"Take to the Boats" More options ?
"Take to the Boats"
Over the weekend, I visited the Waterways Museum at Gloucester. I
thoroughly enjoyed the visit and was able to see a number of things I
already knew about (like the concrete narrowboat and "opened" Bantam
tug) and a good number of things I didn't. I was particularly
interested in some of the video presentations - a short one on Tom
Puddings (including use of a Jebus, and a sequence showing tipping of
pans at Goole) and a much longer one, "Take to the Boats", made by BW
in the 60's to promote use of canals for pleasure and holidays on
them.
This raised a number of interesting points. For a start, BW ran a
regular wide-beam Hotel Boat service from Nottingham to Lincoln and
also ran wide-beam trip boats (which were advertised as being
available for private functions) on both the southern GU and in
Yorkshire. What happened to them?
Also, it was an eye-opener to see what hire boats were available in
the BW fleet of the time. Apart from 70' campers, there were Water
Babies - a 19' fibreglass cruiser, sleeping 2+2, fitted with an
outboard in a well, a 2 burner gas stove and torches for internal
lighting. There was a 26' 4-berth cruiser on similar lines, and larger
(40-odd foot) cruisers with either central or tiller steering, but
even these were very simple compared with today's most basic hire
boat.
I sometimes feel that modern boats (including the ones I work on) are
over-equipped and a "back to basics" approach might go some way
towards making canal boating more affordable - anybody got any views
on this??
- The 'Fair Lady' featured in the video was the former Leeds & Liverpool
short boat 'Ribble' (1934), converted at Bulls Bridge in the 1950s to
a restaurant boat. Nice to see the captain in full Merchant Navy (?)
uniform and the waitress in those