FIVE BEAN SOUP

08/08/2022

Flower Walk

Nothing narrowboat about this really. I just had a lovely short walk in Devizes and found such beautiful flowers. I think it was the West Wessex Way at least for a short ways but mostly just a surprising little path between a spot in the middle of nowhere and an allotment. Enjoy the flowers. I […]

01/08/2022

Heads, Wrists, and Roasting to Death

I will not be getting into so much detail on the way home as it is almost all retracing our steps for a few weeks. It has been interesting and at times painful. Not a lot going to plan. We left Devizes on the 9th of July with an intention to be around Froxfield by […]

25/07/2022

MK24

So what the heck is MK24? It is a 24 hour race where you run as many laps of a quarter marathon distance as you can in 24 hours. Obviously that means that two laps is a half marathon, four is a full marathon, and anything above that is an ultra marathon distance. You can […]

18/07/2022

Final push to Devizes

We decided to take a long weekend to push on for the last 27 miles as over half of that would be lock free. We had the extra help of Emily for the Thursday and Joey for the full weekend. This extra help was magnificent as without it we couldn’t have cruised on Thursday as […]

11/07/2022

Kintbury

In my last blog I believe I mentioned that I skipped getting water on Thursday with Emily because I could get it done on Saturday with Alan. That was a mistake as the next water point after Aldermaston is at Kintbury 14 miles away. 14 miles and about as many locks. Locks take time and […]

04/07/2022

Cruising away without Alan

We put an offer out to the kids to come visit us on the boat and help me move it while Alan was at work. Both girls wanted to do it but only Emily actually could come along. Emily met me at the cow field and we set off to find another mooring, get fuel, […]

27/06/2022

Boat shows and cow fields

Last left you at our first mooring on the Kennet and Avon Canal. The weekend plans were going to the Crick Boat Show on Saturday and cruise on the Sunday. For once things went pretty much as we planned. On the Saturday morning we got up early and headed off to Northamptonshire for the show. […]

20/06/2022

First Impressions of the Kennet and Avon Canal

We left Pangbourne early in the morning. The aim is to get off the River Thames and onto the Kennet and Avon Canal at Reading.sounds simple enough. Once on the canal we can see about mooring just after the town centre for lunch and then go on for a while longer to get into the […]

17/06/2022

Thames…part two

The weather was fair and the hour early when we cruised away from Abingdon on the River Thames. Our goal for the day was to arrive at Wallingford and moor up around noon. Things would not be going to our plans. Not even out of Abingdon the steering felt wrong to Alan. We were far […]

13/06/2022

The River Thames….part 1

Canals we were good on but to get to the Kennet and Avon Canal we have to use the River Thames. That is big open water compared to a little canal. We were, to say the least, terrified for what it would be like. The Sunday morning Alan push me off and walked along the […]