Has it been a month already?

It doesn’t seem possible but we have been living aboard for just over four weeks now. Strangely, time seems to be going faster than ever. We get up around our ‘old’ usual time, take the fur babies out for their morning exercise and ablutions, have breakfast and, before we know it, time has raced by and it’s coming up for early afternoon and we don’t appear to have achieved much. Is this a retired phenomonon?

Any road up, the boat preparation is coming along nicely, still awaiting the cratch cover along with the Water Freedom system to be installed, and we are getting closer to getting started on the long journey south for the winter. Routes are being planned with particular attention being paid to rivers, water levels and potential stoppages as we make our way towards London.

We have some supplies still to purchase including a bag of logs (well seasoned), coal (smokeless) and some firelighters as we haven’t managed to get around to making our own yet (reason as above). We are also going to try to get a ‘coal cage’, a narrowboat must have apparently, to keep the multi-fuel stove banked up overnight. Seems strange thinking about these items as only a couple of weeks ago we were feeling like the Sunday roast as the heatwave rolled over us and the boat heated up like an oven. It has to be said that the last couple of days of rain have been a blessing and very much needed as the canal network has suffered so many restrictions again due to low water levels.

We’ll leave it here for this update and catch you on the next one.

Martin and Nina