canal – Fergy's Rambles.

It’s that time again – SL#47.

Hello again and welcome to what will be the penultimate post in this series regarding my 2014 trip to Sri Lanka which, after three months travelling and a couple of months plus to write about, has taken on a life of it’s own. I am sure this will come as a blesséd relief to many of my long-suffering readers who have slogged their way through 47 rather lengthy pieces and, yes, I am showing off with the accented e. As always I shall start with my usual advice that if you really have a masochistic streak you can start the whole story here.

Whatever way you have arrived here, you are welcome and while the trip was certainly winding down there was still a bit to see and do, I had not had enough of Sri Lanka just yet. If you want to find out all about it, please read on.

Cruising ends and exploring begins.

I do hope the reader has come upon this page by way of those previous and, if not, I would recommend they have a look back a few entries on this site as this will all make a bit more sense.

My friends Gilly and Aly and I had awoken very early on the “good ship Westmorelend” i.e. the canal boat we had hired for a weekend in the little backwater called Salterhebble. I use the word backwater advisedly as it is, being a now closed off section of what was formerly the Halifax canal but is now really the “road to nowhere” being probably a mile or a little more to a basin and a decent enough bar / restaurant (see previous entry) but we had to be on the move early. The boat needed to be back by 0900 and I expect most folk on a short hire probably moor up “back at base” but I was very glad that we had not as we were treated to a simply beautiful early autumnal morning which was probably the most aesthetically pleasing of the trip. Continue reading “Cruising ends and exploring begins.”

Turn round and come back again.

I do hope you have come upon this page by way of the previous entries in this series regarding a wonderful canal trip I took in 2015 with three great friends who I had met through a now sadly demised and brilliant travel website called Virtual Tourist which was killed off in the interest of corporate greed.

If you have happened upon this site looking for Salterhebble or whatever, here is a quick precis. My friends and I were having a weekend excursion on the Calder and Hebble canal / river system in Yorkshire and, for some inexplicable reason, I had been attacked savagely by some sort of severe stomach disorder which had left me in my bunk and so incapacitated that I genuinely cannot tell you where we had moored the previous night as I was suffering so much (not even my own bunk, just the one nearest the heads) and was still not feeling great that morning although thankfully better than the Hell of the night I had had before. I really do not ever want to go through that again. Continue reading “Turn round and come back again.”