It was nice & quiet when we cruised into Crick Marina on Monday & took up our designated spot. A few boats were already here & a handful of tradies were on-site. By Thursday it was buzzing with boats being craned in, & exhibitors setting up shop, us included.
Its showtime! The bookings are full & we are off with the first timeslot. This is the year for the hybrid narrowboat. The interest in our boat was intense, as we walked & talked each prospective customer through our boat, only to walk back to the stern & repeat the whole process again. 5000 steps & 6 hours later the verbal diarrhoea ran out. Was I making any sense by then,? The mouth took over & the brain had disengaged. It was akin to running a marathon. My eyes were sore & my face ached. That was only day 1.
We had lots of compliments on Watt Knot by our visitors. They were impressed that we had lived off solar & batteries for the last 13 days so far. Solar over the last few days has been bringing in around 6 kilowatts, when typically we are using around 3 kilowatts a day.
The narrowboat community has some avid Youtube Vloggers. If you want to stalk any of them, then my advice is come to Crick. We met & had Cruising the Cut, Foxes Afloat, Journey with Jonno, & Floating Your Boat onboard our boat. The Foxes & Jono were perched around our breakfast bar having an in-depth discussion as to whether you can run an induction hob off a 12volt battery. Men talk, I left.
So, who is my favourite Numpty I hear you say, or what is a numpty? Well the Aussie equivalent would be a "dill", & I first heard it come out the mouth of David Johns aka "Cruising the Cut" on one of his vlogs in 2017. He described himself as such, & therefore I christened him my favourite numpty from that point on. I am sure he was delighted to hear it when I told him of the honour I had bestowed on him when we finally met (I restrained myself from stalking). My previous favourite word was "plonker" which I discovered in 2015.

Pubs
The Pytchley - West Haddon

Visitors
Janine Sullivan