About

Sandra and Mike. Married 50 years plus. Sandra is a Lancashire Lass and I come from Bath in Somerset. We met in London, in the summer of “69” whilst in training and have worked all our lives as Optometrists. Due to retire sometime, it will be the 5th attempt. We have two daughters and two grandchildren, and about to inherit two more, as my eldest daughter is to marry her partner and he has a boy and a girl.

Canals have always been a passion and we have worked and cruised on them. A bit more info below. Now we need our own boat to finish the remaining 50 % we have not seen. Lots of rivers! Other interests are family, cricket, photography, garden, Rotary and socialising.

Two pictures that just sum it all up for us. An Early Morning Mist ( very early!) and the sun going down on the night before. It was an idyllic and peaceful mooring.

Early Days

We have had a life long interest in canals, their history, the boats, architecture and the people that worked and lived on them. We were active in IWA and WRG, then spent most Sundays at the museum in Ellesmere Port, digging barrowing and general labouring in all sorts of weather. We then migrated to Bugsworth Basin in the early days of restoration and eventually ended up going there most weekends. It was not until May 1975 that we took our first canal holiday, with Anglo Welsh, on the Staffs and Worcs Canal. However, whilst living in London we did have a working boat of sorts, a butty (Dunlin, originally owned by Chas D Marshall) with an outboard, taking wood plank to Iver saw mills.