I remember the day very clearly. I had just visited one of my old student haunts, the town of Stoke in Staffordshire. While my memories of Stoke are entirely pleasant... this particular day had been a stinking, miserable waste of time. So there I was sat at Stoke station twiddling my thumbs, contemplating whether to buy a mars bar to boost my mood, when a canal boat magazine caught my eye.

 

Many years prior, I had briefly contemplated living aboard a narrowboat while living in Camden so the topic was very familiar. Such was my intrigue I went hungry for the journey home and tried desperately not to look too geek-like as I poured over the delightful (and hugely varied) boats in the magazine. It seemed to me... just about possible... that you could live on a narrow boat as an alternative to a more traditional home.

 

I pitched the idea to No. 1... presenting it as a nice way of life and a potential alternative to the daily grind that we found ourselves in. To my surprise, No. 1 was cautiously favourable.  So we set about researching the whole area.

 

Like most people in this country, when we thought of canal boats, we imagined the brightly coloured narrowboats that populate canals the length and breadth of England. Armed with various Canal Boat magazines, we trekked the country visiting gatherings such as the Crick Boat Show, and we must have viewed 50 or more of these delightful boats; new and old, modern and historic... many of which were ‘award-winning’.

 

 

One night trawling the internet, I happened upon a few dutch and french barges for sale in the UK. Soon, we were talking with brokers, browsing websites, and leafing through magazine adverts... but after many fruitless efforts we came to a startling conclusion... there was very little on offer in the UK, and hence, the prices were inflated.

 

So, using the wonders of the internet, we started to look at barges in other countries and quickly discovered that barges in France and the Netherlands are two a penny. As I happened to be regularly visiting the Netherlands for work, I started to think that it would be possible to visit some barges while I was over there. There would just be the small matter of bringing the barge over the channel... which sounded like a crazy idea to me. And talking with various boating people, they tended to agree... none more so than our dutch friends! But then again, there were several skippers who seemed to do it regularly, and we noticed that the DBA (Dutch Barge Association) members were doing it for fun. How bad could it be?

 

The big problem was that while the internet was great at locating barges, it was (certainly at that time) rubbish at providing useful information. There would often be one blurry wide-angle picture of the barge (they are large after all), and a description that would make ‘this is a rotting, leaky hulk’ read as ‘great opportunity to get in contact with water’. I’m sure it’s much like buying a home, but, it seemed that the barge world hadn’t really adopted the internet wholeheartedly. Our spirits dimmed once again.

 

Finally, a break-through! We stumble across ‘Bowcrest Marine’, who seemed to actually understand the internet. Their site had a search facility that actually worked, the barges were organised by size, and best of all.. each barge had its own downloadable PDF with a full specification and several pictures. Heady stuff.... but in one evening, we achieved what we had failed to do in the 9 months previously... reviewing several hundred barges, and selecting our favourite five. Within a few days, I had arranged to visit them.  

 

Well, in fact, I only ever saw Fenrir. It would be great to say it was love at first sight, but in fact, I just hadn’t left enough time to see the other barges.  In fact, I was a little put-off by the exterior, which looked a little tatty, but on the plus-side, she was refreshingly modern and light inside. The wheelhouse would need renovating, but I saw that as a chance to stamp our identity on her. Best of all, she would not break the bank... in fact I hoped we could stretch ourselves to do the deal in cash. No loans or mortgages. Any work could be done as the money became available. The seller had even suggested we could retain the mooring in Holland while we arranged for her to be moved over. I concluded she was the one.

 

Unfortunately, No. 1 was less convinced, and had set her heart on a slightly smaller, more expensive but undoubtedly very pleasant French barge... and this proved to be a sticking point. On reflection, I could see that the French barge decor was very ‘feminine’, while Fenrir was more ‘big hairy man’. But, as is so often the case, life intervened and the pleasant feminine barge was sold just a few days later. I often wonder how things would have worked out had we gone for that one.

 

It was crunch time, and to her absolute credit, No. 1 agreed to go-ahead despite her reservations, and despite never having seen the boat! In fact at this time, No. 1’s chief concerns became ‘how do we pay for it?’ and ‘where do we moor it?’... which as it happens, turned out to be seriously good questions.

