These are the voyages of the Narrowboat, The Cat's Whiskers on its mission to explore the Waterways of Britain - well some of them anyway!

Now TCW is getting usable if no where near finished we are able to take her out for more than a day. Until recently we had only taken her out for a few hours always returning the same day. However on the 22nd March 2003 with not a cloud in the sky we decided to have a weekend off and set sail (or tiller) for Tixall Wide on the Staffs & Worcs, near the junction with the Trent & Mersey. We had an absolutely gorgeous day for it and having travelled a few miles and several locks we turned round in the junction and shortly afterwards moored up at Tixall. A voyage of 6 hours duration and TCW had behaved impeccably - the inverters were working, the central heating was working - in fact everything was working except us who celebrated with a Roast Pork dinner and a few drinks!

The next day dawned as beautiful as the Saturday - well I assume it did - we were dead to the world - it was certainly sunny at 9.00am when I woke up - it's all the fresh air you know! - Following a leisurely breakfast we cast off about 11.00am for the return journey. We arrived back at the Marina about 5.00pm with TCW having had a good run and no problems. Bev did sterling work with the locks while I messed around with the tiller.

Tixall Wide is a favourite mooring spot and for those not familiar with it was created by the demands of the land owner who refused to have 'a stinking ditch' cross his land. As a result the 'Wide' was created to give the impression of a lake - needless to say it's a great place to turn round even the longest narrowboat!

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