Promotion

We’ve reached a bit of a plateau as far as work is concerned on Real. Incidentally we decided from day one that it should be pronounced “ray-all” as in Real Madrid, I’ve no idea why a Belgian Barge should have a Spanish name but then we know very little of her history . All we know is that she is almost definitely Belgian, she was once moored on the Thames in Plumstead and has a General Motors engine that came from an American Tank when she was converted to a self propelling barge. We got most of the information, except the Plumstead bit, from Frederic Logghe and his excellent Blog/Website.

So I decided this week, as we haven’t got much to report, that I would take this opportunity to promote some of the Blogs that we’ve been following and that have either provided inspiration, information or just plain entertainment.

And in no particular order we have:-

Tim Zim and Lady Jane.
This was one of the first blogs we found about houseboats and boat conversions. Tim has loads of information on his blog and led us to set about doing our own spray foam insulation (you might want to read about our exploits with Spray foam here). The brilliant thing about Tim’s blog is he writes regularly and about anything that’s happened with Lady Jane. I sometimes wish we could produce something like this.

Next there’s Seb and Bee and Wendy Ann 2. These two work so hard, keeping down about 8 jobs each, working 27 hours a day 12 days a week on Wendy Ann 2. But the job they are doing is amazing; they’ve welded up what seems like a million rivets and are producing a fantastic wheelhouse in Teak, and write from the heart.

Then there’s Steve and Lorna and Serenity. Occasionally when I read this I wish we’d bought a fully converted barge, but they’ve still had a lot of work to do. But the best bit is that they photograph everything, which always makes this worth reading.

Next there’s Simon and Mary and Misterton. This reminds me a lot of when we started, they're still at the clearing and planning stage. What I look forward to reading here is Mary’s View, a very funny non-technical insight into buying and converting a Barge.

There are another two Thomas H and Hendrick. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to read these two fully but basically Thomas H is in the process of conversion and Hendrick is, as far as I can tell from what I’ve read so far, more or less complete. Apologies to both if I’ve got this wrong.

And Finally… we have Frederic Logghe and MS Watergeus. This website/blog has an enormous amount of information about all types of barges and I think is a must read for anyone either thinking of starting out
with a barge or in the middle or working on one.

So, there you have it, this weeks thoughts. Maybe next week we’ll have made a bit of progress on clearing out the bedroom end, but if it’s as cold up that end as it is now, then I doubt it. Still, what’s the rush, we’re beginning to live the relaxing lifestyle we wanted.