I hadn’t planned on doing another blog post until I was closer to returning to the boat, but here is short one. I’m presently still on the mountain, skiing each day and looking forward to returning to the canals in the UK. Cool Change has been blacked and serviced and will be back in the water and ready to go when I return in early May. More on my plans later…

What I’m writing about today is concerning an interview that I did with the lovely and talented Annamarie and Kath, vloggers who are known as The Narrowboat Experience on YouTube. It’s a fantastic channel, with informative and interesting videos about life on a narrowboat and many other subjects. In this case, they have a series where they talk to various people about what life on the canal is like and how they began their journey. They called me and asked if I’d like to participate as my story was a bit unusual. I was quite willing since I never really mind talking, as many of my friends will attest to.

The resulting interview has now been published on YouTube. I think they did a great job of editing and producing it, it’s not as embarrassing as I thought it might be (not because of them, but because I hate seeing myself on camera).

Having said all of that, I’m writing now to thank everyone that has recently read, subscribed, and commented on my blog and the interview video. There are so many nice people out there, I’ve been a bit overwhelmed. And thanks to Kath and Annamarie for making it fun and easy. Sorry about the lousy tea.

In addition to making great videos (with Kath) and being an awesome cat mom, Annamarie is also a watercolour artist. They have the website ArtbyAnnamarie.com and I highly suggest you check out her beautiful paintings and their other items.

As for my 2020 cruising plans, that’ll have to wait. There have been some major storms throughout the UK this winter, causing considerable wind and flood damage. At least one major canal is completely blocked, likely for a year or more while it is repaired. As I had hoped to go through that area, a rewrite of the plan is underway!

(photo credit: David Thompson)

As always, I try to answer all the comments I receive here on the blog so please keep in touch and give me feedback whenever you like. I also post occasionally on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I hope you continue to enjoy my meandering writings…

Stay tuned…

I haven’t posted much lately, it was a bit of a slow homecoming. I knew I’d have over a month before the ski season started, which turned out to be true, but it was a long month (and turned out to be even longer than that). I moved up the mountain right away and it was fantastic weather for hiking and scenery but not so good for the ski season. There was no significant snow until well into December so opening day was a couple of weeks late.

Mt. Washington Resort has installed snow-making, but even with the cold temperatures not much snow was produced. Like so often happens in construction, they had to  wait for several inspections and certificates. Once that occurred, they were able to make some snow but it had started naturally by then.

Meanwhile, I’ve got lots of writing done, been looking at the piano occasionally, and have bought a gym membership. Maybe I’ll even go there today. Or tomorrow. Ya, tomorrow…

With some poor weather now and then, I’ve been going through my photos and videos. Up to now I haven’t posted many videos, mostly because I’m not good at taking and editing it! I do have quite a bit, some of it quite interesting so if anyone would like to suffer through it let me know and I’ll post some on my YouTube channel.

I’ve also had an article published in Waterways World, check out the February issue. There might be more to come.

For my boating readers, my apologies for no boating talk. I miss the boat, and the canal life, more than I thought I would. It’s become such a big part of my life that I feel strange being back on land for so long. But skiing daily helps, I love this part of my life too.

One more thing, if you’ve read this far please leave me a comment or message. It would really help me if I knew that there are still people interested!