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Heading towards Napton
junction on our New Year’s Eve cruise
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We spent 2015 cruising
nearly every day of the year around many of the canals and rivers of England
and Wales. We explored many places we
had never even heard of before let alone visited. We had adventures, got wet, cold, windy, too
hot and just right but the main thing was we had a brilliant year and loved
every minute of it. We made new friends
and kept in touch with old friends.
2016 was completely
different, Karen took a contract in Warwick and consequently our cruising and
lifestyle changed. We spent the year
moving around Warwickshire and Northamptonshire to keep in commuting distance
of Karen’s office. Chalkhill Blue 2 was
built in 2016 and was delivered in October so we had to take the old boat up to
Manchester and swap her for the old one.
We were soon back down to the Midlands to carry on cruising
locally. Even with the change of lifestyle we still love it and it has given us many more happy memories
What it has taught us is that
there are vast areas of the Midlands that are unspoilt and we have become very
fond of the area, so much so that we feel we could live around here if the time
comes to move back to bricks and mortar.
To show the contrast in
lifestyle we travelled 1,232 miles through 1,158 locks in 2015 and just 489
miles through 326 locks in 2016.
Irrespective of the distances travelled we have met some fantastic
people on the cut and now we are staying locally for the near future we are
making friends with people following the same lifestyle as us.
We returned from our
family break to the house we rented in Hartley Wintney over the festive period
on Friday and when we woke on New Year’s Eve it was like we had never been
away. It was a still and dry day so we
had a short cruise to Napton. When we
arrived there were plenty of mooring spaces on the stretch leading to the start
of the Napton flight. These moorings are
ideal as they are next to the Folly Inn.
Within a couple of hours about ten more boats arrived and all the spots
were taken – people had even started breasting up against other boats.
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Karen taking us onto the
Oxford canal at Napton junction
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After mooring and having a
spot of lunch we walked back to Calcutt to get the car. We went for a couple of early evening drinks
in the pub and then went back to have dinner.
Miraculously we both stayed awake until midnight which we had not
expected as we were shattered from our holiday and I have been suffering from a
sore throat and earache. Since living on
the boat Karen hasn’t had a single cold and I have only had one and that was
just a couple of weeks ago so was probably still hanging around.
Once again, we wish all
our family, friends and blog readers a happy 2017. To me, writing
the blog means we will always be able to re-evoke the memories of previous years..
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