Well that was a character-forming week! We've bought eldest son a canal boat to call home* and have started an epic journey to transport it home from where it was purchased, in Bath, 250+ canal miles away! Son & GF took on the first week on the Kennet & Avon Canal with us taking over just in time for the trip up the River Thames to join the Oxford canal. Now I used to live in a house that backed onto the Stratford Canal in a place called Shirley, Solihull in the West Midlands, but that is where my knowledge of the waterways of the UK started and ended up until now!
It's a whole different world where speed us either just about walking pace or not even walking pace if you're passing other, moored, boats. Then there's the locks. Fiendishly clever Victorian engineered devices for raising and lowering water levels along the way. I thank my lucky stars that we missed the Bath flight of locks called the Caen Hill Staircase which involved 30 locks in one half mile stretch of the K&A! Lloyd & his GF took a half a day just to cover that half mile. (
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/media-centre/filming-and-photography/our-filming-and-photography-locations/caen-hill-locks-kennet-and-avon-canal)
We completed our stint on Saturday about half way up the first leg of the Oxford Canal in a place called Banbury so in our 6 days we covered about 63 miles. The boat (NB Blue Grass) is now about 2 weeks cruising from home, but that may end up being done in 2-day stints by son at the weekends, so it may be another 2-3 months before it's local, unless we can block out another week to do a shift.
It will, in any event, be a labour of love for him as the refurbishment of the boat was concentrated on the interior thus far so he will have a lot of welding, sanding down and painting of the exterior ahead of him. He is still excited about ownership though so we're hoping he will stick at it. When there's further progress to report, I'll drop by here and let you know.
* He is on the Autistic Spectrum and realistically, will never be able to buy or maintain his own home, but maybe the narrow boat is doable for him.
