We got off to a slightly wobbly start as we turned the first corner and were immediately met with a very-nearly-broken lock, but we hobbled through thanks to a group of CRT guys physically dragging silt away from the bottom of the lock gates using super-long spades…

It was much smoother sailing after that, thanks to a lovely couple who we shared the rest of the day’s locks with. They own the most beautiful cat, Pickle, who immediately befriended Roger. (Just look at them together; waaaaay too cute.) Sidenote: my sweet peas have done extraordinarily well this year, but I have absolutely no idea what I did differently from other years, so will I ever be able to replicate this splendour?!

We’d been planning to just do a two-day move and get up to Boxmoor (which I’d remembered as being a nice quiet spot overlooking a field), but we got there to find a funfair directly opposite. The combination of that noise (screaming kids until 10pm, then fireworks until 11) plus Roger inexplicably walking up and down an A-road in the middle of the night meant we set off moving again first thing the next morning.

Landlubbers are likely unaware of them, but there are some outdoor 24/7 launderettes dotted around the country and they’re an absolute godsend to boaters. I especially enjoy sorting my socks out right next to drivers who’re filling up with petrol; it really heightens the sense of boating being on the periphery of the real world. The one at Nash Mills is positioned perfectly so that you can drop stuff off to wash, wander back to the nearby pub, have a pint, pop back to swap everything into the dryer, another drink and a chat, then back up the road to collect it all. Lovely stuff!

Another boater-specific joy is that sometimes we get to wield the mighty power of stopping road traffic using a special key. It always feels soooo gooood! Matt got to do the honours at Winkwell swing bridge this time.

Mini flood drama

It had been really quite a chill move (despite the last-minute-ness and it involving 13 locks we hadn’t planned on doing that weekend!) but we were flagging slightly as we reached Berkhamsted and then had to deal with a bizarre situation at the final two locks. The water level was so high at the top that it had started coming over onto the towpath so a disgruntled local homeowner had procured a windlass and was randomly opening paddles on the locks, sending water downwards to stop the top from flooding but only by flooding all the houses lower down… Great job, sir!

Anyway, we reset everything with the help of some other boaters and made it through to find a lovely mooring spot within walking distance of the shops (including a garden centre AND a Waitrose! Berko is pretty posh…) and hopefully far enough from main roads to deter Rog from doing any more extreme walks. Another Berkhamsted highlight was finally getting the last bit of our water filter system installed so that we now drink the canal water! It’s genuinely more pure than most tap water and tastes all the sweeter now that we have endless running drinking water powered by free sunshine. De. Lish.

Heatwaves in a steel box

The only negative was there wasn’t much shade to be had and we ended up in the heatwave without much escape when I was given some last-minute editing work. We did everything we could think of to make it bearable, but even with draping wet sheets over all the hatches, the steel reached such an insane temperature it was a bit much for the three of us sharing our one trusty rechargeable fan.

Poor Roger just spent most of the time lying on the floor, the only respite being some cat yogurts from the fridge every so often. (My love for our mini fridge continues to know no bounds having suffered through previous years’ heatwaves with literally no way of cooling anything down. Sometimes I dream of having a mini freezer too, but we’re already at capacity on li’l Reg!)

The worst day was having to move during the height of the heatwave as we had a booking at the nearby boatyard. Even though we waited until 6pm to set off, it was a bit insane, having to wear gloves to hold onto the roof because it was still so scorching hot. We didn’t have far to go, but it was absoutely knackering.

Once the engine service was completed, we made an instant beeline for nature’s fridge: TREEEEEES! The deep, tree-lined cutting at Tring has always been one of my favourite spots and it really comes into its own during the heat. The relief was immediate and immense and everything felt so much more doable once we were there. Phew phew phew.

Baking while baking

While we were there, it was a friend’s 40th birthday in London and I made the slightly controversial decision to bake something, which in hindsight does feel a bit mad, as it involved a 50-minute round trip walking across scorched fields in 30+ heat to get to the nearest village shop to buy butter (plus some jiffy bags to wrap the butter in so it didn’t melt on the return journey!) then waiting until 10.30pm before turning the oven on in an attempt to not overheat completely. But the resulting miso caramel & pistachio creme brownies went down really well, so it was totally worth it.

Other Tring highlights included a delicious Mediterranean meal out, the Tring branch of the Natural History Museum (fascinating, but also sort of horrifying; I did not enjoy the endless rooms of stuffed mammals) and the (tiny, but delightful) Tring Local History Museum.

