Chalked up one year of continuous cruising

One year on ……. Yes, we have been continuously cruising for one whole year!   Monday 28 March was Day 365.  Some random thoughts about this last year ……
1.  We did the right thing.
2.  Eaten millions of eggs.
3.  Read more books than last 100 years put together.
4.  I miss being able to see Amy whenever.
5.  Not missed work at all.
6.  Why didn’t we do this sooner
7.  Only had a handful of arguments and only once stopped speaking to each other for a couple of days
8.  Still got some supplies we bought with us from the house such as tins of tuna and corned beef, filter coffee, olive oil and quite a number of bottles of spirits
9.  Why didn’t we do this sooner
10. Dai sleeping 8 hours regularly instead of the perhaps 4 or 5 in our previous life
11. Miss having vegetables and fruit off our allotment
12. No colds or illnesses at all
13.  Long, hard, cold winter but we survived
14.  Why didn’t we do this sooner


Had two other “firsts” this last week …..
1.  We were just about to set off down 9 locks into Gargreave when an old narrowboat pulled up.   Great we thought, someone to share the locks with.    “I’ve lost my reverse gear” the owner exclaimed “waiting for a friend to arrive to help me down the locks.”       No prob we said, we’ll breast up and take you down.    So that’s what we did - a first for Dai and he handled it like he’d done it a million times.    Tell you what, they were the easiest locks since getting on the Leeds and Liverpool canal - I had two helpers!     (For our non-boatie friends “breasting up” is where two narrow boats are tied together so one boat runs their engine and steers.    You can obviously only do this in broad locks where two boats can use it side by side.)
2.   Foxxie decided to take a midnight dip (well, a 11pm dip).     She went out for her last wee before bedtime and walked off the canal side of the boat instead of onto the towpath - SPLASH !!!    It was pitch dark and the silly moo swam to the other side of the canal instead of back to the boat and got out.   She then proceeded to thrash about in the shrubbery whimpering like a mad thing.     After about 15 minutes of Dai encouraging her to swim back - she did and then of course, once on the deck shook her coat drenching Dai (I made sure I was standing well out of the way).     Foxxie loves to swim but doesn’t like to jump in - she will only go into the water if she can wade in - ar well, as they say “all’s well that ended well”.


So this last week we moved from Saltersford, past Barnoldswick , East Marton, Gargreave and are now moored at Skipton where we plan to stay until Friday and then move out of the town for the weekend (don’t like staying in towns at weekends as it can get noisy and most likely time for the drunks and ner-do-wells to do their mischief.   




Since last blog we have done …  13 miles and 15 locks
This makes total since Setting Off ….. 1078 miles and  946 locks

.... and yes we saw first swan nest

unusual double arched bridge at East Marton (B.161)

you can see the hole - but can you see the woodpecker (it was there honest tapping out another one)

nice rural canalside scene in Yorkshire