It’s been a while since I posted an update – nearer two months than one, in which time lots has happened on board Iris Abbott, pretty much all of it good! There is lots to say so this will be split over a couple of posts.
I’ve been around boats for most of my life (I was 7 when we had our first holiday on a canal boat) but Iris is VERY different to anything I’ve handled before, so moving her for the first time was always going to be a big moment.
I’m not sure where the time has gone, but as I write this it is exactly a month since I boarded Iris Abbott in Northwich and Matt and I brought her down to Acton Bridge.
I’m writing this on Monday evening, 22nd January, five and a bit days after arriving in Acton Bridge. It’s been a crazy few days, but returning to work today forced me to pause for breath and that in turn made me think it would be good to summarise the experience so far.
The question of whether I would live afloat “forever” has come up quite regularly over the past 24 years. I very quickly came up with an answer, which I’ve repeated many times – “I’ll do it until something more interesting comes along.”
The previous article I added on here was written on the 29th January, at the end of my first day of boating this year. I’m typing this on 26th December, at the end of (probably) the last day of boating this year.
After assorted challenges, I’ve finally been back on the move this weekend, but with no firm plan beyond where I wanted to end up today. The Caldon has a stoppage beginning tomorrow and I wanted to get past that, back onto the Trent & Mersey.
This final part of my review of 2022 boating, I explore a bit of canal I’ve never seen before, fail to get to my favourite waterway and end up on very familiar territory
In this fourth section of my review of 2022 boating adventures, I am finally ready to head north from my temporary marina mooring. Shortages of water over the summer had led to unprecedented closures of several canals, with talk of more to follow.
Such fun this boating lark. Turns out I have tendon damage after what I thought was a trivial slip in Warwick a fortnight ago, but was getting more painful by the day/lock (and there has been 89 of them since it happened.)
This is the final extract from my 2004 article for the Historic Narrow Boat Owners Club.
In this second part of my review of last year’s boating (mis)adventures, things go wrong pretty much straight away and it slowly dawns that anything vaguely resembling a plan is going out of the window.