Serenades (?) and celebrations

We accidentally timed our departure from Tring to coincide with a hire boat filled to the brim with a drunk, opera-singing hen party. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against opera (or hen parties, or drinking), but there’s certainly something… interesting about being forced to experience an artform specifically designed to project the voice over the sound of a full orchestra, while trapped standing next to them only half a metre away within an echoey lock chamber. Let’s just say it wasn’t my favourite rendition of the Flower Duet. We stuck it out for a while, but then decided to let them go ahead and took an early lunchbreak halfway down the Marsworth flight.

Refreshed, we finished off the flight of locks, then turned the corner and finally reached the point of the journey I’ve been most looking forward to since we left Ware all those weeks ago: going beyond the furthest bit I’ve previously gone on Reg! I’ve been on the boat for 8 years now and although I’ve really loved getting to know all the twists and turns (and hazards) of the waterway and feeling at home wherever I go, there’s really nothing like that first 6 months where you set off and have absolutely no idea where you’re going to moor up that night, or even what it will look like around the next bend. It’s a very specific exhilaration and feeling of proper adventure and it felt soooo great to travel past the junction of the Aylesbury Arm and off into the unknown, towards The North (yes, technically, we’re still only just north of the M25 so far, but you know what I mean).

Pitstone serendipity

Our mooring at Pitstone was one of our favourites so far. There were no other occupied boats within the whole stretch of water (just one abandoned one), so it felt like our own private canal. We went on the most lovely walks, including to the historic Pitstone windmill on what happened to be the one afternoon a week that they do tours. I loved learning about all things mill, but I became mostly obsessed with the middle wooden column (that the whole structure hangs from). It’s thought to be around 1000 years old (!) and is covered in carved graffiti through the ages, including initials with serifs!

Another exciting walk was to Ivinghoe Egg Vending, a state-of-the-art vending machine selling fresh eggs from the local farm. For two vending business owners, we were living the dream.

The location serendipity continued as I got invited to do a live interview on BBC Three Counties radio which was just up the road in Dunstable. We were basically moored the nearest we could possibly be to the studio, totally by accident. I was a bit nervous, but the interview went pretty well and it was obviously great to get some proper local press.

Sidenote: I also caught a glimpse of one of my favourite bits of transport infrastructure*, the Luton-Dunstable Busway.

*what do you mean you don’t have one?

Not a fan

Then the next heatwave hit, and we sort of lost our minds a bit. Having driven round all the nearby stores and been laughed out of the place when I asked if they had any fans left, I panic-purchased one online to be delivered to the only registered address I have (my parents’ house in Essex). We also spent a full day going not once, but twice to Wickes to try to create a pump-in-canal-connected-to-sprinkler-on-roof device and it very nearly broke us.

Although it did eventually work, it led us to discover we have some small leaks we didn’t know about, so now we have to work out how to fix those. Boats! Honestly, WTF! After a brief (6 hours round trip) drive to my parents’ house to collect the fan, things were feeling a lot more doable again.

By then, of course, the heatwave was over.

Coming up: Join us next time when we re-assess our options as the northern canals all start to close due to the drought. Eek.

Action!

We finally got to go through the recently fixed Copper Mill lock and continue our way north. Onwards to new pastures!

Some pretty famous pastures, in fact, as we moored up directly opposite the hill where the opening to Black Beauty was filmed (Stockers Farm, Rickmansworth):

↑ (what Roger thinks he looks like when he runs)

Ricky highlights

• Delicious PanAsian food in town

• The novelty/luxury of being temporarily back on the tube network (even though it actually takes AGES to get into London from this far along the Metropolitan line)

• Our new neighbours: horses opposite who came for a daily paddle in the canal, a nearby heron who swooped alongside Reg multiple times, plus dozens of tiny brand new goslings and ducklings. I’ve started (trying to do) running again and the lakes of the Aquadrome really kept me going.

We’d arrived at Ricky just before the Batchworth Boat Rally, so got to enjoy lots of absolutely stunning shiny traditional boats going past on their way up, including my favourite coal boat, Emu, all the way up from central London just for the rally. I heard its distinctive Bolinder engine coming a mile off. If you haven’t heard one before, here she is:

Ricky lowlights

Not much drama to report here (thankfully!) aside from one bizarre incident. I heard someone shouting, “Help! Help!” and ran out to find a massive Dutch barge mooring up directly behind us, its owner standing on the bank holding a rope while his boat was still in FULL REVERSE and crashing into the back of Reg. He barked at me to jump on and put it in forward, so I did, then calmly brought it into neutral once it was safely alongside.

