About Us

My photo
In 1977 we hired our first narrowboat from Anglo Welsh at Market Harborough.From that moment our destiny was set. In 2006 we finally purchased our own brand new 57' narrowboat which we named 'Free Spirit'. Our aim is to travel the length and breadth of all the navigable rivers and canals of the UK. This will be our story as it unfolds.

Saturday 15 December 2018

Homeward bound

Friday 14th

New Year's Eve was a bit of a letdown. First a Devon cream tea was looked forward to but, as was the norm in this hotel, a tiny scone with a small dollop of cream with a coffee to follow was the only offering. Don't get me wrong it was delicious and I suppose with dinner at 6 pm a bigger portion would have been pure gluttony. Then the festive quiz started with 20 questions and boy did we do abysmally! 3 questions unanswered and 12 wrong it was no surprise that we came an embarrassingly last!

Dinner finished by 8pm and the waitress mentioned the New Year Eve party would start at 10pm. Had we misheard when arriving in the dining room at the allotted time because a glass of Prosecco was thrust into our hand and Old Lang Syne sang. What????!!!! It's only 10pm! Where was the midnight toast and what about the music and dancing? Apparently, this had started soon after dinner had finished and, with us in the room, we hadn't realised the festivities had begun. But never one to let this get us down we joined the rest of our party and made our own entertainment by being very rude and silly (some photos I just can't show!)and we did toast the New Year in at Midnight!

Good on you Carol

From L to R:- Kath, Hilda, Ernie, Ian, Heather, Michael and Carol.


There were a lot of rude photos after this one. You get the picture??

Friday morning, bleary-eyed and a little worse for wear we were down for breakfast by 7.45am. A 9.20am departure time had been given and we still had to finish packing and settle the bar bill. At £34 Ian was pleasantly surprised at the total and on the coach, checking the receipt, realised all of Thursday nights dinner drinks hadn't been included. Oops, too late to rectify this so two smug people congratulated themselves on saving about fifteen quid.

The journey home with the typical Friday hold-ups and loads of traffic didn't really delay the journey. But waiting for a taxi did. The taxi had been ordered by KM Travel to take us back to the Great Northern but we found that no taxis would be available for at least 30 minutes. I felt for those waiting on the coach who was to continue the journey to Chesterfield as they had another 90-minute journey to contend with. The coach driver refused to leave us stranded and waited until the taxi arrived. Well done KM travel because, after the farce of the tickets and timings on leaving last Monday, they have redeemed themselves by this one action. Finally, we made it back to FS, the diesel heating fired up, the gas and water pump switched on and within 30 minutes we had unpacked and settled back to life in our floating home.

Countdown to Christmas has begun and for once both of us are really looking forward to it.
All the family together and I get to cook dinner at our son's house with his big kitchen and modern appliances. Far cry from putting a casserole on the stove and having to cope with a small cooker! Just hope I can work them all! Then the board games come out, first with the grandchildren and then the traditional game of Poker. Oh and of course plenty of the falling down liquid to keep us all happy.πŸŽ„πŸŽ…πŸ·πŸΊ

No comments:

Blog Archive