Our new life on a narrowboat episode #1

We are Martin and Donna and there's also Dylan our Vizsla dog. We met in Portishead, England in the summer of 2017 and hit it off straight away. So much so that within weeks Donna had quit her career and challenging role as a support worker and I left my right-hand man on the tiller so to speak, running my small business. We then jumped on a plane and spent our first winter together in Sri Lanka and India.

Whilst we were traveling, I sold my place in Cardiff and we bought a 3 bed 1900’s workers cottage in the Pembrokeshire National Park overlooking the sea on the north coast in beautiful south west Wales in the UK. We spent the next couple of years doing the house up and living in a lovely community. We had been able to leave the trappings of the 9 – 5 golden handcuffs behind and fall into a simpler, more contented way of life. Making the break from “city life” had afforded us the freedom of open spaces, lots of nature, fresh air and wonderful walks with the ever-changing vistas of the seasons and the wild west Wales weather... having less gave us more!

Then it started as a little news item far away in a foreign land, however, when Corona virus came to our shores, we had to review what life means, were we just going to sit there in Gods' waiting room or were we going to get it on? The cottage was finished so we took the decision to sell up, have an adventure, see new horizons and experience as much of life as we can before we skid into our graves.

We bought a motorhome and escaped the UK for the warmer climate of south west Europe and spent the second wave locked down in Portugal. Then on the 1st of January Brexit happened and despite Boris’s promises around the freedom of movement. We were given 90 days to get out of Europe, so when the border was opened with Spain, we crossed back and hugged the coastline into the Mediterranean and visited some lovely places before we pushed on up through Spain and France and looking around the canals whilst heading north and back home. Although our trip around Europe was cut short, it was a strange, surreal and sad time to experience empty streets with businesses boarded up and travel on motorways with no traffic.

Anyway, we had to come home so we brought our plans of a narrowboat life forward by a couple of years. So we consider ourselves to have been very lucky to have found Jeremiah Lee during the second lockdown when there was very little choice and boat prices had gone through the roof. We both simply fell in love with the narrowboat the moment we stepped onboard. She has been a lovely boat since she was first put on the water in 2002.

Now that we have settled into our new way of life we have the dubious task of making her a comfy, super efficient and as off grid as possible, live-aboard. Please join us for the trials and tribulations that we have set ourselves, we have got a mooring at Diglis marina in Worcester and given ourselves a year to get the boat as we want her and yes that includes a book shelf, before we can get going and start cruising the cut full time.