Practicing happiness and koselige

Thanks to my family, I realise I regularly do all four of the things researchers say make us happy.

Take a look to see how you’re doing.

Inspired by my younger daughter Freya and her fitness commitments, including her inspirational London marathon this past week, I actively move for at least 30 minutes a day.

Her London Marathon would have been inspiring enough to run 26.2 miles but to complete the distance through gritted teeth in acute knee pain from mile 14 was an unforgettable lesson in determination, perseverance and commitment ( commitment to her own goals, to those who had sponsored her, and as she knew all those children in her school who were waiting to see her arrive the following week sporting her medal).

I am inspired and encouraged by both my daughters and the way their lives (and figures) reflect their commitment to healthy activity. I’m also grateful for boaty friends who spur me on via social media to regularly get out and waddle to bring on a sweat.

I recognise and am grateful for the healthy lifestyle living afloat with a Boatdog brings. It is easy to move for 30 minutes a day with purpose because of our walks together, trips on foot to find shops, exploring new places, tackling locks – all workouts in their own way.

Ploughing through mud takes extra effort whatever your size

Prioritising connections with family and friends, is something living apart from them all and floating about makes even more important. It also brings huge joy in the way they seek to include us, and indeed how we can include them in our floating lives.

It reminds us that being included and including others in small ways is vital. That can be through conversations, paying someone attention in a conversation, really listening to what someone is saying and not being distracted. Making time for someone is one of the best things we can do, and it means a lot.

We need to make sure that we aren’t just contacting friends and family when things are wrong or troubling us – but contacting them when things are good or just when we want to say hello. Sometimes I recognise I don’t do this enough, often because I feel I will be bothering them, that they have busy lives but it doesn’t have to be a major event, just a quick hello a how are you, I’m thinking of you can mean a lot. Hearing someone’s voice makes a difference to the WhatsApp connection too and I’m always grateful for the sound of a familiar voice.

Sharing time and a shoulder with friends and family at times they need support is important for them and us, for our wellbeing and theirs.


Practising gratitude is something we need to keep practising – whatever our age. It makes us feel good because we are acknowledging someone else’s efforts and making them feel good in the process. It’s a win-win situation for us and them. Genuine gratitude, not platitude, is priceless. Not saying thank you because we feel we should, but because we genuinely mean it. Often, we fail to recognise the lengths people go to for us, let alone acknowledge out loud to them how appreciative we are.

The Pollyanna approach to life – always seeing the good in a situation – can be difficult, even irritating, but counting our blessings is invaluable to keep positive. Recognising and taking time to articulate our gratitude for the roles of others in those blessings is also vital for them and for us.

Spending time with pets – maybe because they are always so glad to see us, so grateful for just a pat, a stroke, and always happy to be with us whatever our moods.  Boatdog doesn’t approve of the early morning run habit – she’s always happy to welcome me home as if I had just won a marathon when all I did was waddle around the towpath or local streets for less than an hour!

Pets teach us much about giving unconditional love.


I would add to the researchers’ list those elements which living a floating life evidences brings happiness. The Norwegians define these as koselige – taking time to make the most of the simple pleasures in life. For me that’s time to watch the light from the water playing on the wooden ceiling, the surprise of a stunning sunset, the soft cushions of the sofa, time together and time on our own, time inside and time outside, and time doing those things that give us pleasure – whatever those may be for each of us reading, crafting, doing the crossword.



So this week, join me in getting happier – enjoy that glorious unconditional sharing time with a pet, show gratitude to others, connect with family and friends, keep your body moving and essential time for koselige.

Give, give up & give time to feel good


This weekend in London,  50,000 of the 500,000 runners who applied will run the 26.2 miles of the London Marathon. It will be the culmination of hundreds of hours of training for each runner, many long, lonely cold, and wet hours through the winter, getting their minds and bodies ready for this moment.

Since it began in 1981, London Marathon runners have raised over £1billion for charities worldwide through their efforts. Most runners and those who generously sponsor them will never meet those who benefit from their fundraising. We often sponsor someone we know, sometimes sponsor in memory of someone we knew, but we rarely do we know those who directly benefit from our philanthropy.

Many runners like our youngest daughter Freya, who we’ll be cheering on, have chosen to use their place to raise money and awareness for the causes they believe in. If you haven’t sponsored anyone in this year’s London Marathon, please consider supporting Young Minds with her.

Fancy supporting Young Minds with Freya?

Others run specifically for a charity, fundraising in return for a place. For two London Marathons, the Skipper ran for Victa, a charity helping sight-impaired youngsters and their families. Last year, I walked/jogged a virtual London Marathon on the towpaths of Northamptonshire for MIND – something I couldn’t have achieved in the day without Freya, Jonny, and the Skipper’s support or without the support of everyone who spurred me on through their generous donations.

We couldn’t be here to support Freya if it wasn’t for Steve’s brother Peter, giving up his chance to hurtle miles round London from support station to support station clutching Fruit Pastilles for our heroine and other runners!

Family – a multigenerational lesson in giving ❤️

He’s giving his time this weekend to share with Steve supporting their 93 year old Mum (who’s given to us all for years in so many ways).  Freya’s given her time for months to prepare, and along with the rest of the family who are heading to London, we’re giving her our loud and unfailing support on her inspirational marathon. We’re also supporting Young Minds through her to continue their vital work with young people and parents.

