We had a wonderful Easter, at the Historic Narrow Boat Club's gathering on the newly restored Droitwich Canal. We were very kindly accommodated by Sarah and Jim in the hold of Chertsey, under the new cloths, and had a lovely dinner of range top stew with them on the Saturday night. Their cat, Willow, has taken very well to boat life and was the centre of attention as he sat proudly on his boat.
As well as catching up with our historic boat friends, we enjoyed meeting some new people too - as the newest HNBC committee member, I tried to introduce myself or be introduced to the rest of the committee, who are a great bunch. Much tea, beer (and an extremely tasty by high alcohol content cider) was drunk and there was a lot of very geeky boat chat about things like fleet lists and motor/butty pairings! We also bought a few books about historic boats to add to our collection, including one lovely children's book about canal cats. In the absence of facilities for meeting at the basin in Droitwich, we were accommodated by the Working Men's Club just around the corner, which turned out to be a good location, and we had to become temporary members for the weekend!
On the Sunday, there was a Tat Auction - lots of boaty bits and pieces, along with a few joke items, with all the proceeds going to canal restoration projects. We somewhat accidentally came home with a piece of waterways history - the last piece of clunch to be carried by working boat (specifically the HNBC chairman's Warbler, when he went there a few years ago) from Reach quarry in Cambridgeshire. James bid 10p with the promise of taking it back! It then travelled home in my handbag.
All in all a great weekend, thanks everyone! Tim Lewis took some fantastic pictures, really worth a look!
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