In late 2016 my parents bought “Forget Me Not”, a 40ft cruiser stern narrowboat in Devizes, Wiltshire as an option to use as a movable base for my Dad whilst he was working on IT contracts in the run up to his retirement.
According to a survey they had done when purchsing the boat was apparently made by Brummagen Boats some time in the early 1980s it is powered by a raw water cooled BMC 1500 and at some point has been overplated it’s life before us (this is not unusal for a boat of this age).
It stayed in the Devizes Area with me being a regular visitor through the start of 2017, where I took her down the famous Caen Hill flight of locks, one of the longest continuous lock flights. In the summer of 2017, Mum and Dad took the boat on a long summer cruise up the Kennet and Avon canal, on the the Thames and on to the Oxford canal to Cropredy music festival. At the same time Dad got a contract near Birmingham and the decision was made to move the boat up to Fazeley Marina on the Birmingham and Fazeley canal where Mum and Dad lived on board during the week. Apart from the odd couple of weeks where I took the boat out for short breaks this is where it stayed until May 2019 when Dad finished the contract and retired (for the first time).
At that point I was living in a house in Marple, that backed onto the towpath of the Macclesfield canal and as they live in deepest Somerset, an hour and a half away from the closest Canal, it was decided that I was best placed to keep an eye on the boat and use her. So the trip north started and she would be based in Marple’s Top Lock marina whilst they focused on refitting another boat; a wooden river cruiser, down near London.
Whilst the boat has been in Marple I made various internal improvements including replacing 2 chairs my parents liked with a sofa I made from 2 Kelax units as the base and some custom foam cushions (I even sewed the the cushion covers myself). Whilst under my loco-parentis she’s been taken it on various trips including the Cheshire Ring in summer 2020 and to explore the Silver Propeller locations at the ends of the Leek and Cauldon canals in summer 2021.
In October 2021, delayed by Covid-19, the boat received blacking and a fresh coat of paint and she also had a new survey giving her a good bill of health for the years to come.
Summer 2022 was marked with the Marple and Bosley lock flights being closed so due to a lack of water so she was restricted to going on local trips. She regularly visited the local hot spots of Bollington on the Macclesfield canal and Bugsworth Basin on the Upper Peak Forest canal and the odd night in the marina and hopes were high for a summer trip in 2023
However, fate had other plans and that’s where the story will continue.
Tags: background, caen hill, narrowboat