Published on 12, July, 2020
I don't want to be around on this earth for much longer if I don't find somewhere nice to live. I'm not just able to live with abuse from people anymore.
Some people have unconventional lifestyles, on my travels I came across a whole community living semi permanently on canal boats, here in Hebden Bridge.
Canal boats are lovely. You need to but or lease a mooring to go withthe boat that's often the tricky ir expensive bit. I have 3 friends who don't and instead have to demonstrate they are constantly cruising, ie moving the boat every two weeks a few miles. Makes life a bit harder ie moving it, getting wood, cycling back and forth sometimes ling distances to town with shopping, laundry, to showers, water top up etc., they say it's a days work a week to live that way.
I will add to what I wrote.
Hebden Bridge, where these photos were taken is a lovely colourful town.
On either side, along the canal, we have the towns of Sowerby bridge and Todmorden, which are depressed dumps.
These are tramp boats, but they are in a post industrial town that had reinvented itself as a tourist attraction with artists, musicians, small independent shops and hippies.
The other big problem with living on a canal is that they usually were built through the grubbiest parts of industrialised towns - which are now slums - so they get a lot of use by druggies and trouble-makers. It's much nicer if you can avoid the towns and be more in the countryside between.
British Waterways is also trying to discourage the 'Tramp' boats that are an eyesore and usually don't meet any safety standards - we had one explode about 1/2 mile away just before Christmas - no-one hurt, but the boat has burst wide open at all its seams like in a cartoon.