishers, which I am hoping to see.
It is also a perfect first trip out from the marina in Stone because it is just four hours away. That is long enough to properly test the boat and the engine to make sure nothing has broken over winter, and it is short enough that if there is a problem we can limp back.
The good news is that we have not found any problems so far, and the work we had done while we were away seems to have been done well. The engine has been serviced and the rocker head gasket replaced. The shower has been regrouted and sealed. A fuse for the batteries has ben replaced. And we have a lovely new front button fender. The only issues are an ageing Webasto water heater that we will have to replace soon, and a joint in the central heating plumbing that leaks in cold weather.
I was itching to come travelling again and I have loved it. The canal locks feel a little stiff but that is probably caused by my windlass muscles needing to be built up again. The dogs have settled straight back in. Lulu in particular likes to sit on the rear deck and watch the world go round.
Right. Tea won’t cook itself. Pork chops cooked in stuffing tonight, with baked potatoes, cabbage and carrots. Traditional hearty food for narrowboaters in February. It is good to be back.
I was thinking about what to write this week and realised that the highlight has been a visit to the dental hygienist. I wonder if I am becoming too boring to write a blog. I know some of my fellow retirees, including my wife, will say that this is part of what retirement is about. As well as providing opportunity to do exciting new things for which I would never have time when I was working, it provides opportunity to chill, relax and enjoy a slower pace of life.
I do understand the argument. I have read a couple of books this week, after it was pointed out to me that I never read anymore. I know that Mandy really loves sitting in a corner, doing cross-stitch and watching NCIS. I have no problem with others slowing down. But it is not the person I want to be.
I see myself as a lucky young retiree, enjoying the adventure that life provides. That is why I love being on the narrowboat. That is why I loved spending a month on trains in Europe. That is why I want to go back to the outer Hebrides for a month this autumn. There is so much to do!
And maybe I am wrong about the hygienist being the only highlight this week. We had my god-daughter Kelsey to stay with her mum, my friend Marion. We found a local upholsterer and spent a happy hour with him, looking at options for our dining room chairs. I went for a walk with my brother in law to see the snowdrops in Lytham Hall. I have cooked Baklava for a Greek meal with my cousins tonight. They may not be the most exciting things for a blog, but they have kept me busy.
But I still want to find a new adventure for next week. Slowing down is for old folk. And I ain’t old.
I appreciate that followers of this blog probably think that all my life is a holiday. Since I retired I have been able to fulfil many of my bucket list wishes. We spend our summers on a narrowboat and have travelled most of the canals of England. We have spent a month in Orkney and a month in the Outer Hebrides. I interrailed all over Europe for a month. We have skied. We have stayed in castles. I am a very lucky chap.
This week we are having a proper holiday in Lanzarote. Mandy’s brother and his wife invited us to join them for a week. A free holiday in the sun, after weeks of cold, wet, dark, was too much to miss.
We are flying from Manchester and have arrived hours early. I always arrive early when I fly. I panic (unnecessarily) about hold ups in security and missing boarding. In my 60 years of life I have never missed a flight so perhaps I need to relax more. Or maybe the reason I have never missed a flight is because I am obsessive about it.
Either way, it means I always have hours to kill at the airport. What should I do?
The traditional way to use up airport time in the UK is to drink lager. There are only two times it is socially acceptable to get drunk first thing in the morning – Christmas Day and at the airport. There are an awful lot of people here with pints in front of them. But I can’t face that.
We could book an airport lounge. We always used to do that. We could sit on sofas with plenty of space, drinking “free” coffee and reading the newspapers. It is a comfortable way to fly. But prices have recently got ridiculous. It used to cost about £15 a person, but the price here for two of us would have been nearly £100. That is not good value for money.
We could go to the gate early. That would certainly mitigate my lateness paranoia. But the seats are always uncomfortable. They often change the gate. And it is boring.
We could have breakfast. T2 at Manchester has been recently refurbished and there are a wealth of restaurant options. They are pricey at around £17 for a full English, but it’s a lot cheaper than a lounge. I think that is a good choice.
