The dream is finally alive!!

Finally we are on our boat having travelled up from Worcestershire at lunchtime, stopping on the way at Sainsburys for lots of staples (including lots of sugar for you know what!), as our future shopping will be by foot or bus! A rather nice microwave curry and a bottle of Montana Pinot Noir, hurrah we can still get NZ wine! Spookily enough we are moored next to a couple from Australia who are here for 6 months also, unfortuantely their boat has broken down so fingers crossed we don't suffer the same fate...

Our boat didn't quite pass it's BSC (not Bachelor of Science but Boat Safety Certificate), though it only needs a new fire blanket and spot of welding somewhere - Barry can help to sort that out tomorrow while I drive back south to take the hire car back to Birmingham Airport.

Already Barry has banged his head twice (see gash on his forehead!) and set off the burglar alarm, it's gonna take a bit of getting used to living in a hallway!

We've almost unpacked, and cleaned the boat from top to bottom, thankfully discovered the 3 bags of mothballs stragetically placed in the wardrobes and chucked them onto the towpath - what a revolting smell they make, let's hope we won't now be overrun with moths!

Note the nice 'Next cushions, but the chintzy, flowery curtains that really have to go, just need to get some material and someone to run up some curtains for us!

Tuesday we hope to set off for Llangollen hopefully to begin the adventure, who knows what will happen. We may decide after 5 and a half months that we never want to see another narrowboat as long as we live, or we may be so in love with it we never want to leave...