It’s rewarding to give to those we know, but why is it that giving seems even more rewarding if we have no expectation of repayment or of ever knowing those to whom we give?

John Bunyan was right when he said, “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”

Tony Hancock.in The Blood Donor – BBC


This week we’ve both given blood as we regularly do – an armful always seems so little to give when you understand that according to Blood.co.uk just giving up an hour of your time and one donation could save 3 lives.

We hear where our blood has gone, which hospital it’s been sent to, but never know those our gifts have benefited, and that doesn’t matter. It feels like a gift to us to know we’ve made a difference somewhere, sometime, to someone who needs it. Maybe it’s a health bonus for us too – after all blood letting used to be a medical cure for many ills

For years, I couldn’t give blood, I’m so grateful that finally I’ve managed it. Don’t give up if that applies to you, too.

On the subject of a different kind of red stuff , I’ve ended another giving up this week. It seems to me 100 days without an alcohol calls for a celebratory glass of red this weekend! Cheers 🍷!

What are you leaving behind?

What are you leaving in your wake? What do you want your legacy to be? What do you think it will be?

The wake of a rib travelling way over the 4mph limit – it left boaters and fishermen fuming


As Paris gears up to host the Olympic Games this year, expectations of legacy are being bandied about as ever. Legacy and sustainability are the key aims for Paris 2024. They want local communities to have economic benefits from this, the first time the Games have been held in France for 100 years. Those aims seem remarkably in tune with every other country hosting the Olympics in the past.

That’s not to say they aren’t laudable, and living as we do afloat, travelling on the inland waterways of England and Wales, I’m aware that legacy comes in many forms. It is possible for some to instantly or relatively instantly evaluate legacy. In many instances, though, legacy is only fully possible to evaluate decades or centuries later.

A lasting legacy is the positive impact our lives have on others – family, friends, strangers, and colleagues. Lasting legacies are not always tangible, and generally, we laud those who leave a positive legacy. Negative legacies are complex as last year’s film Oppenheimer brought into stark relief. The man who invented the atomic bomb could be seen by many to have left a devastating, destructive legacy but he devoted many more years of his life working with other scientists to resolve the ‘alignment’ problem – making sure new discoveries serve rather than destroy humanity. That is a significant legacy.


Living and working afloat on the inland waterways, I’m regularly reminded of the lasting legacy of pioneering canal engineers of Brindley, Jessop and Telford, and here on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the work of John Longbotham particularly. He was the first engineer commissioned to create this 127.25mile long vital trading waterway from Leeds to Liverpool. Construction started in 1770, and Longbotham died in 1801 in the penury after construction problems meant he was forced to resign from the project in 1775. Other engineers took over and built quite literally on his legacy until the canal was completed in 1816. As a result, goods from the mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire could be shipped all over the world, and cotton from America could be brought to the mills. Coal from the coalfields could be easily shipped to power the mills and other industries, and in this way, the legacy of these engineers fuelled the industrial revolution.  This year Longbotham’s remarkable engineering legacy in creating a mechanism that would raise laden boats the height of five double-decker buses or 60 ft at Bingley was recognised. This year, his lock solution at Bingley celebrated 250 years. 



The canal was designed by these engineers, but it was actually built by thousands of men, women, and children who worked with picks, shovels, buckets, and barrows.  It is their legacy, which means we can travel in the way we do, but generally, we don’t know their names, even though we appreciate their work daily.



We’re currently moored overlooking Pennington Flash, a stunning 170-acre lake at the heart of a country park. This impressive amenity for wildlife and humans alike is the legacy of subsidence from coal mining and farming that had to be abandoned because of flooding. The legacy of something hugely positive arising from something that was seen initially as immensely positive. Many people in many organisations worked to make this Country Park happen. Few can be remembered by name.



Back in Victorian times, plant hunters headed out to Asia, across Europe and into the Ottoman Empire seeking fame and fortune and lasting legacies through often tiny seeds which they brought back, nurtured and grew into exotic plants to embellish the gardens and parks of their homeland. Many of those plants have existed here for several hundred years no, being enjoyed and bringing colour and a touch of bling to our seasons. For some, though, their legacies have turned sour.

The glorious rhododendron that evergreen ornamental plant brought to the UK by  Victorian plant hunters in the late 18th century is now regarded as one of the most destructive, invasive species in our countryside Alongside our canals and rivers later this year we will join others in waging war against the pink peril of Himalayan balsam which is destroying our native species.

Little did the plant hunters or navvies of the past recognise what their legacies would be or how future generations would view them.

It just proves how hard it can be to leave a lasting legacy – but that shouldn’t stop us all striving to leave the world a better place for being here. Maybe the best we can all do is to leave a legacy in which we do no harm whilst we are here, and hope someone remembers us fondly.



When change is routine – it can help

Remember how quickly we all adapted to new routines during the national lockdowns? Some of us are creatures of habit, others not, but as humans, we all adopt some elements of routine which researchers identify as ways of coping more efficiently and effectively with our lives.


When we cruise, for example, we now have an established routine before we set off. It took us time to get a routine that works, but this way, it means we each have our responsibilities, and hopefully, nothing gets overlooked. One of us walks the dog, the other does the engine checks and puts the tiller handle onto the swan neck, slotting in Jemima Puddle Duck our tiller pin and attaching the Turks Head knot below that which stops her getting knocked off.