And I still have time to add another option. What better choice for using time at the airport than writing a blog. You should try it.
Living on a narrowboat for most of the year, we have become very good at minimising the things we need to live. We have a rule that if we buy something new for the boat, something else has to go. The result is that although it is a small space, we have everything we need to live, and is does not look cluttered.
So why is it that moving house this week, we have so so so much stuff? I cannot believe how many boxes I have unpacked. And I still have rooms full of more boxes, and a garage packed to the roof.
The trouble is that we have lived in large houses for years and years. I believe that people fill the space they live in. Whether it is a small narrowboat, or a mansion. Over time cupboards get filled and spaces get occupied. Our new house is still big but not as big as the one we had in Scotland. We probably should have got rid of half the stuff when we moved out, but we didn’t. So now we have boxes and boxes of things we do not need. I estimate four or five times too many glasses, four times too many mugs, five times too much linen. And don’t even mention the shoes! We have hundreds of DVDs that we never watch, four sets of crockery, a chesterfield sofa and chair we don’t need, boxes of stationery from the loft. The list goes on.
So the next couple of days are about getting lounge, kitchen and two bedrooms ready for use at Christmas. Then I will methodically do the rest of the house, room by room, box by box. That will leave me January to work my way through the garage. Charity shops will be deluged by me, as will the local tip.
The real question is whether Mandy and I can be more disciplined in the future. I’d like to use that narrowboat rule on the house. One thing in and one thing out. I certainly don’t ever want to see this many boxes again!
In July I wrote a blog entitled “Houseless not homeless”. We had just sold our house in Scotland and were going to be living on our narrowboat full time. We had no house but we had a home on the boat. Last Friday we completed the purchase of a new house in Lancashire. It is lovely but we couldn’t schedule the removal company to bring our stuff out of storage till next week, and so this week we have had a house but not a home.
My brother in law installing my new wardrobes – thanks Steve
It has been a strange week. There has been plenty to do, from building wardrobes, to connecting the internet, to sorting out address changes. It has been fun. But I have been to and fro between the house, the boat and my in laws, who live close by. So I have felt unsettled. For ten days I do not know where my home is.
Since I retired we have had a routine of spending the summer in the boat and the winter in a house. In my unconscious mind I have seamlessly switched “home” from one to the other. We have also travelled quite a lot but that was never a problem because I knew where home was. The cliché is that “home is where the heart is”. I think home provides the foundations that allow me to be carefree and adventurous. It is family, it is relationships, and it is also a location.
So this week has felt really quite odd. But next week should be amazing. The removal people will arrive on Tuesday morning and Mandy has kindly offered to stay at the boat with the dogs for a couple of days more while I break the back of the unpacking. I am looking forward to working out where things go. I am looking forward to setting things up. And most of all I am looking forward to building a home.
What do you think about “home”? Is it just where you happen to live or is it so much more?
There are a number of questions we get asked all the time by non-boaters. How often do you fill up with water? Where do you get your electricity? How does the Internet work on a boat? Is it very cold in he winter? Where does washing up water go? Do you need a licence to drive a narrowboat?
Another common question is whether you are allowed to cruise at night.
The answer is “no” if you are a hire boater because your insurance won’t cover it. But for liveaboards like ourselves the answer is “yes” because it has always been allowed. At the peak of canal traffic, in the 19th century, bargees were paid on taking a load from a to b, however long that took, and so often they would travel all day and all night.
Although it is allowed, these days we see almost no boats travelling at night – maybe two or three in a season. Certainly we have never travelled at night. Even with the headlight, you can’t see very well, and it is annoying to fellow boaters who may be sleeping.
But this time of year the sun sets so early that this week we found ourselves travelling in the dark at just after 4pm. Perhaps we should have moored up as soon as it got dusky, but there was a particular mooring we were heading to, and besides it was an adventure.
The water looked very beautiful as the sun went down and my eyes acclimatised quite well. Still, I decided to move even slower than usual because seeing obstructions in the canal was very difficult. Surprisingly, locks were less of a problem. The headlight is designed to illuminate tunnels, and a lock is like a tunnel without a roof, so they lit up quite well.
