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.

20th April 2012. A trip to Sligo and the Atlantic Coast.

We were lucky enough to be taken out again by our friends, Gerry and Violet. We drove over towards the coast at Sligo and stopped to look at the stunning views over the valley of Glencar.

Glencar waterfall was very impressive. There has not been much rain recently in Northern Ireland, though we hear that England is quite wet too!

Glencar valley was lovely.

We visited WB Yeats' grave at St Columba's Church, where an ancestor of his was once the rector. Yeats wrote his own epitaph, for his tombstone, which reads:-

Cast a cold eye
On life, On death
Horseman pass by! 

St Colomba's Church near Drumcliffe is quite impressive. It lies just to the north of Sligo.

Benbulben Mountain dominates the skyline, as we head north along the Atlantic Coast to Bundoran.

The sky was so blue, with cotton wool clouds, above the Atlantic rollers. 

We walked round the headland to look across to Bundoran, which is a major holiday resort, on the other side of the bay. These brave (or foolhardy?) boys were jumping into the sea from the rocky outcrop in front of us.

Later on the waves kept on rolling in from the Atlantic, but the sky told us that it was time to go home to The Puzzler! We had really enjoyed the day.

16th - 24th January 2012. In Enniskillen still, but moving!

Waterways Ireland have arrived in force to cut four of the upright supports shorter. This is in preparation for the annual regatta here in the summer. The shorter posts will make it much easier for the rowing eights to be launched.

Their workboat, Inish Davar, is certainly man for the job. We had to move away while metal cutting was going on beside The Puzzler.



 Inish Davar makes The Puzzler look quite small. Hopefully the river water level will never rise so high that the jetty can float off the posts at their new short height!

In Northern Ireland the waterway regulations state that after 48 hours at any offficial mooring, then boats must vacate it for a period of at least 4 hours. During the summer months, Waterways Ireland have had an ongoing problem in Enniskillen with boats overstaying, particularly at The Round "O". They have decide to enforce the regulations strictly, starting this week. It seems to be irrelevant to them that this is not yet the cruising season!
Because of this enforcement of regulations, we are on the move again. Our first trip was just round the corner to Riverview. We went to the Library, went bowling, and collected some wood for the fire. It is amazing how quickly four hours can pass! We then returned to The Round "O".

I have been collecting Catkin's fur to make a cushion. Luckily she enjoys being groomed.

Our next outing was up through Enniskillen Bridge to go shopping. There is less water in the river now, but it still needed some power to get through the bridge.

There are very few boats on the move yet. This is Broadmeadow mooring, near to the Forum Sports Centre.

Catkin has been using her paw as a pillow.

However she approves of the new cushion, made from her fur!

14th November - 4th December 2011. At the Round O in Enniskillen.

We are still here on The Puzzler at the Round O in Enniskillen, safely settled in for the winter. As we are on the outside of the outer jetty we have a good view across the River Erne. There has been a lot of rain recently, with very few dry days, and the river is flowing quite fast. However we are out of the main stream of the river here, but can watch the rowing crews every weekend as they pass us by. There is very little other boat movement now.

Today we saw two kayaks with a man overboard but he did not seem too upset about it! No panic here! They made their way back to the slipway quite easily, but he must have been extremely cold.

On walking along there do not seem to be very many ducks. However it all changes when the bread comes out!

They all appear very quickly, as do the pigeons, gulls and a few swans!

This large cygnet crept up behind Andy and bit his hand.

I think it realised that it had not been a good idea! The adult swan soon arrived to save it!

At night the sleeping ducks can be a hazard to any late night traffic on the road past the jetty.

Even walking along the jetty can be hazardous too, although Catkin can clear them pretty quickly!






We are enjoying our stay in Enniskillen very much. It is a lovely town, with a lot going on. Everyone we meet is extremely friendly and we have been made to feel very welcome. We have joined St Michael's Bridge Club in Enniskillen, and also Devenish Bridge Club, which meets at Irvinestown, twelve miles north of here. Friends in Enniskillen give us a lift to this, so we have been lucky. The standard at both clubs is very high, which is good for our game!
We play bowls twice a week too, at different clubs in Enniskillen. It is short mat bowling, which is very strong in Northern Ireland in the winter months.

