Brothers Chris, Keith and Jeffrey French had summer jobs on the river when they were growing up so it was probably no surprise when their mum, Margaret Anne, suggested the three brothers should join together and set up a venture offering trips on the river to paying passengers back in 1978.
Hooray, it’s March – and spring is just around the corner. Okay, it’s still blooming cold and that north-east wind is proving incredibly persistent, but at least the hours of daylight are increasing and there are the obvious stirrings all round the garden as nature prepares to share its colourful bounty.
“Doesn’t it get terribly cold in the winter?” That was my first question to Pamela and Edward Burrell aboard their beautiful old Dutch barge, Angelus, when I went to their mooring at Sunbury to talk to them about living on the river.
