Up, up and away as I take to the skies to gaze down on the canals from the air. All courtesy of my friend and former BBC “rival” Jon Hunt, aka The Flying Reporter – link to his channel and his version of this video below. Without a doubt the…
Here’s my final leg of the First Great Round Trip, taking me back from just outside Braunston to Yelvertoft marina where I began.
Every year sees the rally of historic working boats at and outside Braunston marina on the Grand Union Canal. I went along to get some footage and talk to the people who make it what it is.
In this instalment, I move off from Braunston and head to the east side of Rugby, firstly to do a bit of laundry and get some diesel, then onwards to Hillmorton Locks. There I take a look around and chat to volunteer lock keeper Maurice Farndon about a restoration project that’s underway.
After a lovely couple of days hanging out in the sunshine at Norton Junction it was time to move the canal boat to Braunston ready for a minor engineering fix. This involved going through the hideous Braunston tunne and six wide locks. There was also a nasty moment for me…
I was supposed to be taking the narrowboat to a winter mooring in Warwickshire but for reasons I explain in this video, I didn’t. Instead of cancelling the trip though – as I had invited a friend along to show me how to do canalboating properly – we went for a two-day cruise to Braunston. This is the video of that trip.
Here’s my first video ‘blog, describing how I came to be in the market for a narrowboat on which to cruise the UK’s canal network and hopefully take life easy for a bit.
It’s a tale of mid-life crisis, near-purchase of a campervan, and a calender from the RNLI.