Belturbet to Derryvore. 15th - 21st June

After Debbie left us, we returned down the River Erne to Upper Lough Erne and spent a night at Castle Crom jetty. The rest of the week was spent at Derryvore mooring, in Trial Bay, just off the main part of Upper Lough Erne. Only one speedboat came into the bay this time. Here he is “on the plane”.

Derryvore is actually in Northern Ireland. However, for internet access it is, surprisingly, in Southern Ireland. We have a 3 dongle, so went online to top it up. Having taken our card details, it needed our address, so we gave our address in England. It then needed a county to complete the address, but the choice was only of the Irish Counties! What should we do now, as we do not have an address in Southern Ireland? Andy thought that Roscommon sounded nice. Also it was a bit like Norfolk, being quite a flat county, so he chose that one. Our dongle accepted it, so we were in business again, and online!

This week was used for various boat jobs. Andy refurbished the pigeon loft, taking it completely to pieces, before using paint stripper to remove all the varnish. This had started to come away in various places. The five new coats of varnish he gave it over several days should protect the oak for a few years to come! However, the Irish rain might have a say in this!

The small brass portholes were also stripped of lacquer, then polished before relacquering.

We used the cratch table as a cover, while the pigeon loft was out of use. This kept our bedroom dry, except when the torrential rain crept in one day, and our quilt was quite damp!

Here the rain is falling so hard that it is bouncing on the water!

However the rain does have the advantage of creating impressive rainbows. This one was very low and had both ends in the water too.

While at Derryvore we had some good weather too and some stunning sunsets. Here the colour is reflected on to the clouds across Trial Bay.

Another night we walked up to the road, a quarter of a mile from our mooring, to see more brilliant reds and oranges in the sky.






One task, from the job list, was to empty the water tank, as we planned to repaint it. We duly had baths and a washday to do so. Once the tank was practically empty, we couldn’t turn the screws to open the lid! The real consolation of this is that neither of us has to climb inside the tank to clean and paint it, not yet anyway! Water is never a problem on the Irish moorings, as there are water taps on most jetties.

We went for several walks along the nearby lanes. One day we met an old Irishman, who stopped for a bit of craic. We had talked for a while when he asked us whether we were Germans. This was because he had realised that we were not Irish and so must be foreigners! Practically all the hire boaters are German, so it was an understandable mistake on his part.

Shannon-Erne Waterway 21st - 25th April

We sailed back across Lough Garadice, past Haughton's Shore Mooring and on down the Woodford River. Even here the markers keep us away from the shallows.

A wind farm on a nearby hill.

We decided that Ballyconnell was too towny for us for a night mooring, but we look forward to shopping here at a later date. At Ballyconnell lock a small cruiser came up the lock, then we went down with a locaboat from Ballimamore. This hire company have a fleet of penichettes.

Below Corraquil lock many large attractive stones have been used in the construction of the lock mooring. We had thought we might moor in the inlet below this lock, but it was too full.

We carried on and found a super mooring in a sheep field. On this side of the waterway, we are now in Northern Ireland, as the waterway forms the boundary.

"What are you doing in my field?"





Playmates for Catkin? Probably not!

Pleasant though it was at this mooring, there was nowhere for Catkin to walk. We were also being thrown about by passing boats, several of which were putting up a breaking wash and so helping to destroy the river banks. Some were hire boats, but certainly not all of them.

We moved on about half a mile to Aghalane, passing under The Senator George Mitchell Peace Bridge.

Aghalane is a recognised mooring, but is under repair and so officially out of use, while landscaping is going on.

We winded and moored just beyond the slipway, with good bow access into the field.

For those of you who think that life is just one long holiday on the boat, here is some essential maintenance going on! Andy has removed and sanded the front doors, and Sally is now varnishing them. This seemed a peaceful place to be without front doors overnight.


We later read that this area was the site of several murders, during the troubles. It is also very near to the Senator George Mitchell Peace Bridge, which commemorates the end of the troubles.