Sunday 10 April 2011
A monumental decision has been reached. We are going to sell Martlet; we had intended so to do at the end of the summer. We will be buying a campervan and visiting those parts of this wonderful country that are not accessible by narrowboat, also to visit Ireland and France before age prevents us from enjoying a good walk around.
We have met a lot of interesting people over the last 11 years and have kept in touch with a lot of them, we know that we will miss the canals and the other boaters.
There is a new breed of boat owners afloat that we will not miss; the old ideas of helping at locks and slowing down passing moored boats are going, we will move on before they are completely dead.
Looking at the log book, since September 1999, we have done 8,170 locks, 14,193 miles and the engine has run for 5700 hours. We have visited Bristol, London, Ripon and Tewitfield; the latter being the most Northerly point on the Lancaster canal.
We have travelled the length of the Manchester Ship Canal and have crossed the Mersey; the Thames from Limehouse to Teddington four times and have spent a total of eight months on the non tidal Thames. The River Nene, Middle Levels and the Ouse, Cam and tributaries, all of the canal system apart from some Birmingham canals.
We have enjoyed it all.
I have enjoyed keeping the Blog and who knows, there may be a land based sequel!
Thank you for looking and for your helpful and kind comments. The photographs were taken with a Canon PowerShot SX100, to which all credit is due for the result. I merely pressed the button (I know, that excuse has been used many times).
Farewell, good health and happiness to you all.
