Twelve years of Briar Rose ownership completed.  This year's usage went back up again as we had a long autumn cruise, and our Crick trip had a few extra days at the start too. During the year we travelled on the following waterways: BCN New Main Line BCN Old Main Line BCN Titford Canal Birmingham and Fazeley Canal B&F Digbeth Branch Coventry Canal Grand Union Digbeth Branch Grand Union Leicester Line Grand Union Mainline Llangollen Canal Middlewich Arm Montgomery Canal North Oxford Canal Prees Arm Shropshire Union main line  Trent and Mersey Canal Whitchurch Arm ..read more

The May Canal Boat is out, and includes my boat test on Curiosity, by Boating Leisure Services.  This boat will also be at the Crick Boat Show at the end of May ..read more

I came up to the boat after work yesterday.  The Eberspacher took a couple of goes to get running, but everything else was fine.  I was woken several times in the night by torrential rain, and this morning the marina road was more like a lake. I had to go to Dunchurch Pools for a boat test, but I was ready early so I stopped at the little car park by the penultimate Stoke Bruerne lock and walked along to see how the Tove was doing.  The overflow entry of the river was running, showing how much water there is about. The boat test went well, and despite there being some rain ..read more

The April Canal Boat is out, and includes my boat test on a spec boat by Andy Dence ..read more

The March Canal Boat is in the shops, and includes my boat test on Halewick, by MGM ..read more

The February Canal Boat is out, and has my boat test on a stock boat by Russell Narrowboats.  ..read more

An alarm at 3.45am, as I had work this morning.  It was a ten minute walk along the towpath to the car, which we had moved into Cosgrove on Christmas Eve.  It was clear and cold, with bright moonlight. I came back to the marina after my shift, and Adrian had walked along to meet me.  We walked back to the boat, passing these characters in Cosgrove. After lunch we set off back to the marina.   The lock needed turning, and we had an audience of walkers to watch us come up.   Unlike every other day this short trip there wasn’t a breath of wind.  Even the mari ..read more

Christmas Day, and the wind had finally dropped.  We treated ourselves to a cooked breakfast, then as it wasn’t raining, set off.  We were very shortly crossing the Wolverton Aqueduct. A little bit further on, we turned around in the wide section at Galleon Wharf, and headed back.  We were very shortly crossing the Wolverton Aqueduct. We moored up a couple of boat lengths along from where we’d been, mostly to get away from our neighbour’s generator, which seems to be running most of the day.  As we had coats and boots on, we headed off for a walk round the Ouse Valley P ..read more

The forecast for today was for 40mph winds, so we were always unlikely to be going anywhere.  We also had a visit planned, from my second cousin Catherine and Nigel.  Grace was at work and Matthew was being a teenager and had gone back to bed!  We started with tea and then moved on to mulled wine, along with some of my mince pies and Catherine’s Christmas rocky road.  We haven’t seen them since the end of our trip in September, and it turned out we had a lot to catch up on. Afterwards, we had lunch then went out for a walk.  It’s been very blustery but at least it’s be ..read more

Adrian wasn’t working yesterday, so came up to the marina first thing.  He did a stock take and then went shopping at a packed Tesco in Wolverton.  He’d also brought quite a lot with him.  Then it was a matter of getting the boat warm. I came up this morning after my night shifts.  Part of the M1 was down to 20mph on the variable speed limits, due (according to the signs) to an oncoming vehicle.  I didn’t see one, but the slow bit lasted for several miles.  It had been very blustery in the night, and was still very windy this morning.  We debated whether to h ..read more