A big anniversary coming up

Hi dear readers, a Happy New Year to both of you. Yes we're still alive an kicking despite not having updated you for far too long. Well, not much has happened on the boating front apart from emails from CRT reminding me to pay our next licence fee and renew the insurance so there's not been much to tell Herbiewise.

However this is a significant year for us and Herbie because in a couple of weeks time we mark the Twentieth anniversary of when we first met Herbie and decided to buy her and the day when I wrote the first Herbie blog post.  Blogging was a relatively new thing then so we were being quite trendy and teccie I suppose.  If my sums are right, we've published 1860 blog posts in that time.  As well as being a record of our adventures, it's also led to us finding so many good friends on the cut.  

Here is Herbie when we first laid eyes upon her in Stanstead Abbots on the Lee Navigation in a cold January day in 2006.

Her then owners Roy and Val had kept her beautifully clean and tidy and she seemed so cosy hat we fell for her straight away.

I recall that we had travelled all over the place looking at boats, finding nothing that ticked all our boxes so it was a surprise to us that here was the boat we couldn't resist. After our viewing , Kath and I sat in a nearby pub and somewhat in shock, knew that this was it. We were to become boaters.  "If we keep Herbie for five years," we said, "It'll be worth it."  Well here we are twenty years later and Herbie is still a much loved part of our family. From the kids to the grandkids and even to Gertie the cat, Herbie is our second home.

Now regular readers will have noticed that in December we skipped the annual Herbie Awards. This is because our boating was so limited in 2025 that there wasn't enough material. But fear not, our 20th anniversary gives us the chance to indulge in some long term awards. What's the very best cruise we've done, where is our favourite spot, what was our worst disaster  . . .  ?- there's plenty to go on, so stay tuned while I trawl the archives.  I might even compile a little quiz question or two.