Dangers of boating and not keeping your eyes on the ball!

[Soundings]

Quite frankly how we ever did the Warwickshire Ring without any hiccups I cannot imagine.   I was at the helm the whole time of a 40 foot narrow boat.      I had never seen a narrow boat before boarding.     Oh I have just recalled the wonderful trip through Birmingham , past all those delapidated old factory buildings , smelly outfall pipes, everything and the kitchen sink floating in the canal,  grounding on god knows what. Being pelted by bricks from one of the walk over bridges by kids.     I now know why I pefer the Broads.

When was that Hylander? I have been cruising the canals on an off for over 20 years an have never experience any hostilities, although I accept it happens (we have experienced it on the Broads even). We just avoid what might be rough areas.

 

The fact is that antisocial behaviour happens everywhere but given there are over 2000 miles of navigable connected waterways and only 150 on the Broads the odds are somewhat skewed

[ranworthbreeze]

Hi Colin,

 

Many years ago we were threatened on the Leeds & Liverpool near the Preston end with a gun, needless to say we stayed in the middle of the canal and kept going. We endured the drunks under the built over section going through Manchester, but it was the druggies that were more a problem and were intimidating to some smaller crews.

 

We had a brick thrown at the boat above the yacht station at Great Yarmouth which hit one of the windows but luckily bounced off.

 

As you say there are problems everywhere.

 

Going through Birmingham is a delight at Gas Street Basin, canal side bistro's, pedestrian bridges, bars and a block of most of the well know eating out establishments overlooking the canal. It is a pity that the likes of other canal side cities do not adopt the same policy of embracing the canals or waterways.

 

Regards

Alan 

[Soundings]

As you say, Alan, some are good and some bad. Leicester has a bad reputation but here we have never had a problem whilst others have. It is improving there though but, as in most built up areas, it is school holidays that bring the problems. There are delights also - Gas Street is indeed excellent but look how it was a few years ago. Much the same can be said of Banbury - but even these places can suffer from hooligans like Gt Yarmouth in your case and Norwich in ours.

 

Unfortunately the world is changing and not necessarily for the best....or has it changed :-(

[ranworthbreeze]

Hi Colin,

We went through Banbury this year sadly because of the weather we did not get much further than
Banbury I steered us around the lines of moored boats on both sides of the canal whilst their Canal Festival was on the Sunday afternoon, which took over 2 hours to cover less than a mile from start to finish.

The Centre here is as you say is excellent, we walked back up the canal into the town for our evening meal and did not have any issues but a guess a crew of 6 even if getting on is a bit of a deterrent.

Monday it rained all day so we went know where on Tuesday we went into Oxford by train for the day realising that we would not get into Oxford by boat in the time scale we had.

Regards
Alan

[Soundings]

Good to see you are still active across the boating spectrum though, Alan. There will always be ups and downs, and a growing population will not help, but there is still much fun to be had on the waterways of England, be they broad or narrow.

 

Colin