Tag: retirement

What is it like to be on a boat for six months?

And we’re off! We have made several short trips already this year, but this week we set off on our narrowboat for the next six months. This is our fourth year since retirement and our fourth year of boating all summer. The first year was in the North of England, the second in the South. Last year we travelled the westerly canals and rivers – Shropshire Union, Llangollen, Montgomery, Trent and Mersey, Macclesfield, Peak Forest, Staffordshire and Worcester, River Severn, Gloucester and Sharpness, River Avon, Stratford, Birmingham and Fazeley, Coventry and Ashby canals.

The obvious thing would be to head east this year, but the canal network is not so good on that side of the country so we have decided to complete a few more of the canals we have not travelled before, while picking up some of our “greatest hits”.

This week we journeyed up from our winter base in Stone, through the very long Harecastle Tunnel, and down 25 locks of heartbreak hill in a day. We are now travelling through the very flat and very beautiful Cheshire Plain. Over the next six months we plan to moor in Liverpool docks, cross the Pennines on the curly wurlys, travel through the Happy Valley, revisit the history of Bugsworth Basin and maybe go on a steam train next to the Caldon Canal. From there our plans are more fluid and that is part of the adventure.

People often ask us how we cope living in such a confined space for six months. Sometimes we see hire boaters having massive rows as they are not used to being on top of each other even for a week. But Mandy, the dogs and I have found our happy rhythm. We don’t try to go too far each day. We empathise when someone makes a mistake driving the boat – we all do it. I am happy for Mandy to sit in a quiet corner doing her cross stitch. She is happy for me to dash off to find a stately home or a roman fort.

I think we are very privileged to enjoy this life and am really looking forward to the next six months. I love retirement.

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I miss having kids

We spent a day with our niece and her children, Fred and Thomas, this week near St Andrews. After what seems like months of solid rain, we were lucky enough to get some sunshine, and we visited a beautiful garden and a dramatic beach.

It was such a good day. The boys are about six months and nearly three years old, so full of energy and character. I have always loved children. My wife and I were married young and had children straight away. We really wanted them, and also wanted the freedom of them leaving home when we were still relatively young. That worked out well and we have been able to enjoy the life as narrowboaters, travelling around the UK, without worrying about children at school or university,

However, sometimes I do miss having kids around the house (or boat). For a number of reasons I think it is unlikely we will have grandchildren, so we make the most of great nephews and nieces, like Fred and Thomas. And we still enjoy time with our sons and nearly daughter in law, even though they are now in their twenties and thirties, so hardly the same!

I bet if we did have kids again, we would soon find them tiring and would miss our freedom. Maybe we should borrow some 🙂

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Why is it so hard to take a picture of a kingfisher?

During many years of travelling on a narrowboat, I must have tried to photograph a kingfisher a hundred times. We see them on the side of the canal quite frequently. A flash of blue against the brown or green. But for some reason they are really hard to photograph. They seem to know what they are doing because quite often they will sit quietly on a branch until I reach in my pocket for my phone. As soon as I look at the screen they are gone, either disappearing completely, or teasing me by flying ahead of the boat to find another perch.

So this week I was delighted to find a bird that remained still long enough for me to get a series of pictures.

I know they aren’t great – too blurry. We meet a number of bird watchers along the canals. They tell me that I am doing it wrong. I should sit quietly with a huge camera on a tripod, and wait for the bird to come to me. A great kingfisher photo can take days or weeks of waiting. I am just too impatient for that.

I did find a better way to get a kingfisher photo a couple of years ago. I met someone on a towpath that had just taken a picture and she kindly shared with me.

Now that is a kingfisher!

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Should I wear hearing aids to reduce the risk of dementia?

My Dad died with Alzheimer’s in February 2022. I miss him but I do not miss his last few years, when he was a shell, who knew nothing and nobody. It is a horrible disease. Understandably I worry about getting older myself and look for signs of memory loss. I forget the names of people I know well, and sometimes I mix up words. For instance I might look for a “mooring space” for my car.

This week I was given the opportunity to join a research study about healthy people who might get Alzheimer’s in the future. They took my blood and have sent it to California to get the latest testing for signs of p-tau217, a protein which indicates the formation of amyloids in the brain, believed to be the cause of Alzheimer’s. If the test is positive, I will then go on to get MRI scans of my brain and then either an experimental drug or a placebo to see the results. They will also check my blood DNA to look for a particular gene which increases the chance of the disease.

Whatever the results, I will learn something and will help the research which is likely to help many others in the future.

Attending the clinic also reminded me about hearing aids. I have quite bad hearing at high frequencies but normal hearing at middle and low frequencies. Two years ago I tried out private hearing aids to see if they would help. They were expensive and I did not get much benefit so I gave up on them. But my hearing has deteriorated so I went this week to pick up some NHS aids. The doctor told me that many people give up far too soon, and that I should wear them every day for at least eight weeks before coming to any conclusions. She also said that latest research shows that wearing hearing aids can reduce the risk of dementia.

So that is what i am doing. Three days in to wearing them and so far so good. The world does sound a little hissy and scratchy because I am not used to the high pitched sounds yet, but I will persevere. And if it helps with my brain, so much for the better.

