When I received a panicked phone call from The Narrowboat Experience, who were stuck half way up the Grand Union canal and just too tired to carry on, of course I had to help. So I jumped into my car, shot off to Whilton Marina and ran down the towpath to find Anna and Kath, and give them the benefit of my extensive canal and locking experience and wisdom. This is the record of the day.
In the last Competition vlog, I mentioned that a lot of the viewers to this channel are overseas and I often get asked if foreigners can own narrowboats. The answer is “yes” and in this video I talk to an American couple who’ve done just that and are about to set off on their canal travels.
Not really a vlog but an update to the last vlog in which I reveal the three winners of the competition for a year’s subscription to Canal Boat magazine!
The competition is now closed but the video does also include news of my (lack of) cruising plans this year.
Every Spring Bank Holiday, London’s Little Venice hosts the IWA (Inland Waterways Association) “Cavalcade”, a gathering and procession of narrowboats celebrating life afloat. I’d been meaning to visit for ages but finally found the time this year – and I bumped into some special guests on the way!
Every winter the Canal & River Trust shut parts of the network down for a time in order to do maintenance which often includes taking out broken or old lock gates and replacing them. New lock gates are not something you can just order in from Amazon however, so the CRT have to make their own and in this video I visited their Birmingham workshop to see how the process works.
The third and final part (for the moment) in this mini-series about unusual, rare and vintage narrowboat engines. Here we meet Keith Lodge who had a replica working boat built to his specification including a two-cylinder National DA2 engine from 1949.
This is Part 2 of a three part mini-series about classic / vintage narrowboat engines as often heard chugging past on the canal. In this episode, I talked to Rob Goodman about his 1940s-era Kelvin K2 and its unusual starting procedure!
This is Part 1 of a three part mini-series about classic / vintage narrowboat engines as often heard chugging past on the canal. In this episode, I talked to Chris Wenham aboard NB Herbert about his Russell Newbury engine.
What do narrowboat brokers do and should you use one, either to sell or buy a boat? These questions and more are answered in a sit-down interview with James Millsop of brokerage firm Rugby Boats, based at Stowe Hill Wharf in Weedon, Northamptonshire.