As I stepped off onto the bank he just said, “Bloody Nora.” So I asked if he was going to say thanks, but he ignored me, then went inside and didn’t speak another word to me for the entire time we were neighbours! Gotta love a mature man…

Roger also had an awkward interaction. A big tomcat on the permanent moorings nearby thinks this whole stretch is his territory and (in stark contrast to our mute pal on the Dutch barge) this guy was pretty vocal in his displeasure. Matt to the rescue: he hissed at him while running down the towpath, which seemed do the trick. Ol’ Tom clearly realised he was no match for this terrifyingly human-sized cat on board Reg and would hang out quite happily with Roger on the roof after that.

Calm Cassiobury Park

We chose to stop in Cassiobury Park next, not just because it is stunning woodland, but mostly because I needed somewhere Roger could roam freely without me worrying about him getting near any roads. Keeping everyone as calm as possible was the name of the game, as I prepared for a biiiiiiiiig gingerbread project: to build a replica of the original Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition Road Festival.

Since giving up the bakery barn, big projects mean finding a kitchen wherever I can. This time it was a perfect Airbnb near Hemel Hempstead (a short drive away) run by a lovely couple who didn't bat an eyelid at me turning their kitchen into a gingerbread factory.

On the move towards the park, we were sharing locks with the mobile sanitary waste pump-out boat, aka “The Poo Boat”. We got chatting and Poo Boat Captain (I really should have asked his name, ah well) warned us that Cassiobury had gone to shit*. Apparently there was just fly-tipping everywhere and it was definitely not a good place to stop. So we braced ourselves…

But we arrived and it was just as idyllic as I remembered. Also the most perfect shaded spot for a surprise May heatwave. Phew.

(*puns always intended)

Cress-iobury Park, more like…

After arriving, we discovered this area was known for its watercress farming, of all things, and that it actually supplied watercress for The Great Exhibition in 1851, which felt like a pretty nice bit of symmetry given what I was about to spend the next few weeks building.

Cassiobury highlights

There’s something about driving a boat underneath the London underground that I absolutely love, and this bridge just before the park was possibly our last chance to do it in a while. Satisfying!

Roger took to the woodland like a duck to water. I love seeing him off zooming up and around the trees. Going for walks with Rog is one of the things I want to do loads more of now we’re back on the move. He’s the perfect walking companion (so long as you’re happy to stop for frequent sniffing of plants, which we are).

I also love a good bit of boating serendipity, so it was great that the timings worked out for us to have dinner with my mum & dad on Flora Dora as they passed through Cassiobury on their way up north this summer. Roger was slightly less overjoyed as he somehow managed to fall into the canal, then refused any assistance, so just stood drip-drying on their gunwales while we drank our wine; classic.

The walks in and around the woodland were some of the absolute best so far. It made for the perfect place to wind down after getting really rather stressed about biscuit (the only downside to being a professional gingerbread builder).

Thankfully, the project went well and after a nail-biting van journey into Kensington (but expertly driven by Matt), the Palace went on display to the public for a day, then got smashed to smithereens by Helen Sharman and handed out to all the visitors. Job done. Phew!

One day your 2-metre-long construction is being destroyed by an astronaut, the next you’re wandering around a local floating market chatting to boaters and buying a new handmade mug. Just another day in the life.

Next up: escaping the M25 and entering the unknown (finally venturing beyond the furthest I’ve ever been on Reg).

I’d seen some fishermen turn to walk down there while we were moored nearby and I wondered where they were going, so I decided to investigate. As you approach, the entrance to the arm is pretty intriguing as it’s fairly overgrown, but you can just spot one lone houseboat moored along the opening stretch.

Around halfway down the path, there’s a fun section with slightly underwater wooden planks that serve as stepping stones to traverse a section where the River Colne joins the Arm.

Soon after, you can see an old steel footbridge that’s gradually being overtaken by nature. From what I could tell, it leads to a locked gate which I imagine originally provided access to the Wharf.

Beyond the Colne section, it becomes even more overgrown, with lots of fallen trees and logs blocking the path and the navigation, then eventually you reach the end of the Arm, and Troy Wharf.

