Winter 2025 has been one of our most challenging times on the cut, but arguably our most rewarding at the same time. We had planned to travel on the Llangollen canal as far as Ellesmere, stopping at Wrenbury, Whitchurch, the Prees arm, Blakemere and Ellesmere itself before heading back down and getting off the Llangollen canal at the start of January ready to deliver our boat to Kings Lock in Middlewich and then move onto our brand new boat in February/ March of 2026.
I had just finished the last of my Christmas commissions and we spent the afternoon visiting Whitchurch before retuning to our narrowboat home. As most of you probably know, we were moored just 80 yards from the horrific breach that happened in the early hours of the morning at around 4am on the 22 December, we were hoping for a relaxing Christmas but this certainly wasn’t what we imagined. We uploaded a video about the breach on YouTube, capturing the horrible sight of a narrowboat home plunging into the depths below. https://youtu.be/6FuNqijdUDM We felt so bad for the three boaters and their families most affected by the incident and set up a GoFund Me page to help them. We couldn’t believe the response to the appeal and managed to raise just over £101,000 for the families involved. We know how much this meant to the boaters affected and we can’t thank people enough for the generosity and kind messages of help we received.
Our own narrowboats sat on the bottom of the Canal at a horrible angle and it meant we couldn’t light the fire, run the generator to keep our power going or run the heating onboard. We couldn’t cook, sleep or wash, our poor dog Sebastian couldn’t even walk on the boat due to the angle that we sat on the canal bank. Thankfully our beautiful friends stepped in and drove over two hours to pass on the keys to their apartment, meaning we had somewhere to stay. The support and offers of help from boaters, friends and even complete strangers brought us to tears.
Thanks to the hard work of engineers, the Canal and River Trust, and the River Canal Rescue teams our boats were back floating late on Christmas Day. Along with our good friend Phil there were about 12 boats trapped on the 1 mile of canal between Whitchurch and Grindley Brook. We eventually made it down the canal to Wrenbury for the end of 2025, in early January we were treated to the most beautiful snowy scenes along the canal and I was delighted to film this for our channel. The breach itself affected us much more than we imagined, we didn’t sleep properly for about a week after that night, we just kept replaying the events over and over in our heads. I was also worried about the huge GoFund Me not getting distributed quickly enough to the boaters families. But everything worked out in the end and we were so glad we could help.
It’s only now at the very end of January that we feel life is getting back to normal for us. I’m catching up with editing, and creating art, plus keeping up with pet commissions.
Anthony has just gone off to work, Sebastian is lay by my feet, the boat is toasty warm and I have artwork on the table. I hope that you had a good Christmas holiday and that the New year is going to be good for you and your loved ones. We are excited to see what this new year brings and look forward to our new boat and attending the Crick Boat Show in May. I’m also looking forward to creating lots of new art. Right, I’m off to draw, thanks for reading.
Best wishes
Paul
