Vlog 341: You can’t hurry ‘Glove

My good friend Lorna of “Lorna Jane Adventures” on YouTube has just taken delivery of a brand new narrowboat, after two years of waiting. It’s a 25-foot Aintree Beetle which she has named Foxglove.

The Beetle is one of a range of four standardised designs from Aintree which makes them quicker (supposedly) to produce than a fully custom boat, and amazingly it has space for four people to sleep aboard (one double and two single berths) so that’s ideal for families or very good friends. There’s even a very narrow shower and toilet cubicle plus galley with hob and oven. It’s really quite a marvel of packaging even if there are some compromises in order to squeeze everything in. The boat is powered by a 20 horsepower Betamarine diesel engine.

Lorna is currently mooring it on the Leicester Arm of the Grand Union canal so we took a trip along to the bottom of Foxton Locks. There the canal has a junction with an arm that leads six miles east to Market Harborough and while we didn’t go all the way along, we toddled a little way down it until we stopped for lunch, tackling two swing bridges as we went (and again on the way back, of course).