A long-standing viewer offered me and my “canal wife” (aka good friend) Lorna the use of his boat on the upper River Thames for a few days – thanks Ed! – which we were delighted to accept. This is the first of two videos of that trip.
In July 2019, Toddbrook reservoir nearly breached which would have flooded the town of Whaley Bridge. Today, repairs and reconstruction are well underway so I went along to have a look.
Part 3 of my trip through London (including going along the Regent’s Canal and down to the Thames Flood Barrier) this episode sees a convoy of up to 34 boats heading up the River Thames, under Tower Bridge and along to Teddington.
This is Part 2 of the cruise I was invited on by the St Pancras Cruising Club. We went out onto the River Thames and east towards and through the Thames Flood Barrier, in a convoy of 16 narrowboats.
The Canal & River Trust, the charitable organisation tasked with maintaining the navigations of England & Wales, gets a quarter of its budget from a government grant. It’s just been announced that grant is going to be cut from 2027 onwards, leaving the CRT with a huge hole in its finances, that needs to be plugged. I sat down with the boss of the CRT and asked what the practical effects of the cut will be and what they – and we – can do to stave it off.
The Regent’s Canal runs through much of the middle of London and is a surprisingly peaceful oasis of calm amongst the hustle and bustle of the city. And yes, there is a shark! I joined the St Pancras Cruising Club who’d arrange for a huge convoy of boats to travel along the canal, assembling at Limehouse Basin by the end of the day.
Welcome to the edge-of-your-seat finale of the marathon BCN Challenge 2023, where narrowboaters compete to see who can cover most of the Birmingham Canal Network in 24 hours.
Every year, the Birmingham Canal Navigations Society hosts the 24-hour BCN Challenge with the aim to cover as much of the 100-mile BCN as possible. This is my account of being a passenger on the 2023 Challenge.
The Montgomery canal which runs from Shropshire into north Wales is absolutely beautiful but only parts of it are in water and useable by boats. Efforts are underway to connect the whole length and this video covers the latest developments.
In order to film the boats featured in my last video, we took them out for a cruise. It was raining. Here is the footage from that gentle trip along the canal.