Stories about boats and waterways
An alternative to the tradition steel narrowboat, fibreglass (GRP) cruisers are long-established on British canals and rivers. Often cheaper to buy, both new and used, but with drawbacks such as a more fragile construction and less suitability for living aboard, especially in winter, they are a popular choice particularly on rivers. In this video, I speak to a chap who bought a Viking 26 and absolutely loves it.
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For those on small or disconnected canals, who want a boat that can be taken out of the water easily and moved elsewhere, there is the Wilderness Trailboat; an incredibly cute, fibreglass (GRP) lightweight craft that you can practically put in your pocket!
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With Christmas coming and small businesses ever more in need of your support, I thought I’d do a video highlighting a smattering of the arts and crafts that many narrowboaters sell from the canals.
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In this vlog I take the narrowboat through Newark-on-Trent and head to Cromwell lock, where the river becomes tidal. That would be my end point for this session of cruising videos before I stopped for winter. More videos will be forthcoming nonetheless.
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In this vlog I continue down the River Trent, from Holme lock to Hazleford lock, giving the engine some rarely-used revs yet still being slower than another boat that was doing the same trip.
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Just to be clear, and to avoid spurious accusations of “click bait”, I do believe it fairly obvious that there will be no actual travelling down any white water in my narrowboat in this video. “White water narrowboating” is very clearly an oxymoron. With that out of the way, this is my trip from Beeston through Nottingham (on the canal) and out to Holme lock (on the River Trent)
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Continuing my journey east, I go onto the River Trent briefly again before hopping back off it at the Cranfleet Cut and then the Beeston Canal. It was very windy.
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A short and sweet trip today as I took the boat off the end of the Trent & Mersey canal and moored at Sawley. During the trip, I played chicken with a swan, and tried to hold the boat still in a sideways wind.
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I continue east along the Trent & Mersey canal from Willington, re-discovering that from that point it’s a wide canal and that means sharing (wide) locks with other narrowboaters. Video also features two dogs, a horse, some strange noises and a little bit of calm.
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In another tense, nail-biting episode, I cruise further east along the Trent & Mersey canal on my narrowboat, through Burton-on-Trent and up to Willington. This involves the lockside purchase of some carrots.
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