September/October '04
Aboard, Abroad

by John Coxon
   I was born in the port of Plymouth, Devon (alas, missing the Pilgrim Fathers’ departure for the New World by some 384 years), spent the first four years of my life in military accommodation in the naval dockyard there, and the next 20 or so years living at the seaside town (and cross-channel port) of Weymouth on the Dorset coast with the sea on my doorstep, fine beaches, rocky pools and the harbor and boatbuilders’ yards as my playground. I guess this is why I never want to be far away from any stretch of water, salty or fresh, and would never miss the chance to get into a boat of any kind. More lately, I moved north, with the sea half an hour’s drive away, but happily, my area is networked with inland waterways.

Crossing the Pond
   It’s great that thousands of Americans annually cross the Big Pond to tour England, taking in the culture and the history and soaking up our shared heritage. Most will elect to tour this island nation in a hired car or opt for organized itineraries in coaches. But the obvious tourist sights get mighty crowded in the holiday season, and, well, one highway looks pretty much like another as you rush from place to place. I like to think that boaters are independent spirits with a mindset different from the regular crowd, so I would like to propose a better, less stressful way of experiencing my country.

Our Best-Kept Secret
   I am going to whisper this to you — keep it quiet and share it only with your boating chums: England is laced with a marvelous system of inland waterways, and there are very few heritage sites in the country that are far from a navigable canal, so I encourage you to consider this most elegant way to get around.
   Being an avid photographer for the past 30 or so years and with my love of water and boats, be it sea or canal, I am so lucky to live just a short drive from an amazing place — Worsley . In fact, it is the birthplace of our canal system, and the very spot where it all started is a place I never tire of visiting — it is beautiful and dripping with history. The canal is named after the Duke of Bridgewater, a local, wealthy landowner who had underground coal mines at Worsley. His problem back in the mid-1700s was that transporting coal by packhorse was not economical, so he came up with the idea of a canal system — revolutionary thinking at the time. He halved the cost of transporting his coal overnight, and his innovation led to what we call “canal mania,” as industrialists all over the county copied his example. Soon we had a comprehensive national canal system, most of which is still navigable today.
   The Bridgewater Canal starts at Worsley and is a great waterway, unusual because it has no locks to manually operate and navigate, but if you hire a cruising “narrowboat,” from there you can link into, for example, the extensive Leeds Liverpool Canal and other parts of the national network. Bridgewater also commissioned a stone aqueduct, later to be replaced by the Victorians with a metal swing aqueduct that is still in use today and enables you to actually cruise over the mighty Manchester Ship Canal. At Worsley, along with other heritage delights you will also see the original dry docks, which are also still in regular use, a testament to the simple technology of bygone times.

Did He Say ‘Narrowboats’?
   If you are interested in cruising England’s canals, may I suggest you look at narrowboats? You could hire conventional modern craft, and there are even companies which offer hotel boats, where passengers just sit back and let someone else worry about all other things, as well as self-drive day boats to give you a taste of traveling by boat when you don’t want to commit your whole stay on the water. But why not directly experience the canals in a traditional craft? The narrowboat is a masterpiece of internal design and intelligent use of available space with every modern convenience — imagine your home condensed and squeezed into a hull up to 60 feet long and only 7 feet wide.
   Narrowboats were once the floating homes of folks who lived and worked the canal system. In the early days, boats were towed by horses (you can still see the rope burns etched into the edges of canal bridges if you look hard); now they are usually propelled by reliable, steady diesel engines. The controls wouldn’t tax a 5-year-old: a single lever alters engine speed and selects forward, neutral and reverse gears — very simple to use. You steer from the stern cockpit holding the brass sleeve on the tiller. At times, you will ease through tunnels and gaps with possibly only a few spare inches on either side. Canal boat-hire companies will give you basic training, and most souls quickly master the essentials. There is, of course, a speed limit — four miles an hour, just the right pace for laid-back days.

Find Out More
   With regard to making inland waterways holiday arrangements, we have one wonderful website that is really comprehensive at <www.canaljunction .com> — it covers everything you need to know about the entire national waterways system, the boats, history, everything. The website always recommends that you book only with family owned and run narrowboat holiday hire firms. Many have online brochures with full details of boats, recommended cruising routes, hints and prices, but the site includes contact addresses so you can have printed versions sent to you. To help in your planning, the website is organized by region with clickable maps and links to canal systems in either the North, the Midlands or the South of England. There are a variety of options to chose from depending on how independent you want to be and how much time you want to spend this way, ranging from day boats to boats you can hire for three or four weeks.
   The season runs from early March until the end of October, but some firms operate year-round. Narrowboats will have between two and eight berths, although you can find newer companies that offer 10- and 12-berth narrowboats. Some hire boats are original craft that have been converted to all “mod cons,” as we say (i.e., modern conveniences), but there is a whole industry now reflecting the ever-growing popularity of canal cruising and living aboard where new boats are custom built but follow very closely the traditional model in terms of general appearance and traditional livery.

A Typical Family-Run Narrowboat Hire Company
   Now lets take a look at one example of these English, family-run canal-boat-hire companies, specifically, Claymore Navigation Ltd. I chose Claymore simply because they are the only company based on our wonderful local Bridgewater Canal, and incidentally they have a website at <www.claymoore.co.uk> that offers the best insight into typical boat layout and what you get in the best packages. They have a range of vessels from two to eight berths, and with single-lever-controlled, four-cylinder, water-cooled diesel engines that are hydraulic and therefore have no noisy gear box! Claymore has a nice system of induction for those new to craft of these dimensions. Having loaded up your things, a member of the company will walk you through a comprehensive manual and take you from bow to stern explaining the boat to you. Then he’ll go with you and talk you through the Preston Brook Tunnel and the Dutton Lock . He’ll stay on the boat until he’s given you that confident start, then he’ll leave you to get on with your holiday.