A boat passes below a bridge at the Grand Union Canal in London
Think of a canal holiday and you think of ploughman’s lunch-fuelled bucolic puttering, of trim little lock-keepers’ cottages and humpback bridges. You probably don’t think of the Grand Union in west London, particularly if you’re me and punctuated your adolescence watching this neglected trans-urban waterway clog with the rusted trappings of antisocial behaviour.
As a commercial entity, the Grand Union met a suitably bitter end in 1981, when a final narrowboat consignment of lime juice left Brentford Wharf bound for the Rose’s depot in Hemel Hempstead. By then, London had long since turned its back on this stagnant legacy of low-tech, horse-drawn sloth. like almost every civic canal in Britain, the Grand Union was hidden away and fenced off, a secret realm where bad things happened: Narnia for tramps and vandals. associated misgivings pile up as my car’s sat-nav steers me towards the Willowtree Marina in Yeading, west London, through an unpromising hinterland of distribution centres and self-storage depots.
But the Willowtree, which began renting canal boats to holidaymakers earlier this year, is not the Grand Union as I remember it. Couples are sipping Pimm’s on a decked terrace, and the sparkling waters around them are full of swans and gaily-painted narrowboats, among them mine for the next three days – the four-berth, two-loo, billion-yard Caroline.
Presently I’m joined by my friends Ian and Simon, the most constant crewmates in a rolling roster that at various points over the weekend will include several family members, my wife’s cousin-in-law and her daughter, and an assortment of other people’s children. Jump-on, jump-off flexibility is one advantage of a 4mph speed limit. the wide-ranging appeal of this aquatic mini-break seemed to stem from its inherent incongruity, not least in regard to the ambitious finale: our circular barge tour of the capital’s waterways will be completed with a mad east-west dash right down the Thames, from the tidal lock at Limehouse to its counterpart at Brentford.
Many years ago I skippered my family on a narrowboat trip in north Wales, and as we chug waywardly out of the marina my knuckles whiten around the tiller in remembrance. the messily aborted U-turns, the head-on collisions, the shaming, dread cry that lives on in household folklore: “Oi, mate, yer kid’s in the water!” Manipulating these unwieldy and enormous things feels like driving a railway carriage from the back end, with a steering wheel that goes the wrong way.
But the rival traffic down this end of the Grand Union is forgivingly non-existent, and the late afternoon sun applies a soothing golden balm over the endless black roof that bisects the water ahead of me. It also helps that there’s a drink to suit every nautical mood: pear cider anchor-weighers, grog-pattern yard-armers, the manly, fuel-fingered downing of real ale around the clock.
At any rate, I soon find myself able to share my bargemates’ appreciation of London as we’ve never seen it before. even at walking pace, our surroundings seem to evolve in a blur. Dappled leafy silence suddenly gives way to concrete darkness and the overhead roar of an unseen rush-hour. Modest light-industrial dishevelment, garishly balconied new-build apartment developments, a haunted Victorian wharf stained with yesteryear’s soot and yesterday’s aerosol. We putter serenely across the last aqueduct in London, outpacing the North Circular road’s Friday evening gridlock beneath.
The towpath population at this stage comes directly from canalside central casting: joggers, mountain bikers and red-faced men gripping cans, typically hunched by a fishing rod whose line I take immense pains to avoid. When at length we encounter another moving barge, its exuberant young crew are climbing up from their roof on to the bridge above, then vaulting back down on the other side. I manage to overtake when they run aground trying to do something stupid by a cemetery.
As west London blends into north, the mood mellows. a young woman sits on the roof of her moored narrowboat in the lotus position, facing the sunset with a beatific smile and closed eyes. Two north Africans at a window acknowledge us with a tip of their hookah pipes. in the dying light I hang a 10-point left turn and bump awkwardly into the gracious gloaming of little Venice, London’s first venture in exclusive canalside living, and until very recently its last. Simon and Ian hop on to the deck of an unoccupied barge and lash Caroline to it. We’ve double-parked in what we later deduce, while climbing out over a locked gate en route to the nearest pub, to be a private mooring zone. oh well. Climbing back in a couple of hours later proves a more demanding procedure.
Belatedly I explore Caroline’s innards. For me, the joy of a canal holiday is its marriage of the great outdoors with the extremely bijou indoors. Caroline is a representative study in extruded cosiness, with a dolls’ house galley and ablution wardrobes that coerce the user into unusual postures. as skipper I commandeer the double bunk, whose dimensions uniquely permit rolling over without rolling off. This privilege must be weighed against my responsibilities, most especially the grim ritual with which I begin the following day. Defouling the propeller means unclamping a hatch and lowering a forearm deep into the dieselly murk thus revealed. We’ve seen some terrible things floating past and most of them recur to me as I unbind and extract binliner shreds, fishing yarn, sub-aquatic weed and – with horrid, pulpy foreboding – a black towelling sock. how happy I am to have undertaken this task before priming the propshaft and tackling Simon’s fry-up.
