One canal boat, seven friends, six bell towers and several bottles of gin!

I had a little holiday recently. I was hoping to keep you posted on where we were during my week away, but the wifi on the canal boat was a little hit and miss….well more miss than hit. Sometimes it’s great that way because you can really get away from it all.

What more could you want than to spend 7 days on a canal boat with 7 other people, all of us bell ringers. I know to some people that would seem like a nightmare, but for us 8 it was heaven. This was the second time I’ve been on a canal boat, the first time was last year.

Our boat was called “Josephine” and what a fine boat she was to at 70 foot long. We had 2 bathrooms, so a “Boys” and a “girls”. Places for us all to sleep, a lovely little kitchen and lounge/dining area.

You all have to get on well with each other, and muck in when it comes to opening and closing the lock gates. What you have to do came flooding back to me immediately, although to start with I forgot a few little things, but nothing major. There were those who wanted to steer (I wasn’t bothered as I did that last year), Jane did most of the cooking and what a fabulous job she did, especially with the oven on board that if you opened or closed the oven door too quickly it got scared and went out. Jane cooked us meat pies, casseroles, pasta, all sorts of tasty dinners. The kettle was always on the boil and tea was a constant. Paul did a couple of wonderful fried breakfasts which you needed to keep you going with all the walking we did from one lock to another. I’m sure I came back fitter, but slightly fatter.

Because we are all bell ringers Jane and Len worked out the route and also 6 towers that were all in walking distance from the canal.

During the evenings, and sometimes during the day the deck of