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Holidays For The Narrow-Minded

Published By British Airways

A Pim Advertising Supplement

By Anne Bolt

AT the little town of Stourport in Worcestershire I join the pair of narrow boats that are to be my home for a week. They are 70 feet long by just under seven feet wide—or should I say seven feet narrow. The motorboat Snipe, has a saloon and bar. It is diesel powered and tows the engineless Taurus, the “butty”, with dining room and kitchen. Each boat accommodates six passengers in one double and four single cabins.

Along the corridor is a hot shower.

It’s surprising how comfortable the miniature cabins are, with plenty of running water for their hand-basins, a tiny wardrobe and honey-coloured pine panelling that makes them look

pleasantly ship-shape.

Stourport still has a few pleasant Georgian corners. The town grew up around the important junction of the Stafford and Worcestershire Canal and the Severn river. (By and large England’s canals were dug out and rivers made navigable at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. The inland waterways sys tem really dates from 1761, after the third Duke of Bridgewater decided to build a canal to carry coal from his mines to Manchester.) In Snipe and Taurus we start our journey from a complex of basins and locks. Stourport used to be the busiest of inland waterway junctions, with warehouses for cargoes, several hostelries for travellers, cottages for bargemasters, and rows of stables for the horses that towed the boats.

Though nowadays commercial traffic has virtually ceased, the basins are bright with pleasure boats, the cus toms house has become a boat club and the clock-tower still functions.

We “lock down” to the tranquil waters of the Severn and slide gently downstream. On the river the speed

limit is six miles an hour upstream and eight downstream. Stretched out in the sun on the cabin top I pretend to myself that I might read a book, but really I indulge in pure inactivity, unqualified relaxation. We pass a Severn Trow, one of the vessels which used to sail up from Bristol to tranship cargo at Stourport, now used by a sailing club.

Holt Reach, lined with weeping willows, is particularly beautiful, and so too are the swans which decorate the river as it winds beside the city

of Worcester. The Gathedral and the Bishop’s Palace overlook the water and on the nght bank the meadows provide wha must be one of Britain s most perfectly situated county cricket

grounds.

Next day we follow the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, finding a different sort of world. The banks seem almost close enough to touch and are lined with water lilies, purple loosestrife and orange balsam. We see herons standing sentinel along the banks. A wooded cutting leads us to

the 236 yard long Dunhampstead Tunnel, the first of five on the route.

There is no towpath through the darkness, and the horses used to walk over the hill while the boatmen pulled themselves along by handrails, some of which one can still see.

We pass Hanbury Wharf, now the site of a marina crammed with small pleasure craft, and a few miles far ther on we get our first glimpse of the “industrial archeology” that is all the rage: the Stoke Works, built in 1828. Now a nostalgic ruin, the installation once pumped brine from underground sources. It was in de mand for industrial use and provided much of the canal’s trade, but event ually, following the pattern general throughout the English canal system, the trade was taken away by the faster railways. The steam locomotive companies ran their lines on routes corresponding to the waterways, and the competition of greater speed and cut-throat rates finally caused the slow, sad commercial death of the canals—though the next 20 years may bring a reversal of that fate.

On our second evening we moor near Stoke Pound and go to look at Avoncroft Open Air Museum, which is less than a mile away across the fields. Among the old buildings res

cued from demolition and re-erected here are a post mill, a granary on curved brick supports and an iron and nail works.

Next morning it is our turn to climb the hills via 58 locks in 16 miles, the most heavily locked sec tion of the whole British waterways system. On the River Severn locks are electrically operated by profes sional lock-keepers, but we have had some practice manhandling the un attended locks on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal. The famous long flight of Tardebigge Locks have well balanced gates with paddles in good order, and we reach the summit in time for lunch—quite proud of our selves.

It is not strictly necessary for pas sengers on hotel boats to work the locks. Our crew comprises Skipper Dave Massey and his wife Marianne plus two girls, Elizabeth, an ex-nurse, and Jane, a medical student. Eliza beth says, “If passengers don’t help, I never think badly of them. It is their holiday”. But of course helping speeds things along and it is fun to learn a new skill. All the girls enjoy navigating. They share cabin duties and cooking watch by watch. Mari anne is an imaginative cook, and the food is excellent.

