SPECIAL DIETS:
Once your booking becomes confirmed we send out a short questionnaire to find out about your dietary 'likes and dislikes'.  This helps us to prepare menus which are specifically tailored to your own individual preferences. That's all part of the 'private charter' service.

So if you particularly like something (eg salmon, roast dinners, porridge for breakfast, or whatever) we would expect to see you include that in the answers to the questionnaire.  Similarly, if you don't like certain foods (eg sprouts, liver, or perhaps even tripe), we hope you would tell us about that too.  This way we can tailor your menus to suit you (and, to be frank, it also helps us to get the right foods into stock to suit you). We pride ourselves in the provision of good old fashioned, quality, home cooking, without the need to resort to convenience, or processed, foods.

We happily can, and do, cater for genuine special needs - for example we have a regular client who has an intolerance to gluten, and we like to think we cater for his needs very adequately.  We happily cater for vegetarian clients most of whom are happy to accept the inclusion of eggs and dairy products within their menus.  As long as we know, and the foodstuffs are readily available, we can adapt our menus to suit.

That is all fairly straight forward and it is a principle we hope will be understood by most.

HOWEVER, there have been occasions when we have had some considerable difficulty in catering for those with (what we would describe as) fairly extreme 'food intolerances' or requirements.  One client specified boiled Quinoa with pumpkin seeds and slivered almonds for breakfast (quinoa is not even in our dictionary).  For Lunch the request was for humus with flat bread (I looked humus up in the Oxford Dictionary and it describes it as being a form of compost????

SO, we are going to make an important distinction here.... If potential guests feel that they require a diet, whilst on 'Willow', which requires ingredients not normally available from a traditional grocers, butchers, greengrocers, or fishmongers, they must discuss their dietary requirements with us, BEFORE confirming a booking for any charter.  It may be that we can indeed make arrangements to source the required products - but it does need to be discussed before the booking becomes confirmed.  Whilst we will always try to help, we do reserve the right to refuse any booking for a charter if the provisioning for the cruise cannot be carried out using such traditional grocers, butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers. It is not sufficient to claim that a particular foodstuff is readily available in large supermarkets - we do not always have access to such outlets, whilst we are cruising a mainly rural canal system.

In particular, we are not prepared to cater for vegan diets.