Once we are ready, if there are the two of us on board, the Skipper undoes the rear (stern) rope. If he hasn’t taken down the aerial at the front (bow), then I do that as I undo the front rope. I then push out the bow, pull up the fenders on the towpath side, and bring the centreline onto the rear hatch within easy reach as I walk back to get on at the stern. Boatdog will be waiting for me because she too knows her routine – a favourite marrowbone biscuit on her travelling ragrug on the back deck beside her porthole just as we set off.

So we are all creatures of routine – 2 and 4 legged. This week we’ve begun to adjust to a different routine and adapt to the very  well-established routines of the Skipper’s 93-year-old Mum. She’s probably having the bigger change, having to adapt to someone being around her 24/7, but if it helps her stay in the comfort of her own home, it’s well worth it. It’s got me thinking about the value of routines and the reasons we establish them.

Some think of routines as being humdrum, boring or restrictive, but according to psychiatrists, they have a powerful impact on our health and our mental functions as well as providing coping mechanisms. They give us control at times when things seem out of control – as in the pandemic.

In work terms, AI is being harnessed to take over routine tasks in many places to free us humans to engage with more creative aspects. We will still, though, develop our own routines and stick to them – AI won’t be able to sort my regular morning coffee to start the day just the way I like it!

Routines can free us up to be more creative – not having to think what to wear, what to eat for breakfast can be resolved by uniforms (formal or not) and many of us have the same breakfast many times a week if not every day, freeing ourselves up from the start not to have to worry about the little things at the start of a day.

According to researchers if we feel in control of our lives then we don’t rail against routine so much, we accept it as something we’ve chosen to employ to give us more choices over the things we want to spend more time on, more time deciding.

So routines are important, and it can be enjoyable learning new routines, adapting to the routines of others because it enables us to question how and why we do things the way we do. By seeing the routines others have established, we can consider if there is a better way for us to do things, whether organising our diets, our homes, or our daily lives.

One new routine I’m grateful to have established is the result of online encouragement from a group of 4 female boaters, only one of whom I’ve met in real life. Under the alarming title of “Run, there’s something behind you!” we are seeking to encourage each other to get back to or take up running. Because of these wonderful women I’m doggedly waddling at what I like to think is a jog every other day… using the wonderful NHS Couch25k app once more, it worked before and I have very faith it will get me back running again. My knee injury appears to have healed now, and all that’s holding me back is too much weight that I’m lugging around. Hopefully, that will begin to get shaken off as I continue plodding along, but I know the secret is to get into a routine of running, to make it regular. Once I’ve done it, it always makes me feel so much better, so it makes sense to run first thing, to enhance my whole day. Being in one place for months or years as we’re planning will, without doubt, be a major plus in that respect too.

This change makes me very conscious of how fixed we become in our routines and how thrown we can be by what may appear small changes or interferences. It’s interesting to see the medical advice – and what sounds like wise words – concentrate on the short term. In the short term today, tomorrow, this week, we need to see what routines we can keep and identify those which may need adaptation. Once we’ve achieved a single day, we know we can achieve more.

I wonder if we are more adaptable now we live afloat. Some days we move, some weeks we move, some days or weeks we don’t. Our work is not on regular days. We don’t have the embedded daily routines we remember from our past, so work and life for us are more fluid. Perhaps that makes it easier and indeed enables us to be more accepting of adopting and accommodating routines that are new to us. I’m aware the Skipper wouldn’t be happy cruising away while there’s valuable time (hopefully many years of it) to be spent with his mum. We are fortunately we can be here and do this.

There’s a novelty in this new routine adding a new interest to a new way of living, and I never thought I’d say that about routines! It’s a chance to pause and watch the flowers grow…

We’re a mine of information this week

For the first time ever we’ve a new reality beginning this week. Soon we shall be moving just a little for some time. Gone will be the long journeys across the country, or countries for a while. They will be something to look forward to and plan for the future, but for now we can revel in being in one area for a while, and being (we hope) useful to family.


Last week saw us on the Bridgwater Canal, in genteel surroundings that once would have been alive with a hustle and bustle of ‘Flyboats’ fetching and delivering people, parcels, food stuffs and livestock.

These busy boats plied a route from Preston Brook to Castlefield in Manchester. Passengers on the Worsley stop would buy their tickets at The Packet House, the dominant black and white building which dates from 1760. They would walk down the wide steps in front of the house to catch their boat.


Flyboats were designed for speed. They were especially lightweight and pulled by teams of horses that were changed at the stations with stables. They operated day and night. They had priority over other canal traffic at locks and a knife fixed to the bow could sever the towlines of any boats that got in their way. Forget genteel boating (if there ever was or is such a thing) – this was a cut throat commercial delivery business, the DPD of their day.

Their experienced crews were paid a premium and with the quantity of horsepower they required, these were expensive boats to run, so were generally run by the big canal companies like the Bridgewater, the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company, the Leeds and Liverpool Co., or Shropshire Union Canal Company. They ran to timetables so  cargo could be booked by anyone at any stop. In later years some linked up with river or road carriers to extend their business.

