Hail to the Hive!
In all the time that we have been living onboard narrowboats in the Uk we have mostly been of canals but have briefly cruised along a few rivers such as The River Kennet and also our wonderful trip up a section of the River Thames between Reading and Oxford. But we recently had a very pleasant surprise when, just north of Leicester, we hit the River Soar.
And it was a rather lovely experience.
Gone were the tow paths along the sides of the canal, replaced by trees and vegetation.
A real sense of being in a different sort of ‘wild’ as these waterways were created by nature and not carved out of the ground by the hands of men. A real calm fell over me as we chugged our way north of Leicester towards Loughborough.
I would catch myself smiling as the joy of the feeling of freedom washed over me. We were seemingly alone on this river. Nobody in sight and no boats either. A strange,yet awesome feeling of peace and tranquillity with only the chugging sound of the 2 cylinder diesel engine beneath me to keep me company.
I knew @millycf1976 would have her head poking out of the bow windows at the front of the boat so even though we were at different ends of our narrowboat ‘Cygnet’ , I knew we were sharing the same feelings as we gently and slowly made our way further north to wherever we would end up that night.
I always check the map on the canal app to seemof likely destinations to moor up but the llan is at best, very vague. And as such we never truly know where we will be staying from day today when we are on stretches of the network we have not yet explored.
But thats part of the fun of it, part of the adventure