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by Tim MarrowPosted on Posted in Canal Blog, Featured articles, Narrowboaters knowledge, Navigation articles

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The Cambridgeshire waterways are a very relaxed place to be and there aren’t too many rules and regulations to remember. However, if you’re new to boating, these five tips should help your first cruise to go more smoothly.

  1. Overtake at a Leisurely Pace

If you intend to overtake another craft, allow the boat ahead of you enough time to slow down. The skipper may indicate which side they would prefer you to pass them, although it is usual to overtake on the left because narrowboats cruise on the right. Make sure that you overtake slowly to avoid creating too much wash.

  1. Keep Below the Speed Limit

Although the general limit on the inland waterways is 4mph, the usual speed for travel is slower. Cruising too fast will cause a wash to hit the bank, and will create waves that disturb moored boats.  The speed limit can be different on rivers and broader canals. On the River Great Ouse the limit is 4mph and 7mph; these are signposted. Tidal river navigation speed limit is 15mph. Remember also that a river current may increase or decrease your cruising speed. You should also slow down on the approach to locks, bends, junctions and bridges.

  1. Give Way at ‘Bridge Holes’

If you meet another boat at a bridge, the boat closest to the bridge hole has right of way. Because of reduced visibility you should approach bridges slowly. If you need to give way, wait on the right side of the navigation, allowing enough room for the oncoming boat to pass yours. If someone gives way to you, be sure to acknowledge their courtesy with a nod or friendly wave. On a river, the boat coming downstream has right of way.

  1. Learn One Sound Signal

A bridge hole, junction, tunnel or blind bend is the perfect opportunity to sound your horn and let other boaters know that you are approaching. There are a specific set of sound signals set out in The Boaters Handbook, but most boaters are simply aware that one long blast means “Boat coming through!”

  1. Improve Your Skills

If you want to take a canal holiday, but feel a bit daunted at the thought of operating the boat, we operate a one day training course in boat handling. Two ladies who completed the course in September 2014 said:

“A brilliant course, has given me a lot more confidence. A most enjoyable day and very informative.”

“The best parts of the course were turning and mooring and seeing an otter.”

The course covers all the basics, including boat safety, deck work, helmsmanship, locks and mooring: RYA Inland Helmsman Courses. Alternatively, an instructor can accompany you for a day during your holiday and train up to three crew members.

Peggy ~ The Narrowboat Wife

Disclaimer: This cruising advice is for general guidance only. If you are unsure about any element of canal boat navigation and operation, seek advice or training from an experienced skipper.

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by Tim MarrowPosted on Posted in Canal Blog, Featured articles, Narrowboaters knowledge, Navigation articles

The Fens Waterways Link is something that’s going to really change boating for boaters around Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. It’s the biggest waterway development project in Europe. The plan is to link Lincolnshire and the River Witham with Cambridgeshire and the River Great Ouse.

The impressive six-phase scheme will create about 50 miles of new navigations and will allow boats to use an additional 145 miles of waterways, linking the cathedral cities of Lincoln, Peterborough and Ely with the market towns of Boston, Spalding, Crowland and Ramsey. (Ely is currently the top destination for our hire boat customers.)

The project involves canals being cut, drains being made navigable and new locks being built. This venture, organised by the Environment Agency and funded by the Regional Development Agency, will create a new circular navigable route.

You may also have heard of the planned Bedford and Milton Keynes Waterway which will open up a route for broader beam boats between The Fens and the rest of Britain’s canal network.

Two schemes were originally proposed back in 1809 to link the waterways, although that intended route was slightly different. The two ideas were put before Parliament in 1811, but were unsuccessful. The proposal was raised again in 1815 and 1828, but the link was still not built.

However, Phase 1 was eventually completed in March 2009 and was celebrated with the official opening of Boston Lock, connecting the Haven at Boston with the South Forty-Foot Drain.

Phases 2 and 3 of the plan will link the South Forty-Foot Drain with the River Glen at Guthrams Gowt, and with the Glen above Surfleet Seas End Sluice along Vernatt’s Drain. Full details of all of the proposed works are available at www.fenswaterways.com.

The new navigations will offer plenty more opportunities for adventure for boaters beginning a holiday from our hire boat base in March. Until the work is complete, check out the existing routes that can be explored with Fox Narrowboats: River Ouse, Nene and Middle Level.

Fens_waterways

Image credit: Thanks to Old Moonraker for making this map available under a Creative Commons licence.

