Summertime and the living is easy........

Hi, nice to see you.

We've had a great week. The weather has been FANTASTIC with wall to wall sunshine, so much so that I had to go and buy sunscreen!

The swans have started nesting

 photo - Paul Drinkwater

I think this black swan must be a visitor from the nearby Slimbridge Wetlands Bird Sanctuary. I never knew they had white on their wings as I've never seen one in flight before.

Chico made sure that David knew he was sitting in HIS spot on the sofa and helped him check out his emails.....

On Friday we had our ICC (International Certificate of Competency) and CEVNI tests.  Basically they're the boating equivalent of driving theory and practical tests and we need the qualifications to take Bluey to France.  It was a lot of fun and the conditions were perfect for the manouvres required by the examiner. The "man overboard" test had to be done with a life ring as none of us fancied jumping in to be rescued.

David's now left us to go back to his own boat and we're just pottering up and down enjoying life.

We're having more visitors this weekend as our grandchildren are coming for Easter and I can't wait! Grandkids PLUS Easter eggs is about as good as it gets in my view................

See you soon, Bye for now

Getting ready for France

Hi, nice of you to drop by again.

We're still cruising up and down the G&S and still having fun.  The weather has been glorious for the past few days and the sunsets have been amazing!

There's very little light pollution down at Sharpness and the night sky has been really clear with millions of stars. I really must get the telescope out and have a look, the only problem is remembering where I've stashed it away..............

We're now well under way getting ready to move over to France. Roger has upgraded the central heating system as the one that was originally fitted wasn't a boat unit and couldn't cope when temperatures dropped below freezing. Hopefully (fingers crossed) this new one will have the boat nice and toasty next winter.

He's about to fit solar panels for electric and hot water and sort out a filtration system so that we can take water out of the rivers and canals. This blog by w.b Avalon has been extremely helpful, thanks Kevin.

Our friend David is staying for a few days while his boat is out of the water being blacked and he's helping Roger with all the fiddly technical stuff that I can't do. He's also a dab hand at splicing ropes and has made me a special mooring rope to lasso bollards in locks. It's made it really easy but I'm still playing getting lots of practice in.

Chico is ready to go as he's now had his rabies vaccination and has his own passport

We needed diesel last week so teamed up with another Dutch barge and got a bulk tanker delivery. There's a canal-side diesel depot at Fretherne but they don't give any discount for bulk purchase and this worked out a lot cheaper. We reckon we saved over £100 each on a tank full.

That's all for now, see you soon.