A Barge
at Large
A Bike at Large - Ordeals on Wheels
Jo borrowed a mountain bike. On his first trip he was overtaken by a jogger! Drastic action was needed. Enter 'Columbanus' - his e-bike (or bat-bike).
Within one yard he'd scraped his hand on a wall. And on his first 'major ascent' fared marginally better than the badger decomposing on the verge halfway up.
Things did improve slowly and the result is some great tales about the wacky people he met and the lovely (sometimes) places he found them
A Barge at Large
Jo and Jan leave the UK to live on their 110-year-old Dutch Barge in Holland.
It was rather a wreck and Jo had to call on all his skills as a baker to transform it into something fit to live on - at least for people with low expectations.
The book is a humerous ramble through a thicket of difficulties. They emerge, following a year renovating the boat, into a fascinating, sunlit world where they soon start to antagonize people in a new country.
A Barge at Large II
You would have thought that five years would be long enough to get the hang of the boating way of life but Jo and Jan continue to confound the odds and get themselves into even more difficulties.
Their boating days are approaching an end but this book contains new adventures and reflections of a way of life once never dreamed of.
A Narrowboat at Large
This is where it all began when Jo and Jan took the life endangering decision to sell a perfectly reasonable house in the Shropshire coutryside and swap it for a metal tube in a ditch.
Ahead was a learning curve so steep that, had they realized the enormity of it, they may well never have set off at all. 'A triumph of optimism over ablity' is how Jo describes the whole insane venture.
Operation Vegetable
Life on a narrowboat is usually peaceful.
The residents of Watergrove Marina, deep in rural England, find themselves battling a local bully who seems determined to disrupt their peace and quiet.
Banding together our ageing boaters set out to fight this manace.
Flawed Liaisons
An ordinary man, Harry Dunn, inherit rather more than he bargained for from an unknown uncle. Uncle Will's legacy leads Harry down a dangerous, and at times unpleasant, road.
For company he has Mary, a lady he befriends while struggling to cope after his life was blown apart by factors he couldn't begin to understand. But who can he trust?