The now peaceful picturesque place of Worsley would have been a hustling, bustling place, not only with the flyboats and the old boat yard, but also because of the commercial activity around the Delph underground coal mine. This mine was reached and worked by miners using not sunk shafts but via 46 miles of underground canal. The mine was the reason the Bridgwater Canal was built above ground. It was constructed to transport coal from the mine to the industrial hub of Manchester where demand for coal was high.

Spot the heron

We were moored just up from the low roofed mine entrance, opposite the Duke’s Boathouse. This was where the Duke of Bridgewater kept his inspection barge. It has earned the nickname of the ‘Royal Barge’ as it transported royalty including Queen Victoria who wrote of her trip in 1851 “The barge glided along in a most noiseless & fairylike manner amid the cheers of the people who lined the banks of the canal…”

Her Majesty was also impressed by the wealth of the vast coalfields of the area if not the industrial  landscape of Manchester in the distance. For us though, we headed along the Bridgewater away from Manchester and onto the Leeds and a Liverpool Canal through a landscape that has been shaped by coal, and by its demise, by limestone quarrying and peat extraction.

Travelling this stretch of canal for miles we could see the steel headgear of a mine dominating the landscape. At 98 feet high it is a huge reminder of Astley Green Colliery, and 15 acres of the former industrial site is now preserved as the Lancashire Mining Museum. Manned by dedicated volunteers and many former miners, it remains as monument to a way of life and an industry for  generations of families. It is important for all of us that we understand the sacrifices that children, women, men and animals made to keep industry powered and homes warm. Lancashire’s worst pit disaster happened just a few miles away in 1910 at Hulton Colliery Bank Pit no. 3 known as The Pretoria Pit,  in which 344 men and boys lost their lives.

Memorials across this area remind us all of the dangers and deaths coal mines have inflicted on individuals, families and communities. At Pennington Wharf alongside a marina constructed on land which once housed Bickershaw Colliery, stands a sculpture of a miners’ helmeted head, a memorial to 19 men who died in the mine in 1932 as a result of a mechanical failure.

Perhaps the biggest positive legacy coal mining has given to this area are the tremendous natural flashes – huge water-filled hollows created by subsidence. In this area Pennington Flash is now a 200-acre country park where wildlife and nature flourishes.

For us, we can be grateful to the coal mines and miners who toiled in them because they were the catalyst for the canals we now enjoy, to be built as commercial byways.

Logistics, history and waters meet for us

When you know something is going to be the last for a while it takes on a special quality, a poignancy, perhaps even an importance out of all proportion. That is what we’re aware of this week, and it’s  good thing, a valuable opportunity.

Our last cruising time for a while has been a mixture of familiar routes and a foray into the previously unknown. We started off in Middlewich, moved the full length of the Trent and Mersey to the final stoplock and the Preston Brook Tunnel with the Bridgewater Canal.

The Bridgewater Canal is a privately owned  39 mile inland waterway in the North West. It stretches from Runcorn to Leigh. Our Canal and River Trust licence combined with a request for permission to cruise the Bridgewater grants us 7 days of transit on the waterway for no additional cost. We’ve cruised it before, and notably last year found ourselves trapped on it when a lock failed in Manchester and stopped us heading from the Bridgewater onto the Rochdale Canal as we had planned.

We are rather enjoying its lack of locks and tunnels, but to get here we descended the Middlewich flight of 3 locks followed by Big Lock alongside an excellent dog-frendly cafe which we visited whilst waiting for the water point. Water points are often chatty places when boats congregate, and this week was no different. I learned the fraught life story of one single-handed boater and his battles with the NHS before he took early retirement and took to the water for therapeutic living.

So we left Middlewich full of water, empty of waste and full of diesel thanks to Paul and Sam at Middlewich Wharf. Thanks to their tumble driers we also left with dry, clean bedding and clothes.

From Middlewich it was a short hop to Bramble Cutting, once the site of puddle clay extraction. That was the clay used to line the canal. Now it provides an offside peaceful mooring with picnic tables and the tracks still evident that the clay carts used to be rolled down to waiting boats. We’ve passed numerous times and never managed to moor here so when we saw a space…

The sun SHONE so we managed some painting while Boatdog enjoyed a bit of exploring, playing with another dog from another boat and then some serious rolling in goose poo.

The next day, we left in rain (surprise, surprise) to make our way north once more, not travelling too far to moor near the top of  the remarkable Anderton Boat Lift. This feat of engineering remains one of the rightful Wonders of the Waterways.

Set as it is now in a great area of parkland, this mooring offered a good park run, a long muddy walk and loads of wild garlic so homemade pesto pasta was the tasty order of the day. After that is, the Skipper went to rescue another boat in need of help with their electrics. They were astonished to hear thar leisure batteries need topping up regularly…

Then on the next day through the final 3 tunnels on the Trent and Mersey Canal, trying to get the timings right. First from the south west is Barnton, just 572 yards long. Apparently it can accommodate two boats at a time if needs be. Then comes Saltersford Tunnel, 424 narrow yards long.  Passage for our direction on the hour until 20 past. Last after the Dutton stoplock is Preston Brook Tunnel -1,239 yards long and narrow.  Northbound access is only on the hour for 10 minutes. 

Once we’d managed all this logistical juggling and the irritating sandpaper weather (wet and dry) we emerged as the waters meet onto the Bridgewater Canal and promptly turned under the M56 onto a section we’ve never explored before – the Runcorn Branch. This used to be the mainline down to the River Mersey for commercial barges. Now it is often overlooked by leisure boaters but it is a delightfully quiet stretch, populated by noisy nesting coots and the occasional leggy heron. It terminates at Waterloo, at least the Waterloo Bridge so is now a rather lengthy cul de sac.

