Shangri La – back to blogging

Shangri La – April 2026 – K and A Canal

I have not posted anything here for ages! Mainly because we have not been going anywhere.

Shangri La, our 58 x 11 ft widebeam barge, has been moored up here on the Foxhangers private moorings since August 2021, while my wife Karen is doing carework and I am working at Foxhangers.

Why are we doing this? We are going through the long and expensive process of acquiring UK Citizenship for my wife.

The good news is the end is in sight, and at the end of June this year, we will be ready to resume cruising.

We bought Shangri La (previously named Shirley Anne) in July 2021. She was always a lovely boat, but we have made masses of additions and improvements over the last five years.

The most recent, (see pic above), are the solar panels, improved roof storage boxes, and Starlink.

And to go along with the solar, I now have a brilliant Victron inverter/power management system, and 4 lithium ion batteries.

At the moment we have shore power at the mooring, but with the above, along with the Beta generator, when we are cruising we should have no power related issues.

My last blog posts

My last few posts have covered the first trip from Windsor, where we bought the boat, up the Thames and down the Kennet and Avon to where we are now, a brief trip to Three Magpies Pub, and, the most recent one, our drydock trip to Semmington in 2023. See link:https://www.waterwaywanderer.com/information/shangri-la-drydocking-2023/

Future plans:

At the end of June this year, we will both stop our current jobs, and start exploring the UK waterways.

We will head down the K and A towards Bath, with another brief stop at Semmington to have the hull cleaned and blacked.

We might go down onto the Avon and to Bristol, depending on weather and water conditions.

Then, back up the K and A to Reading. This will be a much more leisurely trip than when we brought the boat down here initially.

Then, up the Thames, hopefully as far as Letchlade, then back down to the Harleyford Marina in Marlow, where we plan to winter the boat.

Maps and Guides:

I have all the maps and guides: UK Waterway Map, River Thames Map, and the Nicholson Guide covering the Kennet and Avon:

In the meantime, I will do a few posts on all the improvements we have done to Shangri La over the last few years.

Till then.