September 2018. A final summary of nine and a half years of living on our narrowboat, The Puzzler.

We moved to live on our narrowboat, The Puzzler, in April 2009, having sold our jigsaw and toy manufacturing business. We spent the first two years cruising around England, with two very cold winters on the Peak Forest canal, but in very good company.

 In April 2011, The Puzzler was transported to Ireland, with several boating friends suggesting that we keep an online blog about our experiences, so that they could decide whether or not to go too! As a result, this record of our travels began. In Ireland, we overwintered in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, and during the summers, cruised practically all of the rivers and canals in both parts of this beautiful Emerald Isle. This map shows where we went, during our three years in Ireland.

Moving on in April 2014, The Puzzler had a long road journey across Ireland to Dublin, then across the Irish Sea to Holyhead by ferry. Having crossed North Wales and England by road, it was on to the ferry again, to get to Holland, on the other side of the North Sea. We rejoined her at Warmond, near to Leiden, and set off to explore The Netherlands. Again the map shows where we went in the next year, with our winter mooring being at Schagen, in North Holland. As there are so many small waterways in The Netherlands, I could not show them all, but have instead marked places which we reached with The Puzzler.

Once more it was April, in 2015, when we left Schagen to head south towards France. We took the short route across the east of Belgium, via Maastricht, and entered France on 2nd June. This next map shows all of our travels in this wonderful country. There are no small cruising circuits in France, and all the waterways are huge, by British standards. We cruised practically all of these routes shown at least twice, and in some cases, more than that! We learned to keep out of the way of barges of up to 3000 tons and quite enjoyed their company on our travels.

The final map is of Belgium,with both our preliminary passage in 2015, from The Netherlands through into France, and our final journey in August 2018 to Nieuwpoort, on the coast of Flanders.

Here is a cruising summary for the ten years we have lived on The Puzzler. Although we used kilometres on the continent, I have converted them to miles, for a better comparison of distance travelled.

 2009      728 locks + 1273 miles = 2001 lock/miles
 2010       607 locks + 982 miles = 1589 lock/miles
 2011      160 locks + 1093 miles = 1253 lock/miles
 2012       231 locks + 831 miles = 1062 lock/miles
 2013       212 locks + 838 miles = 1050 lock/miles
 2014       119 locks + 1667 miles = 1786 lock/miles
 2015       682 locks + 1555 miles = 2237 lock/miles
 2016       878 locks + 1608 miles = 2487 lock/miles
 2017       671 locks + 1098 miles = 1769 lock/miles
 2018       578 locks + 1510 miles = 2088 lock/miles
In total   4866 locks + 12455 miles  =  17321 lock/miles

So soon we will be back to living on dry land. The strangest thing we find about being in a house is that it does not move!

Many thanks for reading our blog and all the best for the future.

17th - 25th September 2016. Along the Embranchement de Nancy, and on to the canal de Vosges, visiting the vet at Charmes, and painting The Puzzler at Nomexy.

There are 13 locks leading up to the summit level of l'Embranchement de Nancy, from the river Meurthe, with the last eight lying very close together. This galleon overlooks the canal near to Fléville lock 1. Shannon and I walked between these 8 locks, as this was preferable to climbing on to the roof at every lock, in order to reach the bollards with our front rope.

The summit level of this canal is fed by water pumped up from the river at Flavigny-sur-Moselle.

On the Embranchement there are new lock gates. We had been told that this canal would close tomorrow but it did not do so, so we need not have rushed!

The canal de Vosges crosses the river Moselle at Flavigny.

It is a wider valley here, looking across to the lakes alongside the river Moselle.

The next section has an avenue of plane trees along the canal.

On to Charmes, where the fair was in full swing when we arrived. Shannon was very poorly, with gastroenteritis. We went to the vets, which seemed, according to google, to be near to the centre of town. It wasn't! We did find it eventually, having carried Shannon well over a mile to get there. A kind lady, from the office there, gave us a lift back to The Puzzler after Shannon's treatment. Surprisingly, the fair packed up at 6 pm, as we had anticipated a noisy evening.

This is the 15th century church of St Nicholas in Charmes.

This part of the church was rebuilt in the 1950's after being bombed during the Second World War. These stained glass windows were finished in 1963

This Entombment in the church was sculpted by Mansuy Gauvain in 1516.

We moved on to spend a few days at Nomexy, where there was a boules competition on Saturday, with about 20 teams taking part.

There seemed to be men's and women's competitions, with the ladies on this rink.

Meanwhile we are repainting the cratch area of The Puzzler. This will complete the repainting of The Puzzler, which we started in Ireland in 2013!

Andy is working on the locker lids.