 

 

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by Tim MarrowPosted on Posted in Canal Blog, Customer Reviews

day boat hire peterborough

“We took March Adventurer out to Whittlesey and back on Saturday (four adults and two small children). It was a great day, the team at Fox’s was very accommodating and the driving tutorial made the whole thing a doddle (mostly!). Had a fab time, and would highly recommend it to anyone!”

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by Tim MarrowPosted on Posted in Books TV online narrowboating, Canal Blog, Featured articles

English canals, waterways and narrowboats are rarely featured in film and television, so something that is hardly ever depicted is an on-screen character that lives on a boat.

The world of canals and waterways can seem so enigmatic and romantic to those who’ve never been on board; even more fascinating then is when you notice that somebody lives aboard. Because “liveaboards,” as they are affectionately known, are rarely seen on the silver screen, I love it when I discover a fictional character that lives on a boat. Here are three that you may not have heard of.

This_Year's_Love Sophie – This Year’s Love

Everyone’s pretty much forgotten about This Year’s Love, a 1999 British rom-com that included Kathy Burke among the lead roles and featured indie rock artist David Gray as a pub singer. (He wrote the film’s title track This Year’s Love.) I loved it for two reasons; firstly because it was set in Camden Town in the late ‘90’s and I lived in Camden at that same time; and secondly because I had dreams of living on a narrowboat and the character of Sophie lived on a narrowboat. Sophie (Jennifer Ehle) was a posh single mum with dreadlocks whose boat was moored on a tranquil and leafy part of the Regents Canal with the Kings Cross gas cylinders offering a dramatic cityscape in the background.

The storyline follows a group of thirty-somethings partner swapping and bed hopping over the course of three years, on their individual quests to find a love that lasts. Rodean-educated Sophie conceals her difficult past behind a facade of bossiness.

This film is a sort of grittier version of Four Weddings and a Funeral and is a really enjoyable comedy. It’s more about Camden and the characters who live there, than living on a boat, but I loved the few scenes that featured Sophie’s boat, just to get a glimpse into what I imagined to be a very romantic lifestyle.

BARGEE Hemel – The Bargee

The Bargee is a classic British comedy from 1964 which follows Hemel Pike (Harry H. Corbett) and his cousin Ronnie (Ronnie Barker) taking a cargo-carrying pair of narrowboats up the Grand Union to Birmingham. The script is by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson (who wrote ‘Steptoe and Son’) and although it’s a comedy, there is also a poignant nostalgia in seeing so many working boats moored up side by side, smoke puffing from their stove chimneys with a bloke on the towpath painting roses onto his Buckby can. The storyline covers the decline of cargo carrying on the canals and the gradual disappearance of the boat families’ traditional lifestyles.

Hemel, so named because his parents were moored at Hemel Hempstead when he was born, is a cheeky canal Casanova and has a girl at every lock. Despite the decline in available work Hemel refuses to leave the canals and is protective of his traditional way of life. The cast is an array of well-loved British actors such as Derek Nimmo, Eric Sykes, Richard Briers, Julia Foster, Eric Barker, Miriam Karlin, and Hugh Griffith. Dating so many girls at once can only lead to trouble, and Hemel incurs the wrath of one girl’s father: a fierce and angry lock keeper. This is an old-style British comedy packed with beautiful scenes of the waterways and old pairs of working boats.

the river Sarah – The River

Sarah is almost cheating by being on this list, because although she lives on a boat at the beginning of the series, her story centres around the fact that when her narrowboat breaks down in the village of Chumley-on-the-Water she temporarily stays in a house with Davey the lock keeper. The River was a British TV series from 1988 starring David Essex, Katy Murphy and David Ryall. Davey Jackson (Essex) is a loveable Cockney who grows fond of the neurotic and brusque Sarah MacDonald. The romance is a volatile one, and is often interrupted by Davey’s Aunty Betty and Davey’s deputy Tom Pike. This six part series also shows brief glimpses of the eccentric and strange villagers that inhabit Chumley-on-the-Water.

Curious?

With so few boaters being depicted in mainstream film and television the live-aboard lifestyle remains somewhat mysterious to this day. This results in canal boaters being asked a huge variety of curious questions such as: Have you got a shower? Do you empty your toilet into the canal? And, Can you stand up in there?!

If you’re canal-curious and often tempted to watch boats go by, and quiz boaters about their unusual lifestyle, why not take a short narrowboat holiday break and experience the lifestyle for yourself? We’re based on the Fenland waterways; the uncrowded alternative to the Norfolk broads.

New here? Subscribe on the right to receive regular tips, stories, news and advice related to canals and boating. (We never share or sell email addresses, we’ll only be sending you blog articles.)