I don’t think we will choose to travel at night again in a hurry, but as Thomas Beecham once said, you should try everything in life once, except incest and Morris dancing. And I love an adventure.
After a month travelling through Europe in largely sunny warm weather, it has been a shock to return to the cold of Britain. This morning it was -6°C when I took the dogs for their walk. Winter has certainly arrived.
We have a bit more of a challenge on the narrowboat because our “bubble” diesel stove is not working properly, It is not getting to temperature and so sooting up. I need to find an engineer in Staffordshire who can fix it. We still have the “Webasto” diesel boiler so all is not lost and we can get a pretty cozy boat during the day. Overnight we turn the heating off so it does get pretty chilly but underneath the duvet and blanket it still feels safe and warm.
People often ask me how we live on a narrowboat in cold weather. It is after all a single skinned steel tube. But the reality is that the airspace is so small that it warms up pretty quickly. Hot weather in the summer is much more of a problem, when it can get like an oven. Not something we need to worry about this week!
It is a simple life on a boat. You soon realise what really matters. Staying warm in the cold. Staying cool in the heat. Making sure there is water. Making sure you can use a toilet. Getting food in the cupboard. In return we get a lot for free. Beautiful mornings and evenings. A kingfisher sitting on the back of our neighbour’s boat yesterday. A peaceful life.
We are in the process of buying a house. New complexities will arrive such as council tax, sorting out utilities, broadband. We even have to pay the council for a set of wheely bins. When we move in, we will get the benefits of not having to worry about filling up water, pumping out the toilet or replacing bottles of gas. But I know I will very soon want to be back on the boat. Even when it is cold.
Sadly, this is the final week of my adventure, travelling by train around Europe to celebrate my 60th year. I will be glad to be back home with Mandy and the dogs, but if I didn’t have any ties I would have been very tempted to buy a ticket for another month and keep travelling. I have seen so much and had so much fun!
This week was in the west of Europe and unlike my other weeks has been in just one country – France. Fortunately France is a large and varied country and the week started travelling from Marseille on the Mediterranean, west along the riviera and then up into the Pyrenees to the medieval town of Foix. I have never been to this area, and I found it quite stunning and very French. My pitiful requests of “parlez vous Anglais?” were often met with a shrug or a shake of the head. I had the benefit of Google Translate if I needed it, but I actually found that being forced to use my schoolboy French made it easier. I got along, even after a couple of beers in the Foix microbrewery.
From Foix the train line goes even higher, to the Spanish border at Latour de Carol, 1232m above sea level, the highest station in France. The mountains get more pointy and the air gets thinner. From Latour I dropped back down a bit to spend an hour in the French ski resort of Ax Les Thermes. It is obviously out of ski season, and unfortunately Ax is one of those lower altitude ski areas that are becoming unviable with climate change. But the local market was busy and the town was investing in increasing tourism to take the hot spring spa waters.
Toulouse was absolutely rammed with people because it was the weekend of the Toulouse Marathon. Avoiding the lycra myself, I wandered down to the river to soak up the history of this ancient port on the Garonne. I was also very glad to see the other Toulouse waterway – the Canal du Midi. I watched a boat coming up one of the locks, with more than a little envy. I will be happy to be back on the narrowboat next week.
From Toulouse it is not far to Bayonne and Biarritz on the Atlantic coast. Although development has merged these two towns, they retain very different characters. Biarritz felt to have faded glory as once the playground of the rich, and now a home for hippy surfers. There was a fine view from the lighthouse along the beach, and I sat for a while and watched them riding their boards, waiting for the perfect wave.,
I preferred Bayonne. It is an old walled city, with more of a Basque character than a French one. All the signs were in three languages – French, Basque and Occitan. I spent a happy afternoon, wandering randomly around the town, soaking up the atmosphere. I discovered that Bayonne is famous for its street art. I visited one gallery which was full of such paintings. To me they felt incongruous on canvas and I preferred to see them on walls across the city.
On to Bordeaux. It is much bigger and busier than I expected. I got a little lost amongst the great buildings and monuments that the wealth from wine has brought to the town.