Back onto familiar territory we moved to Lymm and then Dunham Massey to enjoy walks and a slow run in the deer park. We are fortunate to have managed some decent weather for that part of this trip at least and are very grateful for every dry sunny moment.

Now we only have a little way to go until we take up a static lifestyle for a while. We’re grateful for the chance to really appreciate moving whilst we can, and we’re also looking forward to the change of life for a while, the  chance to spend time with a real family VIP.

Many happy returns

Returning to familiar places, familiar things and retracing your steps can sound faintly boring but it provides new perspectives, new opportunities to see things differently if you are prepared to do so, and can foster moments of familiar comfort, alongside a capacity to still surprise.

This week that’s exactly what we’ve been doing on the first leg of our trip back to the north west. I say leg, but actually it was a trip of 5 short legs. It’s brought us along the Trent and Mersey Canal from Alrewas where the passage includes the River Trent. The village of Alrewas is thought to have grown up around the crossing point to meet the needs of merchants who could be held up by the river flooding, just as boaters get held up there today. As a result Alrewas remains a delightful village to while away the hours, days, or weeks it can take for the river levels to drop and make safe passage. 

Alrewas was a key crossing point for salt merchants bringing their white gold from the salt springs and mines of Cheshire particularly. And we’ve spent this week travelling the route plied by carriers of salt, ending up now in the salt town of Middlewich. Its very name stems from salt, a wych (which) being a brine spring or well. It is easy to see the saline trail across Cheshire – in Northwich, Nantwich and Middlewich. 

British Salt at Middleport

For us this week was retracing what has become a familiar route through Staffordshire, across the Potteries and into Cheshire. We weren’t only tracing the steps of commercial barges that carried clay, pots, coal and salt (not all together!) but as ever we were using the same locks these bargees would have used, treading the same paths, seeing some of the same views, trees and fields they would have seen. 

To those whose trade it was to travel this route, this passage between the Midlands and the North West would have been immensely familiar. It’s becoming that way for us too. We’ve made this journey heading north to south and south to north numerous times. We’re on first name terms with Bob the Lock at Etruria and stood him a cuppa this time.

Often, as this time we take advantage of the moorings at Middleport Pottery to stop and enjoy excellent local delicacies at their cafe. No traditional lobby this time (think of a stew with everything you can find lobbed in…) but some truly excellent oatcakes. 

From Middleport it’s just a short trip to the Harecastle Tunnel. We’ve made it through at least four times now but there’s still a frisson of something as we head towards that entrance, hearing the roar of the fans and the thudding clang of the doors slamming shut behind us as we cross the threshold. Is it fear? Is it nerves? Despite the view of the coffin and skeleton visible as you enter from the south, this time was an uneventful calm 40 minute journey through the mile and three quarters underground. They haven’t always been like that, so perhaps recollections of previous less easy encounters with the Scarecastle Tunnel have made me anxious. 

From the tunnel set in its caramel waters courtesy of local iron ore, the canal offers the chance to head up the Macclesfield or to descend the Cheshire Flight. These 26 locks, built in the 1770s carried us down to Wheelock on the Cheshire Plain. 

For us the first lock coming north of the 26 at Kidsgrove holds painful memories. Here it was coming up last Autumn that I dented our beautiful new chimney from the Little Chimney Company on the low bridge profile before the lock. This time, coming down the lock we remembered and kept the chimney off that we’d removed for the tunnel. 

Just before the next lock we were delighted to find Geoffrey on a bench. We first met Geoffrey when he was living out in Willington in Derbyshire. He’s a fascinating man, now in his early 70s. Serendipity brought us together again, as he’d decided to take advantage of some of the wetter recent days to travel by bus instead of his usual Shanks’s pony, hence his arrival in The Potteries. It was good to make him a hot cup of tea in his special lidded cup (he has Parkinson’s Disease), and sort him a dinner and snacks before heading on our separate ways. Geoffrey is heading to a holiday park on the Lincolnshire coast where he has work and accommodation for the summer season. Maybe we shall have to head over there to see him – shame no canals go that way!

So retracing our steps along the Trent and Mersey Canal brought us by chance back into contact with Geoffrey, it also gave us the opportunity to catch distant views of Mow Cop castle, a folly perched high on the edge of the Staffordshire Moorlands. It’s fondly known on our boat as Cow Mop. We moored in one of our favoured spots, at Church Lawton before heading out as the light began to fail to walk Boatdog. She has a particular field she enjoys galloping through near there but this time her walk got longer than expected as we diverted to rescue a stranded, grounded cruiser stuck in a low pound, and heeling over. We sorted the water levels, hauled the shaking owner and cruiser to the side and then because he had engine problems, hauled him through the remaining three locks. Familiar we may be with this flight, but every time we pass through them is certainly different! 

We’ve been lucky too to help some single narrowboaters too on this trip, lockwheeling for them where we could. So as I write this we are 60 locks and 52 miles further on our way, with several pay it forward deeds making us feel good along this very familiar way. As arrived in Middlewich it was good t see the familiar faces of those who’ve become friends over the years – always a delight.

