Wrap up

Tranquilty in France

Well, a year has whizzed by, populated by a new daughter in law, a wonderful visit to the Cape, a new grandson and various short outings to Sabiepark or locally for birding, but sadly no barging.

My weekly chemo treatment, while dramatically bringing down the marker counts, has unfortunately kept us at home in Pretoria for the most part. Also, the fact that we could not find an appropriate self-medicated maintenance treatment that would allow us to go to France for an extended period during the European summer, begged the sad question of whether we would in future be able to do so for extended periods. We had to face the teary question of whether to keep or sell our beloved Linquenda into which so many hours of care and repair and our entire hearts had gone for close to five years. Rudi and I cried our eyes dry over the question but realising that any boat not regularly utilised will simply deteriorate. With my prognosis we needed to put her up for sale. We also then realised that our stated two-year project had actually been completed much in accordance with our plans.

We look back on the whole process from buying, mooring, gutting and rebuilding in both Zaandam and Pont de Vaux, cruising down from Zaandam through Amsterdam, Belgium and halfway down France over three interrupted years as the most fun we have had together in our 40-year marriage!!(celebrations coming up in December this year). We would do it again in a flash if circumstances permitted.

Dream new galley

While still yearning for a full summer of cruising, continuing to make new friends and seeing new sights and all that goes with it, we decided to put Linquenda in the market with our good friend Peter Coupland from www.dutchbargesforsale.co.uk. We are not in a distressed sale mode and somehow silently hope that she will not be sold before the 2014 Spring/summer. We would have to cross over to Pont de Vaux before any sale to remove our personal items, finalise a few touches, and assist any new owner in recommissioning all the systems after the winter. However, and hopefully if she is still available, we would love to do some cruising on the Nivernais canal.

So that, I believe, brings you all up to speed with where we are and what we are doing about Linquenda. In conclusion we both can recommend this lifestyle for it's tranquility, beauty of the surroundings you pass through, the quaint and unexepcted along the way, the glorious food, the surprisingly reasonable cost of living, if you desire to do it that way and the host of restaurants and other attractions that could make it a life of extreme luxury if you desire that style. They co-exist in the same space. Then of course mainly the people you meet along the way. They have been in our own experience with only one exception, absolutely wonderfully warm and sharing characters and most have become life-long friends from all over the world whom we keep up regular contact by Skype and email. 



What a clean beauty, and centenarian next year!

While two living on board a barge might sound like a recipe for claustrophobia and tension, we found it no problem at all and in fact the whole exercise brought us very much closer to each other with greater appreciation for each other's personalities and skills as well as our surroundings.

We can throughly recommend barging to anyone reading this!

 Thank you all for reading our blog