A very quiet start to the new year, awaking to a rather white sky and a few drizzles of rain. Wrapping up warmly we had a lovely one on one walk with K and S, who live near to Berko. K gave us a pot of her freshly made marmalade which will be a real breakfast treat! The boat is moored next to a park where there are quite a few walkers with small children. Its so funny to see toddlers peering in the window and the smiles when they realise someone is inside who is waving at them!
Walking along the towpath yesterday, whilst R was operating a lockgate, was an elderly lady with a plastic bag and a grabber stick. She told R she frequently goes along collecting the rubbish. It reminded me that we have a grabber stick on board too and really should put it to such good use when on a towpath walk. I think ours is 20 years old – a by product of R’s accident which we never parted with.
We had a great chat in the morning with a couple walking by who we were moored next to for a few days at our last visit to Berko. Transpires he is a craftsman who does various refits on the insides of narrowboats. Seeing photos of his work was inspirational as he has had some really clever ideas of how to best use the space available. Having lived on a boat for a couple of months I would love to design my own interior with a place for everything and everything in its place! What I think would be really clever is part of the roof that could be raised up, like you see in VW campervans! R wouldn’t have to keep banging his head or stooping his back. Of course it could prove a bit of a disaster if you forgot to lower it before going under a bridge. I remember my sister-in-law telling me a story of being on the Norfolk broads with her family and they forgot to lower a sail before preceeding under a bridge!
A couple of Zoom calls, a delicious bottle of bubbles (present from my niece who’s husband knows his wines!) as we didn’t have any last night (gin being the tipple!) and an episode of Vera! Living it up in Berko aka 2021!!
NarrowboatTLC 