It was early October 2021 in the North of France, coming to the end of our one year’s adventure in our Wobble Box, when Steve asked me how would I fancy living on a narrow boat.  We’d been away for a year; ten months of which I absolutely loved, the final two months for me were more like an endurance test. I’d had enough of restricted space, I missed my kitchen and I missed entertaining on a large scale.

It took me less than a nano second to think about moving from a ‘cube’ to a ‘tube’. It didn’t sound attractive.  I couldn’t even make it look attractive in my head. I said I would think about it – which was a negative way of saying ‘no’.

At the end of October when our tenant Gail moved out and we had completed ten day’s quarantine in our caravan in our own drive, we moved back into our home unpacking our worldly goods from the man cave into the house. When Gail said she wanted to buy the place as it was perfect for her, and we had been thinking of downsizing anyway, our worldly goods were repacked, stacked and returned into the man cave within the blink of an eye. For those who don’t know us, yes, we are that organised.

As we started looking for somewhere else to live, possibly a bungalow to future proof, Steve again sounded me out about living on a narrowboat.  Being semi open to the idea, which would also take the pressure off finding a new home, we discussed a budget and I agreed to look at a few.  The ones we saw ranged from overpriced wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole to out of our league wooden lined gin palaces. I decided a narrow boat was not for me on what we’d seen so far. However, being an optimistic person, the ones we had seen had given me ideas for what we needed and what might work for us. Steve had a dream and I like making his dreams come true. Thinking about it, without him suggesting a year’s adventure in our caravan it would never have occurred to me to have undertaken such an adventure.

Surfing the net over Christmas, having decided we definitely wanted a project, I came across a traditional 70ft narrow boat called Verulam located at Hartford Marina, Wyton near Cambridge which looked as though it might fit our brief.  We made arrangements to see it on 2^nd January and Chris Bennett, the broker of Tingdene Hartford Marina, showed us around. The previous owners Will and Jess had had Verulam for under two years. Whilst the hull was in excellent condition, the inside needed modernisation.  It had all the basics that made it immediately livable plus an extra for each of us; an engine room for Steve and a big kitchen for me.   We knew it was likely that most things would need servicing, repair and possibly replacement, but we only saw a blank canvas for us to work with and how it was eventually going to be.  It was the perfect project for the two of us and we agreed to buy it.  We’d never bought a boat before, well not if you don’t include the inflatable we took around Europe, and the paperwork was put into process with completion at the end of the month. We checked with Chris how much weight we could take on board. He smiled back to us and replied we should try and keep it under 24 tonnes.

We began to sort out from our worldly goods stored in our man cave what we thought we would need on board, which happily would be a hell of a lot more than you can get into a caravan, and be well under 24 tonnes!

We took possession of Verulam Saturday 29^th January. We’d already decided to change the name to something we could pronounce and would mean something to us. The heating and hot water system needed an engineer to encourage it to work, the wood stove needed a long awaited service, to be as toasty hot as it should be, and the cooker a good clean before I went anywhere near it. 

Without hot water and heating we went to the ‘local’ for evening diner and who should we bump into but Chris and his bubbly wife Lise. It was as though we were old friends who had known each other forever.

Wobbling back to the boat, carefully along the pontoon, letting ourselves into Verulam for our first night’s sleep on board, we couldn’t move for packing boxes and borrowed heaters to keep us warm. We were happy, very happy with our decision.