 

Our offer was accepted quite quickly, and after what seemed an eternity, the barge was delivered (under tow) to a boat yard in the middle of nowhere. I can honestly say, if you were trying to find a more impossible place to get to, you would struggle to pick a place harder than ‘Aalst’. Not the various ones you’ll find on any map of Holland (most of which I visited while trying to find it), but the tiny one hidden away somewhere near Zaltbommel. Each trip out to the boat would take an entire day of flights, trains, buses and taxis... and then the very same to get back home.

 

So, fittingly, it was in Aalst where the story becomes very painful... in no small part due to the survey... which put a very different complexion on everything...

 

The surveying experience is certainly a strange one. You don’t yet own the barge, yet you are paying a surveyor to check the condition of it... which can only be done... destructively. Armed with a heavy hammer, our surveyor was a blunt instrument alright, feared by boat owners and brokers throughout Holland. His broadly neutral perspective quickly dissipated as he hammered away at the hull, with the owner wincing nearby. His conclusions were truely shocking. For the boat to be ‘sellable’, around 40% of the hull would need over-plating (that is, steel plates welded over the existing hull). The boat yard, rubbing their hands, provided an estimate. It was nearly 50% of the price of the barge.. payable by the seller should he wish to continue.

 

 

So, it turns out that I had been looking out for completely the wrong things. My mild disappointment about the ‘tatty’ nature of the exterior turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. While I was fretting about wood floors, fixtures and fixtures... i.e. the way the barge looked, the really important stuff had been evading my eyes. This barge needed serious work.

 

Naturally, the seller was in shock. Any money they had invested in the barge had just gone up in smoke. I had chatted with them enough to know (i) they had put quite an effort into the barge (ii) he and his wife were buying a house to live together. So faced with a huge bill,  his understandable reaction had been to walk away. However, the broker convinced him that if the work was not done, it would not be possible to sell her to anyone. Faced at losing the sale (and his broker), the seller gave the go-ahead, but then got cold-feet again the next day. I remember one very frank conversation where the seller asked if I would meet half the costs of the work. Of course, it was a reasonable question, but the point was that a price had already been agreed, and it was the sellers responsibility to get the barge to the required state. I turned him down, more out of shock and uncertainty than for any hard-ball negotiating tactic.

 

All the time, we were in Holland, commuting to the middle of nowhere to stand in a cold, freezing boat yard day after day. We begun to suspect the seller’s wife was providing most of the backbone, hidden away in the background.. and we came to dread the twists and turns that would occur each morning after the seller had been home.  Another obstacle arrived... the engine would not run. In my first visit, I’d not really focussed on the engine (!) but there was no doubt at all that the seller had suggested it ran. But now it needed to be tested, the seller was backing down and couldn’t provide evidence or clear instructions on how to start it. (No keys with this engine... only compressed air and a series of valves).

 

The broker attempted to present a neutral persona, but in reality, it was clear to me he was telling both the seller and the buyer what they needed to hear for the sale to go through. That wasn’t necessarily what the seller and buying should have been hearing. I was still a little in shock myself, unsure whether this barge was a complete dud, or whether re-plating would in effect, be giving her a long and happy future. And without a working engine, how could we get it back to the UK?

 

We returned home unsure of the situation. Several weeks went by and the situation remained unclear. We were asked by the seller to put in some money up front to help cover the costs, but the broker blocked that, and negotiated with the yard to get the work going. It was clear that the surveyor was on our side, the broker was getting fed up with the seller, and the boat yard were getting concerned that no-one was paying their bills. As the seller twisted and turned, I realised that the cards were slowly stacking up in our favour. The pressure was certainly mounting on the seller. In an effort to break the deadlock, I agreed we would take the barge without proof that the engine could run, and eventually, the go-ahead was given and I was told that the boat yard would start plating.

 

 

Eventually, the work was complete, and the sale went though. The extra months had allowed us to save up more money, and we paid up in full. It was the one bright spot in all of this mess. So, we owned a barge. A barge without an engine, sitting in the middle of nowhere, and with no idea of how to get the barge over and where it was going to go. To cap it all, the boat yard were refusing to have anything more to do with the barge and wanted it gone.

 

A few days before Christmas, the paper work came through. I wrapped up a copy of the document and gave it to No. 1 as a Christmas Day present... slightly nervous that it was not much of a present after all the hassle we had been through!

 

No. 1 and I got busy finding a mooring... our previous efforts having been thwarted by not knowing if the sale would go through, when we would need a mooring, and not being able to show what the barge would look like. But, for once, our luck was in... I found a cheap mid-stream mooring at Tower Bridge and arrangements were made. There was light at the end of the tunnel... all that remained was to get her over...