“There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats” wrote Kenneth Graeme in Wind in the Willows!
And he was right! And what was also interesting was that ‘boats’ don’t have to have sails (my preferred option) – they can actually have engines and very unpowerful ones at that! It is still fun!
For a friends 30th, a group of us hired 3 for a weekend and pottered/puttered around the canals of Cheshire. Lots of fun! Life goes pretty slowly – in fact you can get off and walk faster if you fancy it! But it is really good fun and very sociable! The lock gates are hard work, but pretty exciting! And as one might expect for river banks, there are plenty of pubs to visit along the way!
Cheshire Canals – March 2009
As you would expect we had plenty of fun and excitement… By the time we had reached the first lock – one boat (not ours I might add) had already had a visit from the charter company to put a rev-limiter on the engine to slow it down…
Later in the day the girls on our boat got off and walked when the boys tried to turn the boat round in the canal. The issue with this was that the boat was longer than the canal was wide, which meant a blocked canal…
I must point out that all this excitement was at about 4 miles an hour… I rather think we redeemed ourselves by helping others tie their boats up properly, always helpful to have the sail-based nautical knowledge!
