Canal Holiday in England

Sounds and smells bring back deep memories: A woman’s laugh and a waft of perfume sweeps me back to my blate adolescence; distant dogs barking and the deep mouldering smell of leafy vegetation recalls travels in Sierra Leone, West Africa; heavy muffled fog, pelting drizzle on tree leaves, and the low chugging and bitter smell of diesel engines puts me back on the canals of Great Britain.

My wife and I fell in love with UK canals quite accidentally. During our first US Air Force tour in England, my parents came for a visit. My mother related something she had read and wanted to try—an interesting activity called “canal boating.” With two toddler daughters, aged 2 and 3, you can imagine my wife’s and my reluctance to go on a drive-it-yourself, open-deck, boat trip. But go we did.

Built in the 18th and 19th centuries and before the advent of rail travel, these clay-lined troughs of limit and travelwater totaled 4,700 miles (7,600 km) at its height (including a 2,700-mile (4,345 km) web of connected canals). This enabled haulage of raw materials inland and finished goods out to other cities and coastal ports. With the advent of rail, able to outstrip a canal boat’s 30-ton haulage limit and travel faster, the canal system fell to disuse until the 1950’s and ‘60’s when leisure cruising became popular.

We booked our first trip, a 3-day cruise from south of Banbury into Oxford and back. This was agreeable to mom and we thought that would tick the box. However, by the time we returned to the marina, we had scoured the guidebooks, planning a week-long trip for the next time my parents visited.

That first trip was over 35 years ago. My wife and I have since taken almost 2 dozen canal boat vacations; most included our daughters, some were with my parents, one with my wife’s mother, even two with just my wife and me. I remember celebrating our 25th anniversary on our 15th canal boat holiday. But we had never cruised with friends. Interestingly, we have never vacationed with friends that involved everyone traveling to the holiday location.

Neighbor friends, a couple who are avid travelers, wanted to try their hand at canal boating but did not want to venture it solo or without experienced crewmates. In 2020, they asked if Linda and I would come along for their trip and, of course, we were very pleased to agree. Then came the pandemic. It took 2 years before we were permitted to travel overseas on this adventure. We finally took that holiday boat trip in June 2022.

While canal boating was a first for the two couples we were joining, traveling with friends was a new experience for my wife and me. Knowing how navigating the canals and locks sometimes tested the mettle of our marriage, we wanted to be careful to make the trip as enjoyable as possible for our friends. We had a pre-trip meeting with our neighbors to orient them to canal boating and to discuss routing (as well as be truthful about occasional communication and relationship challenges that can and have occurred on the waterways). Every couple has been married for decades and so were not surprised by this caution.

Traveling the canals is not for everyone. First, if you want action, you will get bored! The speed limit is 4 knots or slow enough not to leave a wash along the canal edge, whichever is SLOWER. You will watch the countryside drift past, able to observe individual flowers and fauna at length, hour after hour. Of course, that is if the weather doesn’t drive you below deck to the small interior.

Because most locks on the canal (which you must work yourself) are just over 7 feet wide, boats must be 6 foot 10 inches to 7 feet wide maximum on the outside berth. The inside of a canal boat requires creative use of space along a single corridor down one side or the other. Configurations vary depending on hull length (limited to no more than 70 feet), engine placement, bathroom locations, galley and dining area layout, and sleeping areas. The feel is similar to a recreation vehicle or motor home (8-9 feet wide), but even more cramped—though what you lose in width, you can surpass in length. You need to like each other’s company since you cannot get very far away while you are under way.

If I were to say that canal boating is completely relaxing, I would be lying. It is very enjoyable cruising leisurely along the canals—except when you have two people guiding the person at the tiller, giving apparently conflicting instructions (sorry, Sonja!). And when it comes to locking, while they use a methodical process and have had the mechanics standardized for centuries, it is not without its hazards.

River locks are operated by professionals so you can simply drive your boat. However, when inland, the canal route needs to travel up or down the terrain. To do this, you must operate the locks and work them on your own.

Locks involve a heavy door (sometimes double doors) at each end of a lock chamber, underwater panels, called paddles, that you raise and lower through a gear set to fill/empty the lock chamber, and using a handle called a windlass. The gates can weigh up to 2 tons each and it takes a bit of pushing on the beam extending from the gate to open and close them. To go uphill, you must fill the chamber to raise your boat to the level of the upper canal. To go downhill, you empty the chamber to get to the level of the lower canal.

If you are working the lock on your own, you use narrow walkways across each gate to get to the far side gears that open/close the paddles. There are handrails to hold, but any misstep can be hazardous. To open/close the paddles you use gears that are usually exposed, so any missed turn can result in either catching your hand or clothes in a gear, or a flying windlass as the gear spins without its catch.

Additionally, when locking down, if the boat sits too far back in the lock, it can get hung up on the cill (sort of the threshold of the upper gate) as the chamber empties. Depending on how deep the lock is, the bow can then dip so low that the front of the boat could begin to fill with water. Fortunately, the cill location is prominently marked along the chamber near the upper gate.

We gradually found our rhythm working the locks. As a group, you can have people working various parts of the lock in sequence; again, it is an exercise in communication as we learn how each other works and who needs to be instructing whom (sorry, Chris!).

Our trip went amazingly well as we took turns at the tiller and others idled on the back deck or sat in the open bow, sipping wine and catching up with each other as the beautiful countryside passed by.

We had a couple of "conflicts" between boats and a couple of hard bumps (not of our making), but all went well and we didn't lose our deposit. Sometimes we cruised on while having lunch, other times we would moor and walk to a local pub or restaurant. Overall, the weather was with us as well.

A wonderful thing about travelling on the canals is the routing. Since most were constructed before railways were built that can be routed up and over hills, canals follow nap of the earth routing as much as possible. This means you end up in very rural areas, farmland, and small villages; places untouched by the “progress” of mass transportation and motorways.

As our canal trip came to an end we talked about what we enjoyed and whether we would be interested in trying another canal holiday on a different route. Some of us enjoyed the trip and were interested in having another go, and others did not find it as enjoyable, which is perfectly okay.

For my wife and I, it was a special experience since it was the first time we had vacationed with friends rather than with family, and we would love to do that more.