This week I took to the water with my Dad and Caroline for a spot of canal boating. The timing of this holiday may be regarded as appalling (one week before cross-Atlantic move) or ideal (four days of tranquility before mayhem).
Canal boating involves chugging around waterways at walking pace in a gaily painted coffin that stretches for seventy feet (i.e. massive). Inside it’s like a very posh caravan. Steering it is exactly like driving a 3-bedroom flat.
When you’re out in the quiet and mist and overhanging foliage it’s very Apocalypse Now. Trees low over the water, ducks lurking under the roots. Or strongly reminiscent of The Fabulous Riverboat from the fantastic To Your Scattered Bodies Go. Not knowing what will emerge around leafy corners. Rolling green and quiet on either side.
Then crossing the Avon on an aqueduct, gliding high over the valley below like an epic level of Half Life 2.
Unfortunately I’m currently ‘between cameras’ so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Wildlife, ducks, geese, swans, herons, fish, hawks. Progress is hypnotisingly glacial. Steering requires constant attention. A Zen trance state.
We were down at Caen Hill in the deep south. If you zoom into the map below there are a bunch of reservoirs in a row. These feed an arm-shredding 28 canal locks for hefting your boat 200ft up in the air.
Overall recommended. Now off to Edinburgh and Arbroath again…
20-Oct-07 at 10:40 am | Permalink
Oh you lucky Devil. There’s nothing I love more than canal boating, although I haven’t been since I was twelve.
Do you know that children and drunk people can legally drive barges? At least this is what my parents told me when I was twelve.
23-Oct-07 at 12:55 pm | Permalink
Did yours have a whistle on a bit of string in a half loop that you pulled and it maked this noise –> *H O O O O N K K*
Did it?
Blink.
25-Oct-07 at 7:27 am | Permalink
No. However there was a big black rocker switched marked HORN. If you pressed it extreme loudness erupted from the other end of the boat and would scare the bejesus out of whoever was on deck.