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by Paula SyredPosted on Posted in Canal Blog, Foxes News
Welches Dam

picture courtesy of East Anglian Waterways Association

Waterways campaigner and Fox Boats mooring customer John Revell have recently had a letter published in the Inland Waterways Association magazine.

“I am writing to support Ralph Knowles’ letter in the Winter edition of Waterways. My boat is shown in the magazine as I reversed into Horseways Lock with Jonathan Chambers on 5 April 2014. I was one of the last boaters to use Horseways Channel and Welches Dam Lock before the route was severed in 2006 when the Environment Agency deliberately piled the entrance to the lock. That was nearly 9 years ago.

The present Peterborough Branch Committee and their predecessors have tried and tried to get some restoration work started but the Environment Agency seems to have blocked all attempts to make any progress.

You might say this doesn’t matter when an alternative route along Well Creek is possible. The Well Creek Trust (all volunteers) and the Middle Level Commissioners (who receive no income at all from boat licenses) have done a really good job but Well Creek is shallow in parts with some very low bridges. What if the Mullicourt Aqueduct or a section of embankment failed?

Many canal and waterways routes have been restored to full navigation after falling into disuse. The list is impressive and we probably all have our favourites. Examples include the Southern Stratford, the Upper and Lower Avon Navigations, the Kennet and Avon canal, the Ashton canal, Huddersfield Narrow canal, the Rochdale canal and the Droitwich canals. The Falkirk Wheel has been built, the Anderton Lift has been restored, Standedge and Leek tunnels have been re-opened, the Ribble Link established and a new route into Liverpool created. Many other restoration schemes have been completed or are well under way.

I think that the main problem in restoring Welches Dam Lock and Horseways Channel is not finance (or lack of it) but of will. The technical difficulties involved in restoring the short stretch of leaking Horseways Channel appear to be similar to the leaking canal bed at Limpley Stoke that was fixed as just a small part of the complete restoration of the Kennet and Avon canal. Rebuilding Welches Dam lock is not rocket science; staff at the Canal & River Trust (formerly British Waterways) and IWA’s Waterways Recovery Group do this all the time.

I cannot believe that this state of affairs would have been allowed to continue for so long had it occurred on the main canal system or had it involved the Canal & River Trust / British Waterways. Would not IWA (nationally) have sorted this out by now?

Why was IWA set up many years ago? Surely it was founded to deal with this sort of seemingly intractable problem?”

Not only did John receive a reply in the magazine, yesterdays IWA bullitin contained the following Welches Dam

Well done John for your continued campaigning on a local waterway. It is good to see that the Peterborough Branch are working in conjunction with the East Anglian Waterways Association on Project Hereward again.

by Tim MarrowPosted on Posted in Canal Blog

Photo 27-01-2015 17 25 47

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by Tim MarrowPosted on Posted in Canal Blog, Customer Reviews

swiftfox_rear_4

“Had a brilliant time at the weekend at Fox Narrowboats. It was my second hen do and not only did they decorate the boat for me, but also gave me a badge and sash which was so nice and totally unexpected! We had a brilliant day on the river chilling outside when it was sunny and sitting inside when it got a bit chilly….memories to cherish forever. Thanks everyone at the narrowboat shop for making it happen x x”

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by Tim MarrowPosted on Posted in Canal Blog, Featured articles, Narrowboaters knowledge

In days gone by, those who couldn’t afford shoes or socks would tie a rag around their toes and feet as a make-shift sock. This ‘look’ was worn by scoundrels, criminals and thieves – hence it’s offensive connotations – but I’ve also heard that boys wearing toe rags might hang around canal tunnels. They would offer to leg a working boat through for a cheaper rate than the official leggers might charge – hence they were cheeky little toe rags!

Legging or leggin’ it means to propel a boat through a tunnel (without a towpath) by lying on planks and ‘walking’ along the walls or the roof. Toe rag is now sometimes spelled as tow rag because the original background story has long since been forgotten.

When you begin boating on the cut (the canal) you start to learn all sorts of weird and wonderful slang words and boating terms. Some of my favourites are:

Crack the paddles: A paddle is a ‘trap-door’ that allows or prevents water to flow through a lock gate.  So the phrase just means to wind the paddles up on a lock gate.

Strapping in: This means stopping the boat on a post of some sort using a rope.

Cheesing the ropes: Cheesing is to tidy your ropes by winding them into a lovely spiral shape.

cheesing the ropes

 Fenland boater Amy, from M.BWillow says,

“Some things vary by area. In the Fens, paddles are known as slackers or penstocks and on the Severn a narrowboat is a longboat, and what we call a cabin shaft on the canals is a hookshaft on the Severn.  In the Fens we also call a dock or mooring a staithe, and a man-made drainage channel is a lode.

