When boaters come to visit...

Last week, just as I arrived home I saw this unlikely pair moored up at my local water point. The lovely hotel boats Snipe and Taurus were once again in my local area. Although we have plenty of beautiful pictures on Flickr I couldn’t resist taking a few more of the red-painted boats and traditionally colourful water cans. Even on a gloomy, rainy day these boats are a sight to make you stop and stare (also known as ‘gongoozling’!)

There are very few traditional working pairs of hotel boats on the canal system today. It’s lovely to watch the motor tow the butty towards an ancient ‘bridge hole’, unhurried as they travel onward. Yet Neil, Corinne and the crew can cover a surprising distance in the space of a week, always offering their guests a varied trip that can include big cities and tiny hamlets.

That night Neil and Corinne came round to my boat: It’s always a novelty to have friends to visit who have arrived by boat, knowing that their own home is conveniently moored a short walk away down the towpath. I had just put my two little daughters to bed, but upon hearing the arrival of Neil and Corinne they immediately got up again to see ‘the lady who turns us upside down’! There were a lot of giggles, running about and tickling before Corinne persuaded them back to bed with the promise to visit again in the morning.

I love to chat to Neil and Corinne about their unusual lifestyle, their travels, their boats and adventures, and how they got into it all in the first place. So while the girls obediently settled to sleep in their boatman’s cabin at the back of our boat, I shared a few glasses of wine with my travelling friends and talked about all things boaty. They’ve done many more hours of boating than me and have learned traditional techniques that I’ll never need, like how to take a butty and motor safely into a lock. At the moment I’m reading the memoir ‘Maiden’s Trip’ by Emma Smith. She learned to carry cargo with a traditional working pair during the Second World War and the descriptions in the book make you realise how very different things are manoeuvring a pair of 70ft boats together.

The next morning my youngest (age 3) opened her eyes and immediately said,
“Can I go into the living room?”
“Yes…. But why?”
“To see if Corinne’s still there!”
I explained that Corinne had returned to her own boat, but shortly after breakfast Corinne arrived with home-baked biscuits for the girls. Her boats were already in the lock beginning to climb the Marsworth flight and since then they have travelled all the way to London.

I noticed on Twitter recently that Corinne shared a cool picture of narrowboats moving faster than lorries on the M25 and smiled to myself. You may think the lifestyle is slow and relaxed but they sure do get around. As I write this they are now preparing for a trip up the River Lea. Catch up with them soon and grab your own cabin (much more affordable than hiring a whole narrowboat),  with a £50 discount .

Disclosure: I was paid to write this on Neil and Corinne's hotel boats blog but re-published here as it is also part of my Real Life! I realise I am not writing much about my real life lately and this is because work and other personal commitments are making me super-busy at the moment!

Peggy
x

The day I fell in love with canals

Stoke Bruerne in Spring

Blisworth has a special meaning for me, because it was here that I met my first true love: a little red narrowboat called Emily Rose. In my late twenties she became an inexpensive first home for a girl who couldn’t afford a mortgage on a London flat.

Aptly enough, it was Independence Day (4^th July) when I took ownership of my first boat and left the brokerage in Bugbrook.   I enlisted the help of a friend who knew how to steer a narrowboat and headed south down the Grand Union towards London.

Before long we arrived at the Blisworth tunnel, and dizzy with the excitement of my first big canal adventure I wrote a bad poem in its honour; “It’s a mile and three quarter, And dripping with water…”
 Originally boats were legged through this tunnel and the leggers hut can still be seen on the bank at the southern end. There is no towpath but the tunnel is wide enough for boats travelling in opposite directions to pass one another. As we chugged through the darkness my steering friend re-told the ghost story of some poor souls who were crushed during the building of the tunnel. They do say that sometimes you may see an alternative tunnel branching off from the current route. This ghostly tunnel is lit by candlelight, as it would have been when the navvies were building it before the tragedy happened…

At the southern end of the tunnel we emerged into the leafy cutting of Stoke Bruerne and moored up for the night. Stoke Bruerne is a charming canal side village full of waterways history. In the days of working boats Sister Mary Ward lived beside the canal offering healthcare to the working boaters and their families. Of course there is a waterside pub to visit, plus boat scales, a double arched bridge, and a series of locks. The waterways museum is in an old corn mill and exhibits include a traditional narrowboat and a reconstruction of a butty boat cabin. You will see steam and diesel engines, historical clothing, cabinware, brasses, paintings and photographs. The museum shop sells books, postcards and other souvenirs. In Stoke Bruerne you can really immerse yourself in the rose-painted nostalgia of the canal era. By this point, and only one day into my first journey I was already in love with the whole lifestyle.

The next day we carried on to visit a church in the village of Cosgrove and then cruised quietly through idyllic rural landscapes. Even at Milton Keynes the canal misses the city centre, instead meandering around the edges giving you a completely different perspective to what you might expect. There was so much open country on our journey and we travelled undisturbed by the sounds of modern traffic, interrupted only by occasional sleepy villages. I felt that I was seeing England in a completely different way.

If you’d like to see the same stretch, not only with your own steerer, but also someone to cook and wash up for you, you may like the Canal Voyagers Hotel Boats Market Harborough to Leighton Buzzard cruise departing on Friday 3rd May 2013.

They are now offering a £50 discount on the first 12 cruises of the year! Click here to get the Late Availability Voucher. 

Disclosure: I was paid to write this post on the Canal Voyagers blog. It was my choice to re-publish it here to offer my readers the discount voucher.