It seems we’ve arrived in a flurry of spring – mating mallards squawking and flapping around, willows in vibrant green robes and blossom appearing at every turn. That’s another thing that makes familiar paths and routes so different, the unique nature and vibrancy of each season. It reinforces just how therapeutic it can be to go back over familiar ground and see it with new eyes in different circumstances.

Join me and book a get-away

It’s been quite a week. I’ve been to Paris, Austria, Yorkshire, and the English canals in wartime. Only one in person, but all were vivid, visceral experiences. I’ve been absorbed in the lives of a male serial killer and his victims; an actress mother as a commercial boatwoman; a female global  adventurer with a delicate constitution and an indomitable generous woman determinedly recovering from surgery. Fact and fiction, reality and fantasy intertwined.

The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go

Dr Seuss

I’ve played chess with ‘Harry Potter’, enjoyed a library treasure hunt, marvelled, laughed, and learned. Fiction and fact, reality, and fantasy have interwoven as delightfully as ever through my days. Books are a vital part of my life, and I recognise many of my life’s highlights and delights have come through the marvels of the written word. 

A marvel of the boating network is the plethora of book exchanges scattered across it – in telephone boxes, toilet blocks, bus shelters, cafes, little covered shelves outside private houses and in pubs too. As a result, the range of books we find to read surpasses anything we could discover via a book club or an Amazon suggestion! It also means that reading is the cheapest and most diverse entertainment we experience.

Books change lives, societies, and perceptions.

Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism

Mallard Yousafzai

This past month on my own I’ve been indulging in sailing round the world, tracking down murderers in mainland Europe and exploring the lives of children in Cumbria post World War Two. I’ve heard the voices of boatmen from the turn of the century, explored the often alarming history of building Britain’s longest canal tunnel, the Standedge, built in 1811 at a time when picks, shovels and gunpowder were the excavation tools of the day. 

It never ceases to amaze me that we have a single alphabet with just 26 letters from which authors conjure words that transport us to far off places, back in time, ahead to the future and everywhere in between. Their crafted words make us laugh, learn, and weep. They make us escape and think.

This week saw lots of Harry Potters, many Matilda’s and numerous greedy caterpillars, bananas in pyjamas, Paddington Bears and lots of Mr Men and Misses to name just a few characters I spotted wandering the streets near schools, and posted on social media. Launched by UNESCO  in 1995, World Book Day celebrates books and reading, as well as promoting reading for pleasure. 

And that’s the importance for us all whatever our ages, we should make sure that whatever we have to read for work, or school, university or college, that we also read for pleasure. That every single day we should, we must, allow ourselves an escape, a pause, a moment to enjoy ourselves, a little relaxation, a real treat with a book. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as we are enjoying it, there’s no snobbery, it’s a private and personal thing but the more we read, even reading things we don’t think we will like, the more we discover, and discovery is something wonderful.

The most wonderful opportunity we can give any child is the gift of being able to read, a love of reading, and access to books that will excite, enthral, and encourage them.

WBD encourages “Changing lives through a love of books and reading.” That’s just what a book can do, it can change how we see our world, how we think, how we interact with others, give us inspiration to dream, to imagine, to learn and explore. There are unlimited supplies of books we’ve never read just waiting for us, there are old favourites longing for us to return.

Reading should be for us all like breathing – a vital habit which we can be conscious of at times, and unconsciously do all the time. 

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials or knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours

John Locke

So whatever you’re planning to do this coming week, schedule in some you-time with a book…on a device, in paperback or hardback, new crisp pristine pages, or well thumbed ones. Fiction, fact, reality, fantasy, let your chosen book or books transport you – where I wonder will we all find ourselves next week? Where do you fancy?

Into every life, some rain must fall.

The British and boaters are obsessed with the weather. It plays a major part in how we live, enjoy and in our case, move, our floating home and office.



Walking this morning as rain and sleet, hail and wind whipped my skin and Boatdog shivered beside me, I was in full agreement with the man who grumbled: “I’ve had enough of this now.” Haven’t we all, even if we accept Longfellow’s words that “into each life some rain must fall.”

The Midlands, where we’ve spent most of this first part of the year, has experienced one of its wettest Februarys ever. Rain is hammering silently against the lovely new double glazed windows that keep out the elements and their soundscape in ways their predecessors did not. Rain these days comes with consequences. Even a little bit of rain has implications.

Parts of the Midlands have had more than two and a half times the normal February rainfall this year, and that means the rivers are full, overflowing, flooding with alarming regularity. We’ve had 6 named storms this winter to date. Every drop that falls now lands on saturated ground. There is nowhere for more water to flow away, it sits, it floods.



For us, this has meant that our original plans to cruise the River Soar once more have had to be abandoned. On February 18, during a Sunday afternoon family walk, 2-year-old Xielo Maruziva slipped into the river at Aylestone Meadows and vanished from sight in seconds. His family continue to pray and hope he will be returned to them. The flooding river has also claimed boats this month.