What do you think about what I am doing? Does it make sense, or after my father, am I just understandably paranoid?

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The best time of year to get a quiet mooring

We stayed this week at Tixall Wide. This is one of the loveliest moorings on the British canal network. Most canals are just wide enough for two boats to pass. Digging more would have been a waste of money. But when the Staffordshire and Worcester Canal was built, a rich landowner, Thomas Clifford, would only let the canal cross his land if it was dug to look like a lake, fitting in with his gardens that had recently been developed by famous gardener Capability Brown.

Narrowboat Thuis moored in Tixall Wide this week

Tixall Wide is really very beautiful and because of that gets very full. During peak season you need to arrive in the morning or you stand little chance of getting a space to moor. Even in the winter it is pretty full because it is a good place to wait out the cold weather, in walking distance of Great Haywood junction where you can get water and a bit of shopping.

But this time of year is the best to get a great mooring. Most of the winter moorers have moved on or are in marinas, and the hire boat season has not yet started. We were extra lucky this year because Tixall Wide had work done on a drainage culvert over winter, and so was not open to anyone. So this week we were moored with just three other boats. It was wonderfully quiet, and properly dark at night, with no light pollution. The moon and stars seemed so bright.

It is the earliest in the year that we have been travelling on the narrowboat since I retired and in all honesty, it is a little too cold and wet when steering the boat. In a few weeks it will be warmer and more civilised. But the big benefit is the peace. And when we are sitting in the boat with the stove keeping us toasty warm, it is a lovely place to be.

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How boring am I?

We had a catch up meeting with our financial adviser this week. In preparation we had to fill in risk questionnaires to see if our view of financial risk had changed, and so whether our pension savings were invested appropriately. The result was that I am on the 51st percentile, or to put it another way, boringly average.

I was disappointed with this result. Not because I am disappointed with how risk averse I am. I would not to want to be gambling with my money at a stage when I am retired and no new money is coming in. Nor because I am disappointed with how much I like to take risk. I worked in financial services for most of my career and understand that an element of risk comes with the returns that I think we should be getting from our savings.

But I am disappointed that it is bang in the middle because doesn’t that just make me very boring? I think now that I am retired that is my biggest dread. That I have become a boring old man. As an old work colleague once told me about retirement – my biggest adventure each day would be deciding whether to buy white or brown rolls for my lunch. I don’t think I am quite there yet. For me, my narrowboat life and long vacations are fascinating and I learn new things every day.

But I can see for others that my life must seem really unimportant and boring.

I think I will go and buy a lottery ticket.

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First boat trip of the year discovers first problems

We have been staying on our narrowboat this week, in a marina in Staffordshire. On the way down, Mandy asked me not to rush taking the boat out on a trip. In particular she did not want to travel when it is wet and windy. I know she is right. Our trip should be relaxing and fun, not a miserable chore. But I have to admit that I have just been itching to get behind the tiller. So I was delighted on Monday to wake up to a bright sunny day, and we set off south towards Great Haywood.

It was a crisp cold morning and as you can see in the picture, the ice sparkled on our newly painted roof. This was a chance to enjoy ourselves, and it was lovely to be back travelling at 3mph. Our first trip out is also an opportunity to check out everything still works. The good news was that the work done over the winter seems to have been successful. The bad news was that the battery charging warning light would not go off. This is a potentially big problem because we have brand new batteries, and if we let them lose too much charge, they will become useless.

Normally I would try to diagnose the problem using a “Victron” app on my phone, which can monitor the state of charge of the batteries and what power is going in and out. Unfortunately the app was not working either. I did some checks to make sure there was not a critical problem, like the engine belt failing, and we decided we needed to return to base. In a boat you cannot just turn around. You need to keep going until you can find a winding hole with space to turn the boat. In retrospect this was a good thing because we did get to enjoy travelling all day, including four locks to start rebuilding my windlass muscles for the season.

Overnight I managed to reset my electrical devices so that the app worked again, and the following morning our friendly engineer found a wire off on the alternator. He also fixed a long-standing leak we have had on the water tank overflow.

So all in all a good result. We have had a nice day out, checked everything is ready on the boat, and fixed some problems which is always satisfying. We need to pop back to Scotland next week but I really want to be boating. We just need a little more sun!

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How to deal with a bad day?

I am naturally positive. My instinct is always to see the best out of everything and to look for opportunities in adversity. Indeed, when I was working I would sometimes be criticised because I would not spend enough time on “what went wrong?” because I was always looking for “what can we do now?”.

But even positive people occasionally have bad days, and Wednesday was one of them for me.

Two things went badly wrong. The first was the dentist. I had an appointment for a crown replacement, but my new dentist took one look and told me I have bigger problems. Apparently I grind my teeth at night and they have worn down to a level where the back teeth are rubbing against each other and putting pressure on the side of the crown which was why it had split off. Fixing could cost thousands of pounds which I don’t have. In the meantime he put in a temporary crown and left me in a lot of pain as the anaesthetic wore off.

