My first broadcasting love was (and still is) radio, long before I got sidetracked into TV or YouTube. These days, anyone can become an audio broadcaster via podcasting, and my interviewee in this video has done just that, telling tales about his life on a narrowboat on the UK canals.
After a hiatus due to “global events” (!), the annual historic canalboat festival came back to the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port. Spread over the Easter weekend, it began with a convoy of narrowboats coming up the Shropshire Union Canal from Chester to Ellesmere, and I went along to document the event.
A sit-down chat about how the new 540W solar panel helped over winter, and mention of the lead carbon batteries I installed in summer 2019.
A new boat show has launched in 2022, held at the NEC in Birmingham. Boat Life Live aims to be the “pre-season” (the organisers are clearly not liveaboards!) show for posh yachties but also includes a solid inland waterways contingent. Here’s my record of my day there.
In October last year, I produced a video documenting the restoration efforts of the Cotswold Canals Trust. One of the major projects they were facing was the need for a tunnel / bridge to let their canal go under a railway line at Stonehouse near Stroud. That was done over Christmas so I popped back for a quick update.
My ideal canalside home has just come up for sale at Barlaston near Stoke on Trent and the owners are seeking a very particular type of person to buy it. Could it be you? I went for a tour because I’m very nosy.
This is a long sit-down interview I did with the Chief Executive of the Canal & River Trust, Richard Parry (two videos)
Wishing my viewers a very Merry Christmas 2021 and a happy new year; plus bonus content of me in the galley knocking up a chocolate mousse.
In some of my early cruising videos I would moan about how much over-hanging vegetation there is along the canals but it turns out there’s a load of work going on behind the scenes in winter to cut the bad stuff back. This is a look at that work.
This is the terrible tale of how a woman who’d always dreamed of living aboard a narrowboat on the canals has had her dreams – and almost the boat – sunk because, she says, she was mislead by the professional surveyor on whose advice she bought the boat.