Bonjour, mes amis!

Like many of you, darling readers, I am a greedy little book-lover. A good bookshop or library is like my Cave of Wonders – I can while away hours picking and choosing new literary treats to stockpile! Another of my great loves? Madcap, whimsical risk-takers! Adventurous individuals who take – perhaps misguided and ill-planned, but courageous and imaginative! – whole-hearted plunges into unique ventures! Starry-eyed daydream-chasers who shape their own destinies!

I think it’s safe to say this week’s “Let’s Run Away…” locale masterfully combines both of those delights…!

LET’S RUN AWAY and browse the floating book barge when it docks in London!

“Word on the Water” is the bibliophilic brainchild of former entertainment journalist Sarah Henshaw:

“Frustrated by a string of unsuccessful media applications, I hit upon the idea of creating my own job – a dream job. I would sell books… from a boat. I knew nothing about book selling – nor boats. I found Joseph, the craft that became The Book Barge, on Google.”

Between 2008 and 2011, she travelled a thousand miles through more than seven hundred locks across the UK, “swapping” her books for everything from groceries to haircuts. She and her husband Stu live aboard the black and cream narrowboat, and Stu is currently renovating a house by a canal in a hamlet in central France, which has a “book barge-shaped mooring at the bottom of the garden.”

Whilst the Book Barge is still chugging along England’s green and pleasant waterways, let’s hop aboard, curl up with the cat in the cosy leather armchair, and start making a dent in our selected reads…

(Photography via Florian Beaudenon and Word on the Water)

Love, sailboats and the smell of new books xxx