Canal Boat — February 2018

canalboat.co.uk Canal Boat February 2018 21

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ME & MY BOATS

WIN

£100

Living the dream

New mum Georgie Forshall and her partner have been welcomed in to the boating

community and now she can’t wait to pass on her passion for the waterways

B

uying a liveaboard was very
much a venture into the
unknown for me and my
partner, John. I grew up in
Bristol and had spent many hours
wandering the harbourside daydreaming
and chatting with boaters getting a
sense of the lifestyle, although the
day-to-day running of the boats, the
engineering of the locks and the
community spirit along the canals
remained a mystery to me.
John, coming from a fishing town in
the South West of Ireland, while familiar
with boats in general, likewise had little
knowledge of the English Canal network
and the narrowboats that traverse it,
proudly exclaiming on our way to
finalise our purchase that “ours will be

the first I’ve ever stepped on!” When we

were researching the kind of boat we

wanted to live on, we narrowed our

preferences down to one simple criteria:

the boat must be ideally less than 62ft

long and 7ft wide so that we’d be able

to take her the length and breadth of

the country.

We were open to a traditional, semi-

trad or cruiser stern and as long as it

had space enough for the two of us to

sleep with a decent kitchen and an area

to sit in the evenings, we would be happy

enough.

We were then very fortunate to come

across The Liberty Rose for sale in

Barnoldswick, just 40 miles from Leeds

where we were intending to live and on

one of the most beautiful stretches of

Locks were a new challenge