Ahoy Me Hearties,
Call me captain of me own ship, with a comely wench as me mate. We’re sailing the canals of the Isle of Rain, searching for the Great White Gilt-head Bream, me harpoon at the ready.
Well that is about it for my speak like pirate day vocabulary. This is the fourth day of narrow boating, and we are starting to feel a bit more relaxed. I say a bit more because as we were trying to dock yesterday afternoon to do some shopping, the wind blew the bow of our narrow boat across the canal, blocking the entire canal. Fortunately, no other narrowboats came along to witness our shame, and Toni’s efforts poling the bow of the boat over to the bank were successful.
It is not that these types of mishaps don’t happen to everyone, but my frantic desperation clashes with my image of being totally jaded, a look that I started to cultivate at age six. Still, we haven’t done anything as stupid as the guy who rented a boat at the same time as we did. Toni and his wife opened a lock, so after everyone pulled through the lock, he had pulled over to shore to pick his wife up. He loosely tied it to the shore and walked over to help his wife, only to watch his boat float down the canal with no one on board.
So far our narrow boat trip ranks up there with our best travel experiences. The English countryside is absolutely stunning. We decided to go north rather than trying to get to London as we had originally planned, so we have been traveling through small villages, parks and woodlands, all brilliantly green.
We have seen four or five different types of ducks, huge swans, geese, mudhens, magpies, and very fat pigeons. Most of the water fowl have clusters of baby birds swimming frantically behind them, struggling to catch up with their parents. All of the birds are used to people and boats, as they will swim up to the side of the boat looking for a handout. Toni was feeding one swan family the other day, and when she ran out of bread, the adult swans started hitting the side of the boat as a way of asking for more. Probably, the swans had read too much of Dickens.
There is a wide diversity of boats on the canals, from very sleek boats such as the one we rented, to ones that look like they had been cobbled together by someone who flunked Shop (a course that boys had to take long ago, when the girls had to take Homemaking.) It seems that many people live on their boats full time, just as people in the States live in their RVs. These residential boats even have elaborate flower and veggie gardens planted in containers on their roofs.
English boaters bring along their cats and dogs. We often see dogs perched on the bows as the boats 
chug through England at a clip of three miles an hour. As the old tow paths alongside of the canals have been converted to walking and cycling paths, Toni has managed greet any number of dogs to get her doggie fix, although she misses our dog Mendel.
What has been particularly outstanding has been the people. I have never been in a place were people are so nice and so helpful. For example, I had a flat tire (tyre) on my walker, so we went to a cycling shop in a small village. While they were changing the tire, Toni went to do a bit of shopping for some band aids and a cable to hook up the tablet to the boat’s speaker system. She asked a guy sitting at a cafe for directions and went to the store that he thought might have a cable. After a bit, he went to the store to see if Toni had been successful. She didn’t find the cable, so he went home and got one of his cables for us, refusing to allow us to pay him for it. This type of experience has not been unique, but has happened time and time again. I really have been floored by the politeness and kindness of the people here.
The only only complaint so far has been the weather. It has been mostly grey with one or two brief showers. It has also been windy. The English, however, are united by their weather: they all hate it and complain about it at the drop of a hat. Everyone that we have talked to have either just come back from or are just leaving for a sunny holiday in Spain, Egypt, Italy or anywhere the sun shines. One saying that we have heard is that one sunny day in England is a miracle. Two sunny days in a row are declared as being summer. Three sunny days is a severe drought and a national emergency.
Oh by the way, you will not be seeing any of Toni’s photos this trip. I can’t find a way to transfer the RAW file format of her photos to my tablet and then to the internet. This and some other limitations are frustrating. She as started shooting jpg’s as well, so we will give those a try and perhaps get lucky.
It is not that these types of mishaps don’t happen to everyone, but my frantic desperation clashes with my image of being totally jaded, a look that I started to cultivate at age six. Still, we haven’t done anything as stupid as the guy who rented a boat at the same time as we did. Toni and his wife opened a lock, so after everyone pulled through the lock, he had pulled over to shore to pick his wife up. He loosely tied it to the shore and walked over to help his wife, only to watch his boat float down the canal with no one on board.
