On Wednesday 13th May, the lockdown restrictions on the English waterways were relaxed slightly to permit day trips for leisure boaters. So I took the opportunity to fire up the narrowboat and do a five-hour cruise down towards Fazeley Junction and back.
A year after I moved aboard, I did a video about what the annual costs were of life afloat. Now, after four years on board, I present an updated version of the same using averaged figures over the full four years.
A little thing like a global pandemic and lockdown is not going to prevent further boat videos on this channel so I present the first in what may become a regular “virtual tour” series, as we meet Dimitrios and Carine Theologitis from Brussels and have a look around their amazing…
After a surprising number of requests from viewers in my Lockdown vlog for me to film a bread-making video, I decided to retrieve such footage from my archives of when I first attempted the process about a year or so ago. There’s no quality to this production at all because it was never really intended for wide distribution but so many folk said “just upload anything” that I have. So it’s your own fault, really.
Filmed entirely on a DJI Osmo Action camera – which has the most amazing stabilisation – with a Rode Videomicro microphone, this is a recording of the first brief walk I took after completing 14 days of self isolation having come back from overseas. The weather was beautiful, the birds were chirping like crazy but the waters were almost totally still. Hopefully this is a nice little background video to bring a window of peace and calm into your day.
This is a day in the life of a narrowboater who’s self isolating having come back from overseas. There’s not a lot to do so it mostly involves eating, drinking tea and watching the telly.
A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of spending a day aboard the fuel boat and butty of “Jules Fuels” on the Grand Union canal. The day started – early! – with loading of supplies and then off we went to deliver to customers south of Milton Keynes.
If a traditional narrowboat that’s 6’10” wide is just too limited in width for you then you might want to consider a widebeam for the canals of Britain. However, there are limitations on such craft so in this video I talk to widebeam owners Julie and Mark Weir about their experiences on a boat with an 11′ beam.
This is a real time recording from the bow of my narrowboat from when I cruised up the Macclesfield canal in September 2019, from Hall Green stop lock to near Bridge 65. Towards the end there’s a bit of a pause while I waited for another boat to come through two bridges close together but I do move on again after that for a bit before finally coming to a halt.
While my boat was broken down recently (see vlog 205), I had the great pleasure of Pixel, Maggie and Ryan aka Narrowboat Chef being my neighbours. They very kindly agreed to instruct me in the mystical ways of baking scones and this is the result.