The morning of Saturday the 28th of April arrives, (moving in day) we were faced with a daunting task of moving our entire lives onto Elsa Born Free whilst absorbing all of the changes and choices that we have made. An early morning call from our friends Stephen and Shirley insisting that they want to help us move in (what a pleasure and privilege that was) we were so very grateful for the help and within the day we had 95% of all our belongings on board.

We said our goodbyes to Steve and Shirls, took a look around, all our stuff is in, now what ? The sun started setting and the marina had such a beautiful peaceful vibe about her, smoke coming from the chimneys and the sound of geese gurgling away in the background, we were tired and decided to have an early peaceful night…….MAYBE.

The first official night was certainly not a dull one, Elsa generates a few sounds that we are not familiar with and I spent the entire night getting out of bed investigating each of these noises to ensure that we were not about to sink (we didn’t). At about 4am I thought it was probably time to get some sleep as we had a busy day ahead but unfortunately all of the geese, ducks, swans and coots in the marina decided to welcome us, they all gathered around Elsa and started singing / screaming as loud as they could for what seemed to be forever.

That was that, we were now awake and ready to start a new day with no sleep behind us, I ate coffee straight out of the tin, picked my eyelids up from the floor and cracked on.

What a privilege it is to learn and experience new things every day.