Stories about boats and waterways
Posts including videos
London’s canals and rivers are becoming ever more crowded with boaters as people flock to the capitals waterways, drawn by the lure of a seemingly idyllic and possibly cheaper lifestyle. But is the dream for real or is reality not quite as rosy? I went down to the big smoke to find out.
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Following on from the last video, about wooden narrowboats, which are quite rare on the canals, here’s another wooden narrowboat which is even rarer – a “fly boat”, the parcels service of the canal network.
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The Wooden Canal Boat Society in Ashton-under-Lyne is a wonderful group of enthusiasts who not only renovate and bring new life to decaying ancient wooden narrowboats but also provide valuable services to the local community. And, curiously, the boats have been restoring the volunteers as well.
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A few weeks ago I went past the well-known historic narrowboat “Dover” on the Grand Union Canal but its looks belie its actual interior so I went back for a proper snoop around.
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Regular viewers will know I have long had an interest in – some might say an obsession about – very short narrowboats on the British canals. The time had come for me to go and have a look around a couple and see if they are for me.
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I went to visit a unique ferry boat in south Wales. This is the story of that trip.
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This is the third and final part of my cruise along the Middle Level Navigations across the Cambridgeshire Fens on a borrowed narrowboat, in which I go up Well Creek.
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This is part 2 (of 3) of my cruise along the Middle Level Navigations on the Cambridgeshire Fens, as I took the narrowboat I’d borrowed from Whittlesey to March. It was windy and the skies were dull.
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I was lent a narrowboat for a week by two viewers of the channel! Starting in Peterborough, I took the boat off the River Nene and onto the Middle Level Navigations. This is part 1 of 3 of that week-long cruise.
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This is an uninterrupted (almost, there are a couple of camcorder battery changes and a re-fuelling stop) video recording from the camera on the bow of a narrowboat as it travelled along the Grand Union Canal in Northamptonshire from Gayton Junction to Weedon Bec.
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