Of the characters on the way I am struck by retired lock-keeper Mr Edwards, who leans over his canal side gate and reminisces about the days when barge-masters’ draught mules and donkeys were stabled at the bottom of his garden— at a charge of six old pence per night— plus the feed. John Heming, a “lengthman” who had kept a section of the towpath clear for 46 years, told me there was still one horse drawn barge working the “cut”.

Most evenings we enjoy the simple delights of a local canal-side pub with shove-ha’penny and darts. At the little rural Hopton Hotel, the man ager says the barge captains used to sleep in his small top floor rooms, and points out the wide benches in the Public Bar where the “leggers” slept between jobs. In the days be fore engines, these men, lying on their backs on special wing boards, used to push against the tunnel walls with their feet and “leg” the narrow boats along the dark, damp, dank

four and a half mile journey through the King’s Norton Tunnel.

We leave the Worcester and Bir mingham Canal, before it stretches a leafy green finger into the heart of England’s second largest city, and turn on to the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal. At first we amble between well-kept gardens belonging to wealthy suburbs of Birmingham, but soon we are back in our rural en vironment enjoying our 18th century pace and style. There are long beauti ful meandering reaches and some times we cruise level with the tree tops and the occasional cottage chimneys.

I sit on the cabin top chatting to the helmsman and watching for kingfishers. They are such beautiful birds with chestnut breasts, a white throat patch and blue emerald plum

Tardebigge Locks.

age which seems iridescent as they flash across the water.

Skipper Dave, steering Snipe, is happy to teach me canal lore, for in their three years on the water he and his wife have become fascinated by narrow-boat life. Their cabin was colourful in traditional fashion, with gleaming brass, hand-made lace and pretty plates, threaded with ribbon and hung on the walls.

The estuaries and rivers of Britain are navigated by sailors and sea terminology is current. Families working on inland waterways have evolved their own patois. There is no port and starboard for instance.

You call to the “steerer” not helmsman, “Hold in”, ie turn towards the towpath, or “Hold out”. We pass an old narrow-boat, “That’s a Josher”, says Dave. The boat was once owned by Fellows, Morton & Clayton Ltd, and the late Mr Fellows was called Joshua On our last day we follow the Grand Union Canal, skirting the remains of Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden. Instead of travelling tandem the waterway is wide enough for the narrow-boats to be breasted up, and thus side by side we navigate a flight of 20 locks in 1 hour 28 minutes.

Dave says he has never bettered 1 hour 40 minutes before, and we are all particularly proud of a tiny round elderly passenger who walked the lot, taking it as her job to shut one of the gates behind the boats. Between locks we travel at a spanking 10 miles an hour, the speed limit, and so I am able to accept an invitation to inspect a newly converted narrow-boat, have a cup of coffee

and still catch up Snipe and Taurus three locks farther on.

In the afternoon, we moor opposite the charmingly named Cape of Good Hope, a tiny waterman’s pub on the outskirts of Warwick, and there is time to see historic Warwick Castle, which crowns a steep cliff above the meanders of the River Avon. Legend has it the first earth works were erected by Etbelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great, in 916 AD. Cer tainly before William the Conquer or’s day there was an imposing forti fication and the castle as it stands now was largely built in the 14th century.

You don’t come across a Warwick castle every few miles. Canal-side scenery and canal life itself is more intimate, more suggestive of a slowed down film of rural life as it still exists away from busy roads and city centres. if you want to take a cruiser on the inland waterways James Hoseasons of Sunday ou , st of**. Suffolk, is agen f , °f hire firms based a . / locations.

If you prefer a more gentle journey with someone else to navigate and cook for you, Peter Proud, of Inland Waterway Holiday Cruises, Preston Brook, Runcorn, Cheshire, has three pairs of hotel narrow-boats, including Snipe and Taurus, which operate a number of different cruises including the beautiful Welsh canals as well as the English waterways.

Similar facilities are available from the Inland Cruising Company, of Braunston, Daventry, Northampton shire.