Then just as I was feeling down, my phone rang. It was the couple who are buying our house. At least they were. Their buyer had just fallen through so while they still want our house, our planned date of March 22nd is now impossible, which means the house we were buying in Lancashire is also off.

So no house and in pain. Not my best day. Mandy also understandably angry and upset. So what to do?

Normally my response would be to switch on my positive energy and find five great reasons to be happy about the day. It would probably have irritated all those around me but it would have made me feel good. But for once it was not what I wanted to do. I just wanted to wallow in my miserableness. I found a quite corner and read a book.

So now it is two days later and and I am very much back to myself. There are lots of good things that will come out of this. My teeth are fine – for now at least. We get to stay in Scotland longer. I will even get my 60th birthday Scottish bus pass. And if the Lancashire house falls through, there will be another one, Fate is our friend.

I have also decided – sometimes even the most positive of people is allowed a bad day.

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What is it like to stay on a boat that does not move?

From March to October we are continuous cruisers on our narrowboat. We travel around the country seeing new places and meeting new people – having new adventures. We are already planning our first trip for this year, probably heading up to Liverpool and then crossing the Pennines to Leeds. I am excited at the thought and this week I made a boat improvement that will help – a map on the fridge.

We had the kitchen upgraded before last season and we have been very happy with it. The one thing we did not like was the white fridge, which did not look quite right. So I had a vinyl “wrap” made of the canal network and have put that on the door. Now, not only does the kitchen look better, but we can easily show visitors where we have travelled and where we are heading.

This is an example of the sorts of “jobs” I tend to do over winter, when the boat is moored in a marina. The experience of staying on a boat when it is not moving is different from our summer adventures. We are not seeing new places every day, and we are not enjoying the loneliness of staying overnight somewhere away from everyone. But there are advantages too.

The marina has plenty of facilities including electricity and water on the pontoon, toilets, showers, pump out, and even its own pub. We also have access to our car so I can easily get to shops or go to see people. I also really love the cold weather. Gongoozelers (non boaters) often ask if the boat is too cold in the winter. The answer is absolutely not. We have central heating from a diesel boiler, and a “bubble stove” that easily heats the small airspace in the narrowboat. Last night for instance was icy cold outside, but Mandy and I were in our T shirts and had to turn the stove off because it was over 24°C in the boat.

It is cold in the mornings because we tend not to have the heating on overnight, but it is cozy warm in our bed, and the boat doesn’t take too long to warm up. I also really love getting up to take the dogs for their first walk, and seeing the early morning sun glinting off the frost and ice on the boats in the marina. It is very beautiful.

Staying on a boat that does not move is a different experience than our summer adventures. But it has its own charms. I am just so happy to be back on the boat.

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Ten things I will miss about Scotland

We had some news this week that we have a provisional date for selling our house in Scotland – 22nd March. We have bought and sold enough houses to know that a lot can still go wrong, but in Scotland the process is more certain and so we are optimistic.

Dundee, a couple of Sundays ago,

I say optimistic because this is something we have been hoping for. Mandy wants to be closer to her family and friends in the Northwest of England, so it makes sense. But we are both still sad to be leaving Scotland. It is such a wonderful country. So it is hard to narrow it down to ten things I will miss. But here goes:

1. The hills. Scotland is built around large ranges of mountains, munros and hills, with classic names such as the Trossachs, the Lomonds, the Cairngorms and the Pentlands. They provide a challenge to climb and a background to so many views,

2. The sea. With such lengthy coastline, very often isolated and bleak, I have walked many miles along beaches and cliffs, lost in thought, with just the dogs for company,. Mindfulness at its best.

3. The islands. Some of my most emotional memories have been formed staying on holiday in the islands – Islay, Skye, The Outer Hebrides, Orkney. Each has its own unique character and beauty. I love them all.

4. The cities. Edinburgh is probably my favourite city in the world. Surrounded by hills and coast it is all within walking distance but still has so many restaurants, bars, museums, parks, monuments. But the capital is not the only great city in Scotland. I also love Glasgow, Perth, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee.

5. The food. This is an odd one to claim because Scotland is more famous for haggis than it is for haute cuisine. However Scotland has some of the best produce in the world – Aberdeen Angus steak, incredible lobster and crab, as well as deep fried mars bars and irn bru.

6. The accents. I deliberately say “accents” rather than “accent” because it is only as you stay here that your ear becomes attuned to the soft highland voices, the warmth of the borders and the rasping Glaswegian.

7. The empty roads. We have spent a deal of time driving between England and Scotland this year and it is such a relief when you cross the border and suddenly the jams disappear. So much space.

8. The independence. Let’s be clear. I am a unionist and would hate to see the break-up of the United Kingdom. But I do admire the independence of spirit of the Scots. It does feel very much a separate nation as well as part of the UK.

9. The whisky. Selfish to choose this one but I do love a whisky and no-one makes a whisky like Scotland. I love the gentle Macallan, the rich Glenmorangie, the salty Talisker and the peaty Lagavulin.

10. The people. It’s corny but true. Scottish people give you time, not always in a rush. Scottish people also have attitude – strong wills, strong opinions, And Scottish people make loyal friends.

Such a great country. We will certainly miss it.

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