Peter Underwood looks what turns
ordinary people into boaters.
Now where are you going to
take your new boat?
Now you have your boat, how can
you get the best out of ownership? You are not a hirer rushing around a 'ring'
any more so how should you plan your boating. We take a look at some of the
boating events throughout the year and what a new boater might get out of them.
Destinations
EVERY boater has their own
favourite canal or stretch of waterway. You will hear people raving about the Thames and arguing about the best section. Other rate the
Kennet and Avon, the Shropshire Union, the
Grand Union and the Llangollen. The northern waters, especially around Skipton,
have many fans and there are even those boaters happiest on the urban backwaters
of the Birmingham Canal Navigations.
Of course, if you moor in the
South East it will be next to impossible to reach the Leeds and Liverpool and return in the couple of weeks you can take
as a holiday.
The way to get over this is to
change your base of operations every year or two, once you have comfortably
explored an area and feel ready for something new.
When we lived in Lancashire and owned holiday boats we tried to moor
around a two hour drive from the house – a reasonable journey on a Friday evening
to start a weekend break on the boat.
That meant we could explore the
Yorkshire Ouse, with weekends tied in the wonderful city of York, or exploring Ripon with it's attractive
cathedral.
After an epic two week holiday
that brought us south on the tidal Ouse and onto the eastern canals at Selby,
through Leeds and around the Leeds and Liverpool to Cheshire,
we established another base that allowed us to explore the Shropshire Union,
with weekend breaks in Chester, the Trent and Mersey and the Bridgewater.
The Victorian Incline Plane at Foxton is the real fascination.
It is easy to visualise how this once slid boats down the hill in 12 minutes?
Another move to a Stafford base
gave another set of canals, and tying our boat in central Birmingham enabled a completely different
experience. Eventually of course you may have to travel further than a couple
of hours drive from home, but that could be a decade in the future.
When you want to make longer
trips you can always link a two week holiday with several weekends, perhaps
making a long initial trip and then hopping the boat back to base over several
weekends.
It may be inevitable – and we
were certainly guilty as novice holiday boaters – that you will try to go too
far, too fast, in that initial burst of enthusiasm. With the benefit of
hindsight I would advise against travelling 12 or even 14 hour days, non-stop,
to an ambitious fixed schedule.
Not only will you return needing
a holiday you will also miss some of the things that help people fall in love
with the waterways.
Give yourself time to stop and
explore the areas through which canals and rivers pass. Not only will you find
some great little pubs and eating places, you will begin to understand the
history of the waterways and how they have changed, and been changed by, the
towns and villages of our country.
The museum at Ellesmere Port gives a real insight into the world
of working boats, from the engines upwards.
There are so many examples I can
only mention a few that impressed me. In Skipton, you will find an historic
town dominated by it's castle overlooking the market street. A stroll along the
Springs Branch of the canal will take you to the back of the castle where
limestone was mined and loaded into boats through long chutes. You have to
wonder whether the castle would have survived if the landowner hadn't been able
to make money by exporting the limestone in his back yard.
The Skipton bonus is several
great pubs serving the local Copper Dragon beer and fish and chip restaurants
only surpassed in Hull and possibly Whitby.
At the other end of the country
you see a very different aspect of Stratford-Upon-Avon if you walk the towpath
– this is not Tudor Stratford that brings foreign tourists in their millions,
but industrial Stratford, built to serve the industries that provided work and
prosperity before tourism became central to the town's economy.
The Shropshire Union and the
Llangollen canals are some of the most popular in the country, with wonderful
scenery and some great canal architecture, but stop and explore and they get
even better.
Brewood has a great old-style
butcher who makes his own faggots. At Norbury you can see the start of the now
derelict Newport and Shrewsbury canal. A walk into Market Drayton
will take you to the home of gingerbread. There is a former nuclear bunker to
visit a bit north of the lovely village
of Audlem and a mile or so from the
canal at Nantwich you will find a Cheshire
market town well worth a few hours to explore.
Many of the excellent guides will
give you an insight into what is just beyond the towpath, so invest in those
that cover the area you are planning to explore and I would suggest buying
Ordnance Survey maps as well to enable you to check out what may be behind the
hill.
Our waterways take us through the
heart of Britain
and enable us to explore its nature, its history, its commerce and meet the
people who make the communities bordering the water so interesting.
Take a drink in the pub or eat in
a restaurant and you will find you are also part of interest of that place.
People will want to know what boating is like, where you are heading, how long
you have been doing it and probably whether it is cold in winter.
Landmark places
Around the waterways there are
some landmark places that most boaters aim to visit at some time. I suspect my
list may miss places others would have but this is essentially a personal thing
and influenced by taste.
Some are great feats of canal
engineering, others places of interest from the days when the waterways were
places of work and some simply places where you can gain a greater
understanding of the system.
Lets start with those feats of
engineering. Top of my list is the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct
on the Llangollen, the most famous aqueduct
in Britain
as it's the longest and highest. It's a World Heritage Site.
The Anderton
Boat Lift, which links the Trent and Mersey with
the River Weaver at Northwich, Cheshire
claims to be the first successful boat lift in the world. The experience
of travelling 15 metres up or down in the large tanks is one to be savoured.
The Barton
Swing Bridge
on the Bridgewater Canal heading north from Manchester, is another
tank, this time the only swinging aqueduct in the world. It carries the Bridgewater across the Manchester Ship Canal.
The aqueduct regularly swings open to let large ships pass underneath.
Then there are the lock flights. The Bingley Five Rise and three rise on the
Leeds and Liverpool canal are impressive to travel through, wide locks that raise the canal over 18 metres in
five giant steps.
My fascination for the Caen Hill
Locks at Devizes, Wiltshire, on the Kennet and Avon
comes from having seen them more than three decades ago when they were disused
and more in grass than in water, with the beams climbing a grassy hillside. I
can only marvel at the persistence that got them working once more.
The double staircase of narrow locks at Foxton
Locks, Leicestershire are unique but for me the Victorian inclined plain, off
to one side is the real fascination. It is easy to visualise how this once slid
boats down the hill in 12 minutes and I remain hopeful of seeing it restored.
Others on my list include the
newest canal in the country, the new section cut across the front of the Liver Building
in Liverpool to give canal vessels access to
the restored docks.
Limehouse Docks in the East End
of London, now restored as a destination for boaters and a route out onto the Thames, has echoes of wartime bravery by working boatmen.
Glasson dock, on the Lancaster Canal is another of those unusual places
where the inland waterways link with the sea and the cries of sea-birds and
rattle of rigging give a taste of a different watery world.
Finally canals are about industry
and along with the wonderful museums at Ellesmere Port, Gloucester Dock and
Stoke Bruerne which help us understand canals I would add the Black Country Living
Museum at Dudley where the reality of
a working boat dock in the industrial Midlands
is brought to life.
The Black Country Living Museum in Dudley where the reality of
a working boat dock in the industrial Midlands is brought to life.
Get a grip on how canals used to
be and you will start to enjoy and understand the gaunt and crumbling mills you
pass as you boat through Burnley and Blackburn and the gaping wastelands of
Tipton or Walsall where the pits, power stations and metal works have been
pulled down.
