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Friday 30 September 2011

Cruising reflections

Bon on holiday

Bonny can be very meditative at times, despite being young and active. She sat here, looking out over the River Trent for a good hour, just watching the world go by. That was the flavour of our cruise.  I deliberately didn’t plan to travel a long distance with limited time. Instead I wanted to be free to mooch along for a while, see a promising spot to moor and stop for the rest of the day, or a couple of days if the mood took us. As a result I was much more relaxed than usual whilst cruising as I did not put myself under any time pressure.

I also have this dream of being able to give up working and cruise for months on end. I wanted to feel what it would be like to have unlimited time and no targets to aim for. I discovered that I am more of a moorer than a cruiser! I love finding a new place to moor up; new neighbours to pass the time of day with and new walks to explore. The cruising is necessary to do this, but I am not one who likes the cruising for its own sake and so am not happy to cruise from dawn to dusk, leaving no time to explore or relax. I feel slightly less of a boater because of this, but it is good to know. I still want to explore the canal and river system but I think I would do it is chunks, taking plenty of time for each journey and returning to my home mooring in between trips. so I’m not the total gypsy I thought I was!

great single mooring Taft bridge

This is the sort of mooring I love to find as basically I am an unsociable hermit! There are wide banks of reeds at either end of the boat so no one else can moor next to me. There is no road or railway particularly close by and so Bonny can run free and there are no houses nearby. This particular mooring is near Taft Bridge on the Trent and Mersey, in between Rugeley and Great Haywood. The towpath is wide at this point so I can put my lounger out without becoming an obstacle for joggers and dog walkers.

shall I go or stay

I have been dreaming of a perfect home mooring. It would be a single mooring rented from a farmer on one of his fields. he would fence off around 60’ x 60’ so we would have room to sit, grow a few veggies and Bonny would at last have a garden to run free in. There would be access to a stand pipe for water and the mooring would be close to a bridge and the farm lane so I could park my car and access the towpath. It wouldn’t be far from somewhere I could cruise to for diesel and pump outs. It would be heaven for us, so if there are any farmers out there who want a regular income for very little effort…

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

lovely

Lynda Alsford said...

Sounds like a lovely way to spend a holiday, just going where you feel. The advantage of the boating lifestyle is that you take your home with you. If I do that it is a different hotel every night and so not as relaxing!

I hope you get your ideal mooring one day!!

Lynda