Hotelboat pair Snipe and Taurus set off yesterday from Stourport for a week's cruise to Gloucester.
If all goes according to plan, at the moment they should be on the Droitwich Canals, which reopened last week to a grand opening ceremony. I think they will be the first hotel boat pair on the waterway.
Yesterday owner Corinne Thomsett, reported that they had a spare cabin or two for last-minute guests, for next week's cruise, from Gloucester to Stratford upon Avon.
She reported it via twitter:
I suppose conventional businesses might put up their 'late space' on via the various websites that specialise in late-space deals.
However, marketing late space deals can be tricky with small and rather specialist businesses.
For example, a quick search on lastminute.com drew a blank for searches on 'hotelboat' and other combinations of such phrases - even just plain word 'narrowboat'.
A small business like a hotelboat pair is hardly likely to be geared up to reselling space in such a commercial way - and at very short notice too.
So I think Corinne was pretty smart to tweet it out. It attracted my attention, and now, since you are reading this, it's obviously attracted your attention too.
Initially she was coy about discussing last-minute rates, but here's what she calls a special 'Late Granny Exclusive' offer:
Gloucester to Stratford-upon-Avon (via Saul Junction) - Special 'Late Granny Exclusive' £350 for single cabin for a week.
This Late Granny Exclusive is a very good deal for an all-found holiday in the English countryside (assuming you aren't expecting to send your late granny on the trip, although even that would be a pretty cheap send-off).
If you haven't got time for the full week, you could perhaps negotiate a part-rate.
But be warned that joining a hotelboat in mid-week can be a tricky affair and you'll need to arrange both ends of the rendezvous yourself when joining or jumping ship mid-way through a week's hotelboat cruise.
Also, contacting a hotelboat pair by phone when on the move is tricky. They'll probably be mid-manoeuvre, like in this picture showing Corinne bowhauling butty Taurus through Marton Locks on the Llangollen canal a while back.
(You can browse the Flickr photos here.)
At this point I'd probably point you to Corinne's remarkable cooking skills. Last year I seem to recall she was blogging or tweeting her daily recipes, and they sounded delicious and very sophisticated - but she seems to have stopped doing that now. I'm amazed she finds time to tweet at all.
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