We arrived safely back in UK on Wednesday morning after a very emotional farewell for now at Gisborne airport where many people came to wish us well. The gorgeous Jade sang a waiata (Maori song) and Haka to us at the airport, and had everyone in tears - we were so honoured, what a brave young woman.
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| The farewell committee at Gisborne airport - Jade is next to Barry |
There are so many things I'll miss about living in New Zealand (Gisborne especially), and I intend to write something around that in the near future ...
Yesterday Barry got the train to Rugby where the lovely Barry from the boatyard collected him and took him to see 'AREandARE' - he's been a little anxious about sighting the engine and just wanted to be sure that it's the boat we want - and luckily he loved it! So subject to a satisfactory in-water survey on Monday, we'll go ahead with the purchase and be narrowboat owners again - hurrah! We're not sure as yet when we'll actually take possession or be on board, but it's likely to be in the next couple of weeks I would imagine. Barry didn't take any photos of the boat surprisingly, he said he wanted to savour the time talking to her current owner and looking around - there's enough lovely pictures on the ABNB website.
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| Waiting for the train, all wrapped up against the cold ... |
Will the blog name change people have asked? I hope so, we just have to work out how that happens and if we can keep the blogs we've written to date as nbnorthernpride, and just re-direct people - does anyone know how we do that? Any information gratefully received.
The temperature change from Monday last week of around 29 degrees C, to today of around 0 degrees C has its challenges, but nothing we weren't expecting, and Barry is loving seeing the snow! We're off to the Lake District today with my three sisters and their partners, and my parents for my mum's 80th birthday tomorrow and my dad's 93rd on 30th March.
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Sandra
ReplyDeleteJust a point of clarification regarding your query about changing the blog name...
Do you want to change the "Title" or the "address".
The Title are the words that appear on the banner across the top of your blog page. The address is where your readers know to go to find your blog. (eg www.narrowboat-waiouru.co.uk)
It's reasonably easy to change the blog Title and considerably more difficult to change the Address.
I suggest you and Barry consider a new blog banner photo with a new title (eg, new boat name) and leave the address untouched. That way your readers will still find the blog.
Oh.... and tell Barry he could have left his rotten Gisborne weather behind :-)
Hi Sandra/Barry and welcome back I have enjoyed your blog and others so much for the last couple of years that we are in the throws of buying a boat ourselves and should be afloat by end of April and I have started my own ramblings http://124andy.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteGoood luck
Andy and Sue
Hi Sandra and Barry,
ReplyDeletetwo suggestions for the blog:
1) How about creating a new blog and putting a final blog post on Northern Pride with a link to the new site.
2) a better way that will take advantage of all the good work you did on Northern Pride in terms of traffic would be create a new blog and when you post on there just upload a one line headline post on Northern Pride that links to the new site. The advantage of this is you have gained lots of links from other boaters and services like Google Reader and who knows where that a redirect like this will keep those routes to NP (and on to the new site from there) without relying on your audience having to do any work. eventually we might get fed up with going the long way but that choice is ours.
Welcome back you two!
ReplyDeleteI am so glad you like the new boat, it must have been quite a relief.
I agree with John with a final post on NP with a huge link through to the new blog.
That way you can have in the url the name of the boat or whatever and people will start to bookmark your new pages having been to the last NP post.
I did manage to change my url and keep my blog going but I am on wordpress.
Have you thought about wordpress instead of google?
Google are changing a bit and are already dropping their RSS Reader in the near future, so not sure what they are at.
Really looking forward to meeting up with you both again.
Good luck to you both xx