Robby & Diane n/b Grand Adventure
We are Robby & Diane of Grand Adventure, Braidbar No 220. We were ready to start a Narrowboat build in 2019 and thought we had everything figured out. Our trip to England was booked and we were coming over spring 2020 to buy a narrowboat. We all know what happened then so our plans were delayed.
We didn’t have a builder so we went to Crick 2022 when we could finally travel. After touring Desiderata at Crick and getting our build slot we feel like we joined a family at Braidbar. Meeting Donna and watching how she interacted with other visitors impressed us both. James spent about 45 minutes answering our questions. It was nice to be taken as serious narrowboat buyers even though we are from the USA.
We returned for the owners gathering that September and enjoyed meeting everyone. They welcomed us as part of the Braidbar family. Listening to their stories told us we’d made the right decision.
After hiring a number of narrowboats we knew what we didn’t want but not what we wanted other than a narrowboat we could navigate the entire network on. We started looking at all the previous Braidbar narrowboat builds. We joked that we wanted James and Donna to build us a Frankenstein narrowboat, all be it much prettier. We liked features from a variety of the other narrowboats and came up with our design.
As our build got closer decisions needed to be made. We visited whenever possible and when we weren’t in England Donna and/or James would meet with us via WhatsApp.
Once the build began Donna provided photos of the progress. Response was quick to all of our questions. We were unable to pick our granite before we had to depart so we left that to Braidbar and we couldn’t be happier with the choice they made.
Because we weren’t able to visit as the build took place we asked Donna and James to build us a narrowboat they would be proud of and they did that and more.
Coming from the USA to purchase a narrowboat has been a journey and took a lot of trust. We are very happy that we put our trust in the Braidbar Team as that journey has come to an end and we’ve now began our Grand Adventure.
Everywhere we’ve travel thus far people stop and stare. They compliment Braidbar as the builder and tell us she’s a smart narrowboat. We’ve met other boaters and they praise Braidbar as one of the best narrowboat builders, if not the best. We look forward to cruising the cut to new places and seeing England and Wales at a narrowboat pace.