These days it looks completely abandoned, with a handful of boats still in there in various states of disrepair. Having done a spot of research since I got back, it seems that until around 12 years ago it was still in use, with a guy called Chris Collins restoring a historic boat, ‘Progress’, which looks like the one that’s hidden under the tarp nowadays, alongside an old Ovaltine boat, ‘Mimas’.

The Arm is getting encroached upon not just by nature, but also nearby industry, with The Marble & Granite Centre on one side and Harry Driving School for Trucks on the other, with only a corrugated metal fence separating them from this hidden bit of water.

It was such a nice walk. I saw some fishing spots around the nearby lake, which would make for an excellent picnic location next time from which to watch the little sailing boats.

It’s a really peaceful spot and feels like a little forgotten pocket of waterways history. I loved seeing the old crane in the boatyard, imagining what the Wharf used to look like, when and why it fell out of use, and what the owner’s dreams were for it. It really would be such an idyllic spot for a yard.

This isn’t the first off-shoot that’s piqued my interest. Since we set off from Ware, I’ve spotted so many little bits of water heading off from the main navigation and I always wonder what they’re used for. I love a good side quest; I think you’re way more likely to find something of interest by going off the beaten towpath.

Deceptively far

Despite its beautiful woodland, lovely bakery and brewery, we were overjoyed to be leaving Perivale due to the aforementioned work boat crashing into us (see previous post ↓), only to meet them again further down the canal; when they saw us approaching they literally hid from us! Ridiculous.

Getting to Denham from there should be pretty straightforward. There’s only three locks right at the end, so before that it’s just plain sailing cruising…

We were really happy to finally get out of the area covered by floating rubbish and had a nice jaunt down to the junction at Bulls Bridge (where we got to sound the air horn at the turning, which is always fun). We were making slow but steady progress so decided to pull over and have some lunch. Then just as I started to move to moor up, a long narrowboat undertook us at full speed. (It was the equivalent of a truck speeding past on the inside just as you’re about to turn off the road.) The bow of their boat very nearly hit us, so I stopped Reg from moving and assumed they had something terribly wrong with their engine and were about to apologise to us profusely as they came past me, but the couple on the back just waved and smiled?! I was too shocked to be able to respond in the moment so had to just watch them speed off into the distance leaving a massive wake behind them. It was just so bizarre.

Luckily, that was the last of the drama for that day and we carried on up through Cowley and Uxbridge then settled for the night just above Denham Deep lock and enjoyed the novelty of having some outdoor seating for once!

Next morning was Easter Sunday and we realised we’d foolishly let the coal stocks run too low and no shops would be open to buy any. Thanks to some helpful neighbours, we discovered Harefield Marina was open, but that they only had two bags left! So we untied from the nice bench mooring and set off in hopes of nabbing one. Luckily we got there just in time to get the final bag. Phew!

HS-toooooo expensive

The landscape up this way has been totally changed by the HS2 development and it pretty much dominates the view now. Last time I spent time up here, it was in the process of being cleared and the protesters were still camped on site. The final construction is even bigger than I was expecting. Where the canal passes underneath it, there are some of those creepy, dalek-like freestanding remote surveillance units. Matt swore at one of them and its alarm started going off! (I love the idea that a person will have had to check the timestamp for that and will just see a smiling couple cruising slowly past on a cute narrowboat - haha).

There are still some gorgeous walks to be had around the area though, especially up through Widewater Lock, around the lakes and small hills. Harefield village itself contains nothing of note besides the sheer number of St George’s flags, so we were pretty excited to hear there’s going to be an Islamic cultural centre just up the road from the canal, much to the disappointment of local GB News-ers.

Locksmithing

We set off from Denham in high spirits and bright sunshine and had a great run (including spotting The Piano Boat out in the wild) until we reached Coppermill Lock, which was already on my radar as it’s where a strong cross-current joins the channel and throws every boat off course as you approach the lock, making you crash into the opposite bank unless you’re really on it and there hasn’t been too much recent rain. Jubilant at having traversed it unscathed, we moored up ready to set the lock then saw some signs saying one of the top paddles wasn’t working and the bottom gates were so leaky that would mean the lock would lose more water than it could fill with (making it impossible to get through).

