{"product_id":"the-bookshop-that-floated-away","title":"The Bookshop That Floated Away","description":"Product Description\n\nIn early 2009 a strange sort of business plan landed on the desk of a pinstriped bank manager. It had pictures of rats and moles in rowing boats and archaic quotes about Cleopatra's barge. It asked for a £30,000 loan to buy a black-and-cream narrowboat and a small hoard of books. The manager said no. Nevertheless The Book Barge opened six months later and enjoyed the happy patronage of local readers, a growing number of eccentrics and the odd moorhen.\n\nBusiness wasn't always easy, so one May morning owner Sarah Henshaw set off for six months chugging the length and breadth of the country. Books were bartered for food, accommodation, bathroom facilities and cake. During the journey, the barge suffered a flooded engine, went out to sea, got banned from Bristol and, on several occasions, floated away altogether. This account follows the ebbs and flows of Sarah's journey as she sought to make her vision of a floating bookshop a reality.\n\nBook Description\n\nThe story of an extraordinary bookshop... and everything its owner did to keep it afloat.\n\nAbout the Author\n\nSarah Henshaw is the proud owner of the Book Barge, the UK's only canal-based bookshop, which is currently still in business somewhere on the water in rural Staffordshire, close to Stoke-on-Trent.","brand":"Constable \u0026 Robinson","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40443358216277,"sku":"9781472108050N","price":9.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2481\/5790\/products\/78eb26d9-c71b-4bb9-aaa6-c9e032c94e6f.jpg?v=1670329581","url":"https:\/\/smeikalbooks.co.uk\/en-us\/products\/the-bookshop-that-floated-away","provider":"smeikalbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}