by WWC Mike Todd

July 1967 and Christine and I started our marriage with a honeymoon on a hired canal boat, from Canal Cruising in Stone. We had booked a fortnight and the brochure told us that we should be able to do ‘the ring’.

We were to discover that this included going down the Trent and Mersey, Staffs and Worcs and up the Shroppie, with a side excursion to Llangollen canal in North Wales.

Although leisure boats at that time were almost as primitive as working boats, but with just a little more room (not a lot!) we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and were clearly bitten by the bug.

We Bought A Boat!

During the next year we bought a very small boat (20ft), originally one of the first BW day boats but was sold to us for cruising purposes! Our small front cabin had enough headroom to sit but just about stand. The water supply came from a plastic container that had to be hand pumped into the washbasin. Occasionally we would dump its contents into the under bunk space where we also kept all our clothes. There was just a two-ring gas hob, no electric (we used a small Camping Gaz lamp when it became too dark to see) and a bucket and shovel Elsan. Waste Disposal service places were a modernisation yet to appear on the canals and Elsan contents had to be buried in a place where no human would tread (aka hedgerows).

I can still remember approaching the huge barge locks on the Aire and Calder. Then, they were all manned (today we would say staffed!) and the gates would mysteriously open ahead to admit us to the cavernous interiors. Near Ferrybridge, we passed the occasional train of Tom Pudding boats carrying coal from a nearby colliery to the then quite new power station. But by now a working narrowboat was a very rare sighting.

All Change!

Along came 1970 and we moved to Whitley Bay north east of Newcastle and our son was born soon after the spring move. We decided to sell the boat, as occasional use would be impossible that far away from the canal network. Having had a long final trip with baby on board we were to leave it (boat not baby!) at Braunston Marina. The boat sold at auction for a fraction of what we paid, but we probably did have our money’s worth of use out of it.

We were finding that getting to and from the boatyards was always a challenge! It helped that in those days it was still possible to send a trunk ahead by Pickfords removals so we did not have to carry too much luggage on the trains.

Near yet so far

In 1981, having moved to Milton Keynes we found ourselves very close to the Grand Union (we could see it from our garden). Time pressures of work and voluntary activities meant that just the very occasional trip kept our interest alive. One Easter we only made it into central London via the Grand Union and Paddington Arm, turning around at Commercial Road Lock above Limehouse Basin.

1990 saw us move to Cornwall to establish a business providing holidays for adults with a learning disability; this meant we could only go away in February for a number of years in warm places, such as the Caribbean, Mauritius and The Gambia. After 13 years of full-on, living on the premises, we gradually started to reduce our involvement, eventually selling the business to our management team.

Our 40th Anniversary Cruise

In 2006 we returned to the canals for a couple of weeks during which we met a couple who were on an extended cruise. This inspired us the following year, for our 40th wedding anniversary, to persuade Wyvern Shipping in Leighton Buzzard to offer us a good deal on six weeks continuous. We especially wanted to navigate all three Pennine crossings as both the Rochdale and Huddersfield had been reopened around the Millennium

The start of our trip coincided with a very wet June. Crossing the River Trent at Redhill to reach the Beston Cut was decidedly hairy! Having made it down the Trent we then reached Stanley Ferry where the River Calder rose very rapidly. We sought shelter for the night in Broadreach lock but one of us, in turns, kept watch on the river level gauge below the lock. The water level reached within a few inches of over-topping into the lock and the Aire and Calder canal – but we survived the night.

After a couple of days we had cabin fever and decided to retreat back to Woodnook Lock. The lock keeper there advised us that we were OK to go via Castleford and thus up to the relative safety of Leeds. I doubt if today’s risk averse advice would have been the same as we had to push hard against the flood stream. (We never did make the other two Pennine canals that year).

But we were still not deterred from using the canals and the following spring began to look for our own boat… More follows in part 2!