New Start

The last nine months have been sad for us. First Carl's Mum went into hospital with pneumonia and died. Then the day after Carls' mum's funeral, Liz's mum was taken into hospital. She died eight weeks later. We have hardly been out since May. We missed our three week cruise in September because Liz's mum died on the first day of the cruise so we had to go to Kent for the funeral and to help sort out Liz's dad, who is 85 and cannot really live on his own any more.

As this blog was originally set up specifically for Liz's mum, so that she could follow us whenever we were out cruising, we have not felt like adding to it.

However, Mum would have wanted us to continue with it, so here we are again.

We have not taken Blackstone out yet this year. The one free weekend we had that coincided with dry sunny weather, the canal was frozen solid! Still we went to the marina, lit the fire and ran the engine. Everything is still working OK.

It is Carl's birthday on 28 February. Liz has taken some time of work and we are hoping to cruise for five whole days. Fingers crossed that nothing happens to stop us. We need a bit of a cruise to get lots of hot water to spring clean the boat. It's surprising how mucky it gets over winter when it's not being used.