Ken asked me a question:
I’ve just spent the evening browsing apolloduck for widebeams, rather than working again… I visited Whilton & Braunston marinas on Sunday and saw a wide range of Narrowboats and one widebeam. I’ve realised though that the Mooring is the thing. Do you continually cruise the network, or do you have a residential mooring? I don’t think I could really continually cruise. Do you know where to look for the best residential mooring sites that are within commuting range of London? Unfortunately I still need to turn up in the office each day. I found a great Dutch Barge site last night which has a good widebeam cruising map (I think using your new search engine). A good max size seems to be 60×12’6×9: http://www.barging.co.uk/ukcruising.htm.
When I wanted a boat I too went to Whilton and Braunston and Crick because these big marinas are so near to each other and selling so many boats.
I’ve never had a mooring and the longest I stayed in one place was for three weeks in Islington (because it’s so cosy and secure there and convenient for commuting) and a couple of weeks at boatyards while having repairs done. But continuously cruising isn’t for everyone, especially if you need to commute. Last summer I took to the Thames and spent a lot of money on rail fares and was late to work fairly regularly. I don’t know where to start looking for residential moorings near London and suspect there might be quite a waiting list – try asking the same question on the www.canalworld.net forums.
(By the way, I just added http://www.barging.co.uk/ to my www.boatr.org.uk search engine, thanks for the tip).
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