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General => Eye Candy | Videos and Pics => Topic started by: Neil955i on May 31, 2023, 08:31:57 AM
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Well that was a character-forming week! We've bought eldest son a canal boat to call home* and have started an epic journey to transport it home from where it was purchased, in Bath, 250+ canal miles away! Son & GF took on the first week on the Kennet & Avon Canal with us taking over just in time for the trip up the River Thames to join the Oxford canal. Now I used to live in a house that backed onto the Stratford Canal in a place called Shirley, Solihull in the West Midlands, but that is where my knowledge of the waterways of the UK started and ended up until now!
It's a whole different world where speed us either just about walking pace or not even walking pace if you're passing other, moored, boats. Then there's the locks. Fiendishly clever Victorian engineered devices for raising and lowering water levels along the way. I thank my lucky stars that we missed the Bath flight of locks called the Caen Hill Staircase which involved 30 locks in one half mile stretch of the K&A! Lloyd & his GF took a half a day just to cover that half mile. (https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/media-centre/filming-and-photography/our-filming-and-photography-locations/caen-hill-locks-kennet-and-avon-canal)
We completed our stint on Saturday about half way up the first leg of the Oxford Canal in a place called Banbury so in our 6 days we covered about 63 miles. The boat (NB Blue Grass) is now about 2 weeks cruising from home, but that may end up being done in 2-day stints by son at the weekends, so it may be another 2-3 months before it's local, unless we can block out another week to do a shift.
It will, in any event, be a labour of love for him as the refurbishment of the boat was concentrated on the interior thus far so he will have a lot of welding, sanding down and painting of the exterior ahead of him. He is still excited about ownership though so we're hoping he will stick at it. When there's further progress to report, I'll drop by here and let you know.
* He is on the Autistic Spectrum and realistically, will never be able to buy or maintain his own home, but maybe the narrow boat is doable for him.
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Some more shots...
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...and more...
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This final photo shows Lloyd & GF Sasha with some new friends!
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Stunning adventure! We had a wannabee trawler a few years back and adapted to "river speed." That being about 7 miles an hour! Great story and pictures!
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Neil, thanks for sharing! Sounds like a great time on the water. Are those boats originally designed for any specific purpose other than pleasure and living on? Do you have any interior pics?
It appears we also share something beyond our love for 2 wheels..a child on the autism spectrum. My oldest daughter (16) is on the spectrum. Very high functioning but plenty of challenges as I'm sure you can understand. I hope your son finds some joy in fixing up and maintaining his new home.
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Neil, thanks for sharing! Sounds like a great time on the water. Are those boats originally designed for any specific purpose other than pleasure and living on? Do you have any interior pics?
It appears we also share something beyond our love for 2 wheels..a child on the autism spectrum. My oldest daughter (16) is on the spectrum. Very high functioning but plenty of challenges as I'm sure you can understand. I hope your son finds some joy in fixing up and maintaining his new home.
Thanks for the positive response Hawk and yes, originally the canal network here in the UK was used extensively for moving freight and goods about until the coming of the railway network. Anything heavy and not time-critical such as coal, iron ore, clay, finished pottery etc., was grist to the canals' mill. These days, very little freight so it's mainly used by folks for leisure and a hard core of "water gypsies" who roam the waterways and live off grid.
ASD is, as you say, a challenge both for those with it and their nearest & dearest! My wife and I reckon we could write a book about it. But that's been done and one of the scariest things is the little known link to suicide for those on the spectrum. In a Cambridge University study "Professor Simon Baron-Cohen added: “Even a single suicide is a terrible tragedy for the person and a traumatic loss for their families and friends. Suicide rates are unacceptably high in autistic people and suicide prevention has to be the number one goal to reduce the worrying increased mortality in autistic people.
“Autistic people on average die 20 years earlier than non-autistic people, and two big causes of this are suicide and epilepsy. We published the preliminary data on elevated suicide rates back in 2014 as a wake-up call to governments, and yet nothing has been done.” My emboldened text.
Take good care of your daughter Hawk.
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Lucky guy those seem so peaceful to cruise on.
I would have issues going over the Pontcsylite aqueduct one though , yikes.
Ya not a fan of heights .
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Pontcysyllte_aqueduct_arp.jpg/800px-Pontcysyllte_aqueduct_arp.jpg (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Pontcysyllte_aqueduct_arp.jpg/800px-Pontcysyllte_aqueduct_arp.jpg)