Amy is a huge fan of historic boats. She says, “Toe rag was used as a slang term to describe Severn canal boats and their steerers! No idea why! As the owner and steerer of my own Severner I find it interesting… if a bit offensive!”

Val Manning, author of the narrowboat novel The Other Side of Solitude says, “Not really canal-related, but a lane is called a drove. You also have a lot of Fenland place names relating to witchcraft, such as Wicken and Coveney.”

Other waterways words are used right across the network; such as butty, which is a cargo narrowboat that has no engine and is towed by one that does. A barge however is a canal or river cargo-carrying boat with a beam (12ft or more) that is about twice that of a narrow boat. The term is often incorrectly used to describe any boat carrying goods on a waterway.

The place where a canal narrows under a bridge is known as a bridge hole and a flight is a series of locks rising uphill with pounds in between them.  Inside each lock you will find a cill, which is a doorstep on which the lock gates sit.

A winding hole is a short length of very wide canal, used as a place to turn a boat around, and it is pronounced ‘whin-ding’; not ‘wine-ding’. It is so named because the wind can be used to help the boat to turn.

However, my favourite canal word is probably Gongoozler; meaning a bystander who enjoys watching the activities of boats and boater as they pass by.

What’s your canal lingo like? Do you have any favourite words or phrases? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

New to boating? You may also like What’s it Like to Actually Steer a Narrowboat?

https://www.foxboats.co.uk/whats-it-like-to-actually-steer-a-narrowboat/

For more ideas to add to this year’s holiday plans, sign up for digital updates from this blog. (We never share or sell email addresses – your details are safe with us.) Just look for ‘Follow Blog’ in the sidebar on the right and get insider knowledge about the Fenland Waterways.

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by Tim MarrowPosted on Posted in Canal Blog

January Featured Photo

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by Tim MarrowPosted on Posted in Canal Blog, Featured articles, Narrowboaters knowledge

Earlier this November the BoatsAndOutboards blog reported that a busy stretch of the Kennet and Avon canal in Bath had to be closed after a 65 ft canal boat sunk. During a stag party boat trip the ‘Langton’ became stuck in a lock in Widcombe, Bath and began to sink. The Canal and River Trust were quick to place pollution mats in the water to minimise diesel pollution; they then began work to remove the boat from the scene.

Whether you’re a leisure boater, hire boater or live-aboard boater, a lapse of concentration can spell disaster – even if you’re an experienced boater.

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Here are three boating mistakes that you wouldn’t want to make.

  1. You’ve Tied the Mid-Rope to a Bollard

If you’re travelling uphill through a lock and the rope runs out of slack then the boat may turn over as it rises. When travelling downhill through a lock a tied-up boat could be left hanging by a rope as the water level falls. Instead; pass the centre rope around a lock-side bollard and back to the steerer on board who can then lengthen or shorten the rope as necessary to steady the boat when the water rushes in. Next, open the paddles slowly so that the boat doesn’t surge about in the current.

  1. You’re Not Watching Both Ends!

Most boaters are very conscious of the fact that you must be wary of the cill at the stern when travelling downhill through a lock. It will be marked in paint on the lock-side so you can be sure of its position. However, you must also pay attention to the rope fender at your bow which can become caught on the front lock gate when rising or falling – especially if your boat is 70ft. If your boat does begin to tip at an alarming angle and begin to take on water, instruct your crew to close the paddles as quickly as possible, and then refill the lock to float the boat once more.

  1. Your Skipper and Crew Aren’t Paying Attention

While enjoying the relaxed feeling of a cruise on the waterways it’s easy to forget that a lock can be a dangerous place and that all those operating the boat and the lock should know how to do so safely. The steerer at the helm should remain fully attentive and crew at the lock-side should continue to check that the lock gates and paddles are being operated safely. It’s quite possible to become distracted if your crew consist of children, teenagers, hen parties or a stag do for example!

And one final thought; don’t rush! No one wins a prize for running beside a lock, or jumping heroically from a boat to the lock-side.

What tips would you add to this list? Have you ever had to drop the paddles in a hurry? Have you ever had any scary moments or near-misses in a lock? Let us know on Facebook.

Peggy ~The Narrowboat Wife

Disclaimer: This advice is for general guidance only. If you are unsure about any element of canal boat navigation and operation seek advice or training from an experienced skipper.

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