At last! The lines have been taken up, the mooring relinquished – yes, let go entirely – and I’m off on my 2019 cruising adventures starting with a trip up the North Oxford canal to Hawkesbury Junction where it meets the Coventry canal.
The (in)famous hand-drawn canal map returns in this vlog where I contemplate places to go in the narrowboat in 2019.
In this episode, my mystery Crew member and I continue our winter jaunt along the North Oxford canal from just outside Rugby, through Newbold and up to just past Brinklow.
Drop your jaw and gasp in disbelief as you watch me take the boat out for a cruise in winter. Yes, winter. OK, it’s not snowing but it was December, a time when I’m normally tucked up by the roaring stove with the boat on the mooring.
The penultimate Not A Vlog of the 2018 cruising, this is the trip on the narrowboat from Blisworth to Weedon via Gayton Junction on the Grand Union canal.
After several weeks, at last I embarked on the final leg of my autumn 2018 cruise along the Grand Union canal, the return stretch taking me from Blisworth, through Gayton, Weedon, Norton Junction and ultimately to Braunston.
Real-time “slow TV” footage from the bow of my narrowboat as I travelled from Yardley Gobion to Stoke Bruerne bottom lock.
After several days at Yardley Gobion, during which time I had the boatyard opposite look at – and hopefully fix – the diesel leak, I carried on with my return journey up the Grand Union canal, going back through Gayton, up the Stoke Bruerne locks and up through Blisworth tunnel (no signs of any ghosts this time round).
It was a great pleasure in amongst my canal cruising this autumn to welcome, all the way from Canada, the RV Geeks onto my boat. They joined me for a day to experience narrowboat cruising, even taking the tiller and steering the boat.
Starting from just above Stoke Hammond lock, in this trip I did a mammoth journey (for me) on a beautiful sunny October day, up through Milton Keynes, continuing through Cosgrove and ultimately ending up at Yardley Gobion where there was a boatyard I could ask about a newly-found and substantial diesel leak on my engine.
