The Start Of Summer Boat Life, A Visit from Friends + A Trip To The ‪@howlingbarge‬!

We're Ben, Emily and Alan, and this is our home, a 56-foot narrowboat called Roisin Dove. This is Rambler, Ben's floating studio. We travel full-time, whether it's on the UK waterways, on the boats, or on the road in our self-converted home on wheels. This week we arrive in Napton, our friend Adam visits, and together we take a trip to the Howling Barge to make some music. Okay, it's still quite early, but we're going to get Rambler through some locks before our busy day begins. And then I'm gonna go get a taxi back to the van. I didn't end up doing it yesterday just because there was none available, unless I paid £40. So at quarter past nine I'm gonna leave Benny with the locks and go and get the van. And then you're gonna finish those off, and then we'll come back and get Roisin. Let's go, let's go! Okay, we actually did it. Benny's in the last lock. I need to go and get a taxi now that I've booked to go back to Fenny Compton to pick the van up. So I'm gonna have to leave Benny to do the rest of this last one. But yeah, I can't believe we did that so quickly. Okay, we're through and I think it's Night Swan. Or is that Night Swan up there? That could be Night Swan. Are you Night Swan? I guess we'll find out tonight, won't we? Okay, back at the boat. Time for some breakfast and get ready to move machine then. Just wondering where Alan is right now. Did you miss us? Huh? You just scuttled away from me when I came in the boat and then launched through this cat flap, didn't you? Are you gonna go have a look? Just watching from there? Yeah? Ah, you changed your mind, did you? I see. Come on, why don't you go have a look? Let's go. We're about to go into the fourth lock but I'm gonna have to go and leave Benny to it because I'm gonna go pick up Adam. His train gets in in about half an hour so I best set off otherwise I'll be late. So I'm doing the last two on my own which I haven't done much of before but gentlemen on the boat behind just helped me get through that one. Yeah, take it slow, should be okay. Done the bins, filled up with water, parked the boat here on this corner because where Rambler is, there was a space but it's now gone. So hopefully somebody will move and we can get the boat moored up somewhere a bit better because I don't like this and I know Emily won't like it and that's no good, is it? Okay, I'll have a drink. Look who it is! Nice to see you here. Hey, how are you doing? I am enjoying the sunshine and happy to be reunited with some of my favourite people. Right, let's get out into the sunshine, eh? Yeah. Did you just down your beer? Yeah. Oh my god, I was really thirsty. Mine's gone. You were supposed to drink it with Adam. I didn't even get a bloody cheers off it. I was so thirsty. I was waiting to cheers you before I drank mine. Oh my god, Benny! Some people have no etiquette. I'm sorry. He hasn't even drank any of it. I'll crack open another one. I was waiting to cheers. I'm sorry. It's a strict rule for me. I'll open another one. Do you think, Alan? Uncle Adam's here. So Adam's obviously here to come and have a great time with us and hang out in the sunshine and drink beer but he's also here to film an episode of his series Humans of the Waterways. I highly recommend going and checking that out over on his Instagram. His Instagram is adam.floatinghome. I'll put it on the screen as well. I'm terrible at explaining things so I'll let Adam explain what Humans of the Waterways is. So the whole idea behind Humans of the Waterways is I'm basically fascinated by all the different people that live on boats including these guys and I think like you know as we look at these like steel tubes as we walk up the canals inside each one is a whole world and inside that world people just have all these kind of intricacies and different characteristics about them and there's no one like unifying thing that explains a boater so the idea of the series is to show the uniqueness and individualism of each and every boater. That wasn't really one sentence but I hope you get the gist. That was way better than I could explain. Thank you, Adam. And now these guys are about to film something on Rambler so yeah look out for Adam's reel about us and all of his other ones. Oh she's back. I think I'll leave them to it for now. Probably quite a lot of you know that I am not the cook in this boat. Benny is the great cook. I make baked beans on toast. Well I'm not going to make beans on toast for dinner tonight. I'm going to make a tofu thai green curry. It's a special occasion. Adam's come to visit so I thought I'd give it a go. I've got Jamie Oliver as a guide and I'm going to make the paste from scratch as well so it's going to be hopefully pretty tasty, pretty full on flavour. So I've got fresh ginger thai basil which smells... I don't really know how to explain it. It does smell basil-y but there's a kind of maybe it's a bit citrusy. It's very nice. Lots of garlic, loads of coriander. I've got green chillies and lemongrass so I'm going to make a paste with those. One thing we don't have is a lime. I think that's supposed to go in it but we don't have that so if it needs to be a bit sour I might put a little bit of cider vinegar in it. I know it's not the same. I'm going to put tofu, green beans and some courgette in it as well. Right I'm going to make the paste. Okay and I forgot it's got shallots in the recipe which I actually happen to just have some. I never have those but yeah it's pretty lucky. All right I've got five cloves of garlic. Go in the blender. Two green chillies. Put everything in there ready for the paste. I decided to do quite a lot of it because there's ingredients like the lemongrass and the thai basil that when am I going to use that again so I might as well use it up and make a big one. I think I need to put a load of oil in now. Oh