We might have turned back then if it hadn’t been for a lovely intrepid boatwoman who said she’d seen some people manage to cover up the leaks with a tarp enough to counteract it. So with our new friend’s help, we tied some old mooring pins to the bottom of two tarps then carefully lowered them to try to cover the leaky gaps in the bottom gates. It was slightly trickier than expected and then all we could do was open the one working paddle and wait for it to fill…

We waited and waited, until the water level reached the “top” of the lock, but then it was clear our efforts weren’t good enough, as the level started to go down again. We were within a few inches, but anyone who’s gone through a lock (or studied physics? I did single award science GCSE, so I’m not the one to ask…) knows the insane pressure means unless it’s level (or very close), it’s impossible to open.

We were tempted to let it drain and then start again, but by this point everyone was tired and grumpy, plus I had to catch a flight the next morning, so the priority was to just get moored up for the night. So we eventually admitted defeat, both boats reversed out, faced that horrid cross-flow again, then back around the bend we found a lovely quiet spot to moor.

Roger was the happiest of the bunch, having been locked in all day (as he always is during moves). He went for a massive walk that evening, while the humans stayed in. He wears a Tractive tracker on his collar, so we can keep a beady eye on him and go and collect him if when he goes and hides in a nearby bush just as we’re planning on setting off (how do they know?!) It’s been fun to see how his roaming varies depending on where we are. When we were on our mooring I thought maybe he’d grown out of going for big hikes, but now I think he just didn’t like the area or number of dogs. He’s really come into his own since we left, going off and exploring like he used to when he was little.

Good things come to those who wait

Getting stuck behind a broken lock is just the way of the waterways. Sometimes you’re forced to stop. Of course we couldn’t overpower the mighty water; all we could do is update our Canal and River Trust notifications so that we’d be emailed as soon as it was navigable again.

Moor drama

As we set off after having had the new electrics/solar installed in Tottenham it was heavily raining, but seemed fine. But as soon as we exited the lock, things took a turn for the worse as a tributary merges with the river at that point and it was adding a huge current to the already fast flow. We had no choice but to go with it, so we were speeding along just trying not to crash into anything. The problem was it was already sunset when we departed. We thought we’d have time to moor up before it was totally dark, but time was running out so we went for the first mooring spot we could find, on Walthamstow Marshes (one of my fave spots in the past).

The flow was so severe we had to overshoot then turn around and push back against the current, like you do on tidal sections; it’s the only way to maintain any control. So we went from careening along at insane speed to barely making progress against the water! But I finally managed to get Reg alongside the towpath and Matt stepped off with a midline to hold it. We had just started celebrating when the bow caught the flow slightly and immediately it was too strong for Matt to hold against, so he had to let go of the rope and the boat whipped around 180 degrees within a couple of seconds. I went into full astern and somehow managed to get another rope across to him. After much slipping over in mud and frantic hammering in of mooring pins, Reg was finally secure. But possibly the most stressful mooring of my many years of narrowboating!

Marshes in March

It was so nice to be back in my old favourite spots (my kitchen was just up the road from Hackney Marshes so I used to spend most winters around that area). We made the most of being close to so many boat friends, with lots of pub catch-ups and walks. Being double-moored onto after so many years having space to ourselves was a bit of a change, but we were really lucky with our neighbours and Roger made some new cat pals. Frustratingly, despite giving him the entirety of Victoria Park to roam in at night, he still chose to walk down the towpath towards the main road. I swear he’s deliberately trying to freak us out…

Water Freedom

Another big but totally worthwhile investment was getting a Water Freedom unit fitted. I know some people find the idea a bit gross, but basically it’s a multi-stage filtering system that means you can fill your water tank directly from the canal/river instead of moving to (and queuing for) the taps along the cut. It’s making such a difference already as Reg (though perfect) is tiny in every respect, including the water tank, so we were struggling with two of us trying to ration one tank every two weeks. But now we can take long showers like normal land people! We’re getting the next stage fitted soon which will mean we can actually drink the water too. Cannot wait. It’s game-changing stuff.

Flotsam or ‘churn’?

If we thought the water in east was a bit more dirty than expected, it was nothing compared to when we reached Greenford in the west. People often talk about ‘churn’ in relation to the rubbish on the canals. In the summer months when things warm up, the heat causes gases on the bottom of the channel to push all the sunken rubbish (along with some mud and other stuff) up to the surface, where it lingers until it sinks back down again in winter. It’s absolutely as disgusting as it sounds really and I’ve seen it in a few places where there’ll be some crisp packets and half-broken-up plastic bags floating around on the canal, but I’ve never seen anything like this before. It was an endless sea of trash as far as the eye could see. Absolutely insane. And some dismiss it as just an annual phenomenon not to worry about?!