The Soar normally flows into the Trent, but Trent has also spent much of the past month in flood, closed to navigation. One small section of the Trent is at Alrewas in Staffordshire. Boats moving up and down the Trent and Mersey Canal at that point have to travel on the river for 1 mile and 2 furlongs between the lock at Alrewas and a lock at Wychnor, passing a large weir en route. This section has been intermittently closed to navigation this year because the strong flows make it unsafe. As we headed from the Coventry Canal across to Derbyshire to Willington, where we had arranged to get our windows replaced, we were held up at Alrewas until the river section was passable. We got across, but last week, as soon as the windows were wonderfully replaced, we intended to come back across to begin our journey north. No chance said the Trent – I’m in charge ! Every time it rained, we held our breath because two or three days later, river levels would rise once more. We prayed for dry weather, and we’re grateful for several clear days that gave us hope.

On Monday morning last week the Trent and Mersey river section was regarded as navigable, so we set off with alacrity,  and made a slow river crossing battling against the current, watching boaters including some old friends whizzing past us as they went rapidly with the flow.

For us, the rain brings mud, flooded towpaths, wet clothes, and a soggy dog. It is an opportunity to be grateful for our Morso stove, dry towels, efficient windows, and the chance to get warm and dry in our cosy boat. It has a short-lived effect on our bodies.


For others we have met these past weeks, the rain brings hours, days of struggle. They are resigned to being cold, wet, and stiff as the rain soaks them. Geoffrey and Jim have both been generous to share insight into their lives living outside. They don’t have boats or vans or tents. They carry their lives with them every day. We look at bridges and consider them for height and width, for their capacity to knock our chimney and aerial off (yes – the high water levels and a bridge put paid to our aerial cover this week). Geoffrey and Jim both look at bridges for their capacity to offer overnight shelter, evaluating their width, their positioning to withstand prevailing winds, the slope of the towpath beneath to repel or collect water. Misjudging one of those, or an unexpected change of direction of the wind, can lead to wet sleeping bags, soaking clothes, and literally of being damp. Geoffrey particularly looks at bridges for their safety, too –  are they away from inebriated nighttime drinkers, so offering a night’s sleep away from potential disruption.


Thanks to Raynor Winn’s personal journey, The Salt Path, many of us recognise that there are as many reasons for homelessness as there are people. Geoffrey and Jim both live as they do because of the Covid pandemic, but there the similarity stops.


Geoffrey became homeless when the holiday park for which he worked had to close because of the pandemic. He and all the other staff lost their jobs, but for all who lived in as he did, they also lost their homes. The day after his 67th birthday, suddenly, with no work and no home, he was advised to talk to social services. They looked at him, noted he was suffering from the onset of Parkinson’s disease and told him he should be going into an old people’s home, many of whom were struggling to contain the spread of Covid. He was horrified and walked out of social services’ office, and as he put it, “I just kept walking.”

He talks eloquently about the wonderful people he’s met, particularly the generosity of boaters, as he migrated towards the towpath with its regular bridges and many benches. Over a welcome mug of tea and a hot sausage roll, he shared learned lessons about the goodness of strangers, the consideration he’s experienced, the joy of winter sun and the warmth of unexpected kind gestures. He’s been offered a holiday park job after Easter, so he hopes to be back with a roof over his head once more.

Bus stops with shelter are a lifeline for Jim when it’s wet



Jim, too, is living in villages alongside the canal. He is in his 40s and works as a casual labourer whenever he can. His marriage broke down during the pandemic, and he lost his job as well as his home. He lived in hostel accommodation but found himself stressed and alarmed by the behaviour of some others there. He chose to live as he has now done for over two and a half years, walking the towpaths, the footpaths, and country lanes. He stays in the West Midlands, the area of the country he knows best, and says he feels stronger, happier, and enjoys a  uplifting sense of freedom, even in the rain.

These men have taught us much these past weeks – about gratitude, acceptance, values, and expectations. We are grateful to have met them and for them to have shared their time and lives with us.  They both said they appreciated our proffered hot drinks and food, and conversations. As the wonderful late poet Benjamin Zephaniah rightly recognised, people need people. (Enjoy the rain in Phil Hankinson’s illustration). Zephaniah also says: “If you need a lesson From whom will you learn.” Geoffrey and Jim have taught us so much that’s positive these past weeks  – about themselves but also about us and wider society too.

Our floating itinerant lifestyle is also a product of the Covid pandemic. It is a life infinitely more full of comfort than Geoffrey or Jim’s, and one for which we remain eternally grateful. We are grateful we could help them a little, that we got across the river when we did, and for the moments without rain. What are you grateful for today?

Rainbows need the rain

We can see clearly now

Our window on the world, or indeed windows on the world have changed dramatically this week. We see the wealth of birds and animals, people and the British weather around our floating home and office very differently today than we did this time last week.



After years of planning, research, saving, and preparation – we have new windows, and not just any windows. We have replaced our single glazed ones which had a metal hopper strip with large panel double glazed windows. We are seeing things totally differently, and are ridiculously surprised by the difference it has made. There’s no line across our view anymore. The world we see seems more expansive. As I write, two blackbirds and a pigeon are flying from beech to oak to alder, each taking their perches in that order. My view of their daily performance is captured in a black powder coated sleek frame, no peeling paint or encroaching green gunge detracting from the scene.

The old windows were a little like anyone with old vehicles with sliding windows might recall. I once had a Mini with sliding windows that acquired moss regularly and even began nurturing a buddleia – our old boat windows hadn’t become that advanced, but were heading that way. They rattled atrociously when we ran the engine or even moved on board, so each hopper had individual pieces of wine cork cut to wedge them either open or shut as desired. The only advantage to them was that they didn’t leak – although as we excavated and removed them we discovered at some point in their lives, some obviously had.


