Cal

Thanks for sharing your holiday. If you don't mind me asking how did winter hire prices compare with the usual early spring and late autumn hire prices? It is possibly something we would consider doing at some point in the future.

Hope not. Although we don't have much planned for the weekend I would prefer not to spend it all in bed

Just had my booster this morning. Moderna this time after the previous two were Pfizer. Our local vaccination centre was very busy this morning. I booked one of the first appointments and there was a queue when I arrived as they were opening up. It does seem as though people are taking this booster scheme seriously.

Love it in the Fur and Feathers.

They are. If we want to be in a specific area at a specific time and need to book a pitch we are having to do it 12 months in advance. We have booked pitches for all of our main trips out next year right through to the end of the year to make sure we get where we want to be in Burnham Deepdale, Southwold, Isle of Wight and Devon and Cornwall. Bank holidays in particular have proven tricky. Although we landed lucky with that last year and booked Whitby for the August bank holiday at the last minute and really enjoyed it although that was a massive 300 pitch "pop up" campsite.

Thanks both. We have looked and there are plenty of places for us to stop with the van. We will pop down that way at some point in the future but for now we are enjoying lots of other places that we have not had the chance to see while we had the boat.

I'm going for that option. The website has kicked me off again

Trying to book my booster jab this morning. So far I have made it to the front if the queue twice only for the system to have a hissy fit, claim a technical error and chuck me out again. Currently number 1091 in the queue again. Will see if I have any better luck this time. If they are going to have a push on giving us all a booster jab then surely they need to make sure their booking website is up to the job

Sadly I have to agree with you. If prices do go up further still then that may well spell the end of us holidaying on the Broads certainly by hire boat anyway. We will certainly visit at some point in the motorhome but it won't be the same as being on the water.

Some pretty impressive numbers there prior to Covid. Just totted our total number of nights on the motorhome for this year and by the time we have (hopefully) had our four night break over New Years in North Norfolk it will take the tally to 50 nights. We didn't pick it up until May so I'm happy with that figure and happy that we are getting enough use from it. Hopefully the tally for 2022 will be much higher. We have some great trips in the planning with trips to York, Burnham Deepdale, Southwold, Isle of Wight and Devon and Cornwall as well as plenty of weekend trips more locally. Here's hoping 2022 is a good year for us all

We were priced out of summer hire on the Broads well before Covid hit but with the way prices have risen since we are on the verge of being priced out of spring and autumn hire as well. The hire costs for some of these boats makes the cost of owning and maintaining a boat almost seem reasonable

Our motorhome is more often than not referred to as the boat (despite us not even owning a boat anymore )

Can't say that turkey had ever bothered ours guts.

Not jealous much Enjoy your break.

I think a lot rather depends on your perspective as well. Certainly for us 2021 has been a great year so far. We finally managed to realise our plan to sell the boat and buy the motorhome and have had ample chance to try it out through the year with some great trips in the planning for next year and beyond. If next year is going to be better than this year then bring it on, I can't wait.

You got a discount when you bought the boat, expect to have to give a discount when you sell the boat. Other then that don't worry about it. Happy boating.

The boats won't get as much condensation with no people on board. They will be left with windows cracked open to provide adequate ventilation.

Depends where you are based. In Burton Waters, Lincoln zebra mussels were very prolific and if your antifoul was a bit older and less effective then it would grow a lovely mussel beard which depending on the power of the boat could have a very detrimental effect on the performance and fuel economy.

We used the Premier Paints semi hard antifoul on our last boat and it was always fairly good. That said they did hike the price up a few years back quite substantially. The last few years that we had the boat we tended to bring it out of the water every winter for a few months so we found we were repainting it every year just to tidy it up more than anything. It didn't really need a fresh coat but we might as well do it while it was out of the water.

We never had any trouble with our power supply to the boat. They were very good with that. The one time there was a big and prolonged power outage during winter (due to someone killing themselves nicking cables) they brought in massive bac up generators to provide power. Our electric bills were never huge. Our bollards were topped up with £14 cards and we would use three a year at most.

We never "winterised" our boat in the 13 years we owned it. We put a large tube heater in the engine bay on a thermostatic switch set to 5 degrees and a smaller tube heater in the heads. That was it. We never did anything else. We plan to do much the same with the motorhome. It will never get fully drained down or winterised because we plan to use it all winter.

Blimey. They must have been going pretty quickly yo cause that much damage!!

It is nice to see a hire fleet that is including "elite fleet" smaller couples boats. Too often the fleets concentrate on providing larger premium boats and forget the 2 berth boats.

Can't say we have ever been overly fussed about Ranworth. We have often gone in got straight into a mooring walked up to the church come back and gone again. It just doesn't really appeal to us and isn't somewhere we would spend the night.

If you plan to keep Norfolk Lady for any length of time I would thoroughly recommend looking into getting remote controls for your heating. We never had it for the boat but having now got it on the motorhome I wouldn't be without it. The one we have is bluetooth activated if we are on the van but works via text message if we are out of bluetooth range. Just have to remember to put my phone within reach of the bed at night so I can switch the heating on without getting up in the morning. You can set it on a timer as well but we have not bothered with that yet. Might do now it's getting to being colder mornings though.