coconut in there. Okay let's get some of that in there. I don't measure stuff out. Two tablespoons. Let's put some oil in. I'm not really sure if this is going to turn into a paste. It seems like it's so dry. I feel like I need to put some liquid in there. It's very dry. A little touch of water. Oh my goodness it smells so good. I think we're getting there. That smells amazing. Actually smells like Thai green curry. I mean what was I expecting? A gold work boat going past. Yeah I think it smells beautiful in here. That's the Thai green paste. Look at her go. Oh you've gone for that. All right you made it from scratch. Wow I assumed it would have been jarred. I'm actually quite impressed with how it smells. It smells amazing. I can't believe you've made your own Thai curry paste. It's Jamie Oliver isn't it? We've been we've been watching Jamie Oliver. I've cooked some courgettes and green beans and I've tried to make some tofu crispy. Oh my that looks fantastic. That looks great. It's looking all right and now it's time to fry some of this sauce up. It smells very good and and then I'll add everything. I'm also cooking some rice. I didn't realise we didn't have any basmati. So we've got brown rice and I've put some coconut in there. I don't actually know how much of this to put in because I just made loads of it. Just slap some in before it gets too hot. Okay I think it's too hot. Take it off the pan and put it in the pot. You're gonna be pretend. Oh my goodness. It's so smoky in here. Have you tasted it to see how strong it is? I have and it's you know um vibrant. The tofu and stuff will probably eat it up as well quite a bit. Yeah that's true and it's gonna have coconut milk in it. Uh we're gonna need a bigger pan. Aren't you meant to like saute the tofu with the sauce? This is how we learn. Sorry guys it's not gonna taste quite the same. We're interpreting and perceiving in a different way and I think that's a beautiful part of our like music. That's generous. I think that looks all right. I wonder which one's bigger. I think it's that one. Oh yeah I'm ready for this. I'm so ready. Oh one minute maybe that was the biggest one. I don't need the biggest one don't worry. Is that okay? Appetizer for the lady. Oh yeah thank you. I also ordered dessert. Oh cheeky. That's what they call me. Cheers. To life. To friendship. And laughter. Look at the sky. That's beautiful. Don't sound ever cheeky kids. Come on Adam we're going on a road trip. Family trip. Apparently the van doesn't have a name. I was shocked. Name suggestions in the comments are welcome. So many people have commented names but just none of them seem quite right. Roger. Roger that. Morning guys. Morning. Good morning. We're now a double act. What's the plan today then? Today we're about to leave to go and make a musical recording at a lovely boat with a guy called Paul. His boat's called the Howling Barge. Maybe his boat isn't called that but his project is called the Howling Barge. I don't know what his boat's called. I know that his boat has a really fascinating story though that I'm sure he'll probably tell us all about later. Yeah I'm excited. Always excited to hear Benny play music as well. That's why I'm most excited for today. And Adam's doing another Humans of the Waterways filming as well aren't you? I am yeah. It's all becoming very interlinked and the community is getting more emerged into one. Yeah. Soon you will not be able to tell us apart. What is this? When I went to treat myself to a caramel ice latte and I spotted a cookie straw. I want one. So I believe I will be able to drink the latte through the straw. I want to see how this goes. That is so indulgent. And then eat the straw. I know it's quite indulgent The car park that we were going to had like a barrier as you can see so I couldn't get in under that and so I went and found somewhere else to park. It just happened to be right next to the canal so that's really nice. Actually I think it's the river. I'm not sure. River lead navigation maybe? And it's about a 15 minute walk to the Howling Barge so that's where we're off to now. There's a lot of massive wide beams on this stretch. All right so we're here in Hereford. We've met up with Paul and we're just walking over to his boat. Emily's gone to park the van and it's a gorgeous day. I'm feeling really good about this. I haven't performed out of the boat for a while and I think it's a lovely chance to play music in a fresh lovely place with lovely people around. So here we are at Paul's boat, the Violet Mary. Hiya. Hi. You get parked all right? Oh wow. This is what, we're not used to this aren't we? No it's so cool. What an amazing spot. What an amazing boat. Hi. Oh my goodness what a lovely boat. Hi. How you doing? I'm about to put this mic stand here. Saw a little snake out here before. Swimming along. So is this the River Lee navigation? I think so. So beautiful. Jeez that is... The finish on that is ridiculous. That's a wrap. Oh you'll have to listen to my album when it comes out. I can't wait. Bye. See you. Well that was lovely wasn't it? That was so great. Feeling very grateful and inspired. So if you want to go watch the full video of me performing we'll have a link in the description and we'll put something up here so you can follow that link and go watch me playing on the Howling Barges channel. It sounded great. Yeah go check it out. Right back to the boats then It's a good place to park. Yeah. And we're back at Knapton. I showed Emily see that and I'm up all the way. She's like trying it out. They're just making their nest. That's really cute. We're back. Chef's in the kitchen straight on it. What are you guys having? Salmon and spinach and little tatties. Nice. And I'm having some kind of corn steak things. And Alan, she's having her biscuits with a view. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for cooking. I love a tomato.