A major issue for our life afloat during the increasingly hot summer months when temperatures have risen above 40 degrees on our metal home, has been the complete inability with the old windows to open much of them to develop a through draft. We painted the roof a lighter to reflect the heat,  retro-insulated as much as we could reach of the steel hull, but the windows and lack of breeze became a major issue.  With that in mind, we’ve gone for windows that can be tilted or removed entirely to maximise any breeze. The highest insulation spec should also help, but time will tell.


Cruising through Wigan last year, we visited Caldwell’s, the company we had selected. We wanted to see their windows in person, to feel them, see how they worked, talk through our requirements. It’s a genuine family firm, we spoke to two Mr Caldwells and a Miss Hannah Caldwell. They listened to what we wanted, made helpful suggestions, and were able to answer all our questions immediately – none of that ‘oh the person who’d know is busy’!

After Skipper Steve had measured our windows for the umpteenth time, we placed our order in the New Year, and on Wednesday he drove to Wigan to collect 7 beautifully packaged, new windows.


They sat overnight in a Derbyshire car park near the boat, and then on Thursday the highly recommended Callum came to install them. We couldn’t have chosen worse weather to be without windows! The rain started in the early hours of Thursday. It thundered unrelentingly on the roof, hammered against the old windows, and by the time Callum arrived (sensibly clad in waders) the towpath alongside the boat (and alongside the first lot of windows to be replaced) was under water. 


He’s a boater too, so undaunted. He began on the smallest of the 7 windows – the bathroom. Inside I was covering everything I could with thin plastic decorators’ sheets to catch the expected falling rust and stop the rain encroaching too much. Steve’s job was to try and prepare the multiple screws that had held in the old frames for removal. Thirty plus years had taken their toll on them though, and demanded brute force. Finally they succumbed to serious persuasion and we’re removed. After breaking the seal around the outside (which wasn’t hard), the window was out. AS the rain hammered in, we began to prepare the bare metal hole for its new window.

Scraping away old sealant and flaking paint, angle griding away rough edges, cleaning off rust, dust and a surprising number of mummified insects, levering out the old wooden frame from the inside that had sealed the gap between the window and the steel side of the boat. The rain pooled in the plastic sheeting, finally forcing it to fall to the bathroom floor where a handy bathmat soaked up the worst. Callum crouched in the protection of the hatch to prepare the new window with insulating foam edging and a bead of black sealant before whisking it through the rain to its new home. Ankle deep in water, he placed it into the prepared frame and it fitted! Don’t ask my why I had any frisson of joy after all that measuring, but relief was certainly evident on the Skipper’s face! Steve then had the job of securing the frame with ingenious clips that are screwed into place – fiddly in some places, straightforward in others, and head torches were as always invaluable for seeing what you’re doing in cramped spaces. 


One down, six to go. Sausage and bacon sarnies and tea on tap despite everything piled high in the kitchen! We worked on, bedroom next, then the kitchen and finally the biggest window on this side, the saloon. All in, and then it was time to turn the boat (we were moored as close to the winding hole as possible to save disruption). Another boater walking his dog came for a chat and told us he was moving on, so we moved to his space alongside stone edging once we turned which reduced the risk of trench foot.

The rain stopped, and the sun tried to come out, as we turned, ready for the next side. Only three windows here – the side hatch adds more light and ventilation. It will be a project for another day.



For now though, we worked on, old out, preparation of the hole, new in. Just as we started on the last window, the rain started again, and the last window proved the most difficult to get out, but a hammer worked wonders once more. We had the routine down to a fine art, and very little rain came in before a lovely shiny new window was in place, keeping out the elements. Within 5 hours, 7 old single glazed windows and their internal wooden frames were out, and new double glazed windows installed.


Last night was so bizzarely quiet on board the boat (and we’re moored outside a pub by a road) – we could hear a pin drop. Somehow, I hadn’t expected such a complete change. I had to open the window by the bed to hear the birdsong this morning! There are noticeably fewer drafts, and we can begin the process of insulating the internal areas around the new windows, making new wooden frames for the inside as streamlined as our new views on our world. I think new window coverings are also called for – maybe blinds this time with magnets to hold them in place on our sloping walls, so we can pull the blind right up above the window and maximise not only our view of the outside, but our view of these amazing windows.


Not since the advent of our fridge and then our washing machine has anything changed our life afloat so dramatically. As we live with these windows through changing temperatures, we should see even more advantages, to fuel usage in the winter and staying cool in the summer.

Unfortunately the person who said they wanted the old windows hasn’t materialised so if anyone wants them, do get in touch, seems a waste to throw them away.

For now though, I know the new ones mean a bit more work. George Bernard Shaw said “…keep yourself clean and bright, you are the window through which you must see the world.” I need to keep our windows clean and bright – and I always seem to struggle with removing smears during cleaning. Anyone prepared to share their tips to solve this, please?

Stunning at sunset ❤️


New window spec for those interested:
Double glazed, black powder coated frames, thermal break, full hopper so the whole window tilts, clip in installation, mitred tops, 4 inch radius curved bottoms (old ones were 3 inch radius) aesthetically more pleasing, 6 clear glass and 1 frosted glass. All supplied by Caldwells Windows Limited