About us and our boat

We, Brian & Jane, live in Worcestershire and finally retired in 2011 after a combined 74 years(!) working in local government.

Having had a few hire-boat holidays and spent 4 years enjoying the canals on a shared ownership narrowboat, we wanted to spend more of our new-found free time boating. After much research, and touring many marinas and brokers, we decided to commission a brand new narrowboat of our own.

Bonjour is a 60ft semi-trad narrowboat built by Nigel Moore (NSM Narrowboats) in Worcestershire using a Colecraft shell built in Warwickshire - we like to support local business!

Bonjour was launched on 30 May 2011.

Saturday, 24 May 2014

Never complain it’s cloudy

 

Friday

Cloudy.  Bit of a dull day.  Went from near Brinklow to Hartshill and moored outside The Anchor.  Didn’t see many boats.  Not a lot happened.  Day enlivened by the wondrous sight that is Charity Dock, near Bedworth.  Apparently it is a great place to get repairs and things done to your boat, but it’s more famous for its weird and wonderful collection of “characters”

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After the briefest of stops at Nuneaton for “essentials”, we arrived at the Anchor at 3.10, spent the afternoon “chillin’” and enjoyed a great steak and chips there in the evening.

Saturday

We were up by 7.30 but 5 minutes later it started raining, and it carried on for six & a half hours.  Throughout the morning we were saying “shall we move? no”, then “it’s getting a bit brighter” “we’ll make a decision at 1” followed by “we’ll make a decision at 1.30”.  Just after we’d said “we’ll stay put” the rain stopped and the sun came out!  So we set off for Atherstone, wanting to get the 11 locks behind us.  Lock 1 was great, ready filled for us and it was sunny

 

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By lock 2, which we had to fill, the heavens had opened again. Luckily this shower was short and sharp, but from then on all the locks were against us, ie empty, and filling every one became tedious as these locks are notoriously “slow to fill and quick to empty”.  No wonder I was fed up!

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(Brian said I wouldn’t publish that one!)

Finally exiting the last lock at 5.45, we looked for a good mooring, which we eventually found just as a thunderstorm started.  Tomorrow will be better, they say.

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