Moore2Life - The Full Story

I am absolutely delighted to see that Chas from NB Moore2Life has published his website on the internet.  Chas and Ann are great friends of ours, and I spent a lot of last winter teaching Chas how to write a website.  I could have just done it for him, but I knew, given time, he would get the grasp of it.

Chas is over retirement age, and it has only been in the last year that he has really started to use the internet.  It is a terrific achievement on his part.

Chas and Ann have always kept daily notes, I saw them, neatly typed up in wordpad documents.. Chas is not a speed writer, and it must have taken him just ages to type up with two fingers!

Most of those notes have now been published, and Chas’s ‘book’ is available for viewing from the first thoughts of having a narrowboat back in 1995.

It is an amazing read, and will be of great interest especially to those just ‘thinking’ about having a boat.  When Chas and Ann first started, it is obvious they had no idea…. they had decided though to share the boat with their long time friends Terry and Myra..  Firstly though, they had to find a canal!

“Terry had seen a canal at Aldermaston, however it was not in working order in the 1950's. If you travel north from the south coast you are bound to cross a canal. …  So one weekend in 1995 we all set off towards Hungerford and found the 'Kennet and Avon Canal' “

Then they had to find boats!

“Continuing our walk going west we came upon a lock. "This is promising" …  decided to go on to Newbury in the car. … A walk along the towpath under the bridge revealed the wonderful sight of Narrowboats. Never before had we seen so many in one place. We started to pick out the ones we liked and wondered how much they cost.”

The four of them didn’t even know that there were different types of boats..

“At this time we had no idea what 'Trad' meant and that there were also 'Semi-Trads', 'Cruisers' and 'Tugs'. We thought that 'Cruisers' were short plastic boats with outboard motors and not what we were looking for.”

This is an absolutely fascinating read… I am really looking forward to all the chapters being published, what an insight it is.

This must be seen as an inspiration to anyone thinking that it’s too late in life now to start a website.  Also what is unbelievable is the fact that Moore2Life is a continuous cruiser as is NP… there is no telephone line just a mobile phone connected to gprs, and the hope that the mooring chosen is good enough to get a signal to upload stuff to a website.

Moore2Life

Well done Chas