Waggies Cruising

Some boats are bought. Some are restored. And some seem to follow you through life.Waggies Cruising is Richard Waghorn's warm, funny and deeply personal story of a lifelong relationship with boats and the Norfolk Broads.It begins when Richard is six years old, watching his father restore an old wooden Broads cruiser at Loddon. There are leaking cabins, an unexpected swim in the river at Norwich, a roast dinner destroyed by the wash of a passing gin palace and the beginnings of an obsession that never really went away.Decades later, Richard returns to the Broads, first aboard hire boats and eventually aboard his own much-loved Nauti-Rascal. Along the way come boat shows, breakdowns, bad weather, questionable moorings, YouTube adventures, loyal friends and two unlikely stars of Waggies Cruising - Winnie, the calm and sensible black dog, and Betsie, her gloriously chaotic ginger companion.But this is about more than boating. It is also about family, friendship, change, loss, resilience and what happens when one chapter of life ends and another unexpectedly begins.From his father's insistence on doing things shipshape and Bristol fashion to a remarkable full-circle return to the very same mooring in Loddon many decades later, Richard discovers that sometimes going back to where you started is the best way to move forward.Told with warmth, self-deprecating humour and affection for the people, dogs and boats that shaped the journey, Waggies Cruising is for anyone who has ever looked at an old boat and thought: "That just needs a bit of work."