For my second day in Bordeaux I took a local train up the line through the Medoc, passing the vineyards of some of the most famous wine areas of Bordeaux – Macau, Margaux and Pauillac where I got off. I walked up through the vineyards and along the Route des Chateaux, where every few minutes I passed a new great house – Latour, Pichon Baron, Bellegrave, Fonbadet, Saint Mambert. I had a wonderful three course lunch in Pauillac for €21.50 followed by a tour of another Chateau – Lynch Barge – where they make one of the Grand Cru wines of Bordeaux. It was a fascinating tour and finished with a tasting of a few of their vintages – delicious but a little out of my price range.
Coming to the end of my journey now, with La Rochelle – famous for its old port and the many sailing boats moored there. It is also famous for oysters, and I arrived at the market just in time for half a dozen of the best with a cardboard cup of wine – not bad for €8.
My last French train is to Paris today (Friday) and then back to the UK on the Eurostar tomorrow morning. This past month has been a life affirming adventure and one I will never forget. My top three tips for old interrailers:
Travel light. I have a 40l rucksack and it has been more than enough.
Be flexible. By all means make a plan, but be prepared to change it as you go.
Do it. Many people have dreams of a journey like mine but they stay dreams. Just do it.
I hope you have enjoyed my four week travelogue. I really really really have. See you next week, back on my boat.
Over half way through on my month long train jaunt around Europe to celebrate being old, and despite all the travelling I am full of energy. Week 1 was in the North, week 2 in the East and week 3 has been in the South. My last blog ended with me arriving in Palermo. The good news is that there was no horse’s head in my bed. Instead I found myself attending mass in the Catholic Cathedral. I do not understand Italian, but my Dad was a vicar and so I could follow the rhythms of the service and it was very peaceful. Mind you, I am not sure what this statue was indicating, outside the door.
Scicily is a slow paced island and I loved my time there. I even bought a cap, like the ones they wear in Godfather 2. It will come in useful next summer on the narrowboat, especially if I need to resolve any family arguments.
Naples was my next stop – two trains, an Italian haircut and a boat away. I have never been to Pompeii so that was my priority. It did not disappoint. The ruins cover a huge area with so many things to discover. And even better, because it was the first Sunday in the month, entrance was free. In my mind I was back in AD 79, under the shadow of Vesuvius.
One Pizza Cappricciosa and a good night’s sleep later and it was off to Genoa via Milan. It is a long journey and the train was delayed, so by the time I got to the hotel, it was nearly dark. I decided to take a walk around the harbour to the old town, and I was rewarded with wonderful old buildings and boats. It really is a beautiful historic town.
Tuesday’s trip was on small trains across the border from Naples to Nice. I was lucky because the Italian train strike did not affect my journey. I was even more lucky because the views from the train were spectacular, as the track clung to the cliffs on the edge of the Mediterranean. I have been on some of the world’s greatest train journeys, including the Glacier Express in Switzerland, and the highland line in Scotland. This route is up amongst the very best – Italian Riviera, Monaco and Cote D’Azur.
Nice is nice. I spent many hours wandering the streets and discovering old churches, art installations and gelaterias. I climbed the steep hill between the promenade and the port. It had the most stunning views. Another town I was sorry to leave.
There was one more town to visit this week and that was Marseille. It is a cosmopolitan city, founded 2600 years ago by the Greeks. The basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde sits on a big hill overlooking the town. This time I cheated and took the bus to the top. Again, incredible views and things to see before I walked down the cobbled streets to the port. I love walking when I am travelling because there are always surprises to find. I wandered into one abbey and found an organist practising. I just sat for a while and listened to the free concert. Then, when I got up to go, I discovered a door to the crypt, and found underneath the church a series of small chapels, hewn from the rock. I would never have found any of this had I not been wandering and wondering.
Having travelled through North, East and South Europe, it will not surprise you that I am going West for the last leg of my adventure. I had hoped to get to Spain and Portugal, but a combination of poor train options and bad weather has encouraged me to change my mind and head to the west of France. I’ll tell you more next week.
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