We kept trying to dislodge the stuff that was getting caught around the propeller, but in the end it got too much, the engine stalled and we had to drift to the side then open up the weed hatch, reach into the (freezing cold) water to free the prop by hand/knife. After some difficulty, Matt pulled out an entire T-shirt! Gross. We couldn’t get out of there quickly enough and it really made us want to ramp up our litter-picking efforts.

Perivale: A tale of two halves

We made it to Perivale by the evening and found an idyllic mooring spot just in front of some friends we hadn’t seen in ages. The very best antidote to a fairly stressful move day. It was great to suddenly be back within short walking distance of the excellent Horsenden Farm Shop, Perivale Brewery, and the big Tesco that’s housed in the Grade II* listed Art Deco Hoover Building.

For a while, Perivale was a really lovely peaceful time; remote working by day, woodland walks and dinner with friends by night. Then just before Easter weekend, while I was in London helping a friend with her engine service, a work boat dragged a 120-metre-long floating pontoon past Reg and it crashed into the back of the boat, gouging the paintwork on the stern back to raw metal and mangling Matt’s beloved 20-year-old bike beyond repair. Matt immediately ran down the towpath to confront them and explain what they’d done. They calmly said their insurance will reimburse us, but as things stand we’re still waiting for a resolution. Fingers crossed…

The Initial Departure

Although we officially left our permanent mooring in mid-December, our first move was pretty pathetic: only about 4 metres! We just moved over to the public side of the river while we frantically sorted lots of work stuff and put things in storage.

After a few stressful, exhausting and slightly emotional weeks (it was bitter-sweet leaving a community of such fab people and we really loved our time there) we were finally actually off. First stop was one of my faves, beautiful Amwell Nature Reserve, where we immediately got iced in as the whole section of river froze over. I love being frozen in on the boat as the soundscape is just awesome; the big ice sheets creak and groan, then there’s a loud ‘pew-pew’ shooting noise whenever a boat pushes through breaking it into shards. The timing of this freeze worked well in the end as Matt had a trip to Turkmenistan anyway (he’s a travel writer) so it was just me and Roger braving the slippery gang plank every day. Rog being naturally more confident with that than I am…

Big Move Days

The proper push south came once Matt returned at the start of Feb, where we had a deadline to reach Tottenham by the 4th in order to have the solar and electric setup totally revamped. 1st Feb was a Big Move Day and despite endless rain was filled with lovely serendipitous moments, including bumping into some old friends as we stopped off briefly at Stansted Abbots marina, and a farewell coal purchase from Ben on Lion at Waltham (a fun ‘drive-by’ handover, as the two boats passed each other!). We reached Cheshunt, knackered but pleased with the progress.

Next morning we had an early, slightly frantic start as we needed to move down a lock in search of phone signal (Cheshunt is beautiful, but famously in an internet black hole) in order for me to take a work call. Made it just in time though and once that was done we had a good (if freezing cold) run down to Stonebridge, waving at more boat friends on our way past.

Into the City

It was pretty overwhelming to have swapped the greenery of Hertfordshire for the sirens and buses of Tottenham. I took Roger to stay with some friends on land nearby then we moored up onto Edd the Electrician’s boat for the big solar upgrade and celebrated having made it with an M&S Dinner For Two!

The upgrade was pretty life-changing. We went from having just two working 240v electric sockets to six, plus three 12v sockets so now we can charge our phones while sitting on the sofa (the luxury!). My trusty little old solar panel got replaced with two huge ones, which increased our capacity by nearly 10x and the old lead acid leisure batteries (that were hobbling along into their sixth winter) were changed for a brand new lithium-ion modern extravaganza that keeps itself warm (!) and has an app so you can see how charged it is in real time.

It’s incredible that we no longer have to run the engine to charge the batteries. Even though it’s barely been sunny yet this year, we’ve been making more electricity than we can use. But the biggest change for us is that we are now able to have a fridge on board, for the first time ever. Yes, it’s the smallest compressor fridge available on the market (9 litre capacity), but it is amazing to be able to have cold food and drink. I wonder when/if the novelty will wear off. Can’t wait for summer!