We throb through the cobwebbed confines of Maida Hill tunnel, and emerge beneath the gaudily magnificent show mansions that border Regent’s Park. the Grand Union has now given way to the Regent’s Canal, and regentrification is well advanced. At Camden Lock we take aboard several new passengers and – with the most profound gratitude for my brother’s experienced hand on the sluice cranks – tackle our first lock. Standing at the tiller as water billows up inside this mossy tomb, I feel like Indiana Jones facing some desperate predicament. Then I look up and see a great weekend crowd of Goths and tourists peering down at us: our first gongoozlers, as canal-curious spectators are known in the barging community. There’s a strange celebrity in piloting a narrowboat through metropolitan waters. the last time passers-by waved with such frenetic regularity, the boot of my car was on fire.
The Caroline’s crew lunches at a waterside gastro pub in Islington, feeling the floor shift beneath legs now accustomed to gentle pitch and roll. Afterwards the sun comes out, luring hordes of sandalled Hoxton trendies to the towpath and a number of other recreational bargees to the water. We squeeze into a succession of locks side by side with a chatty old skipper, who fails to suppress consternation when I reveal our next-day itinerary. “The Thames? seriously? You got the licence?”
No one is allowed out on the River Thames in a boat larger than a coracle unless they’ve passed an exam demonstrating familiarity with VHF short-range radio and the technicalities of the Global Maritime distress Safety system. a couple of weeks before I had done precisely this, after a five-hour training day aboard a boat moored near Putney Bridge. the instructor had beamed when he handed back my exam sheet: I’d scored 21 out of 22, and could now let everyone within a 45-mile line-of-sight radius of my boat know that it was sinking, aflame or had been boarded by pirates. But though I knew how to respond to what mariners like to call “grave and imminent danger”, I had no idea at all about how to avoid that danger in the first place. the tutor’s smile withered as my farewell query tumbled out: “But which side of the river do I, you know, drive on?” (Navigator’s tip: it’s the right.)
Crew members are dropped off throughout the afternoon, as we pass through the construction cranes and old warehouses of King’s Cross, and head down to the East End. By the time the Caroline is tied up for the night in the marina at Limehouse, it’s just Simon, me and a creeping dread. We spend the evening in a Thameside pub, watching enormous, barge-eating cruisers and hydrofoils speed up and down. At one point in the night I awake with a start, abruptly certain that in failing to brim our freshwater tanks the Caroline carries insufficient ballast for the seesaw ordeal ahead.
The next morning we take aboard a cargo of wives and excitable young liabilities. At 11.25 sharp, the harbourmaster summons Caroline into the cavernous Limehouse Lock. the concrete wall before us parts; lifejackets are donned. We are about to “lock out” – a fearsome phrase, the verb of no return. I click the radio handset to Channel 14 and croak the compulsory announcement: “Thames VTS, Thames VTS, this is narrowboat Caroline entering the tideway at Limehouse. Over.” We await the howl of anguished protest this announcement deserves but there is no reply. Then the inrushing tide sweeps us helplessly away, like a pooh stick.
The contrast with our progress to date could not be more compelling. in place of sloth and stillness there is frenzy, a mile-wide choppy sea afroth with larger and much, much faster craft. We barrel under Tower Bridge, a bullying current sucking us towards the pillars. I have both hands on the tiller and still it threatens to buck out of my grasp. more bridges come at us in a rush: Simon stands before me with a Port of London Authority flip chart, tolling out the navigation notes for each. “Cannon Street Railway, span two, second from right … Vauxhall, keep well clear of MI6 headquarters to the left.” But the tideway narrows and empties as we plough westwards, and by the time Simon is alerting me to the rowers’ buoys by Putney Bridge, I’m very close to enjoying myself.
Soon after the Caroline nudges up to the gates of Brentford Lock. We’re off the rollercoaster Thames and, with some relief, back on the Grand Union kiddy ride. Our delightful slow-boat study of industrial history, human geography and environmental behaviourism picks up where it left off. Sunburnt middle-aged skinheads jump into the uninviting water, Sunday gongoozlers mass at every lock. There are plenty – six alone in the Hanwell Flight, the longest in London. my crew now works the gates like an oiled machine, but I’m still literally barging Caroline into every lock like a drunk man shouldering a ladder down an alley. “Don’t worry mate,” calls out a genial waiting boatman above our booming, hollow thunks, “it’s a contact sport”.
This winningly laidback outlook is the essence of a canal holiday’s appeal, and I’m very pleasantly surprised to have discovered that it holds good even when circumnavigating the busiest city in Europe. a couple of hours later I drive out of Willowtree Marina with a big, lazy smile, at walking pace on the wrong side of the road.
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Details
Drifters (www.drifters.co.uk) offers three or fournight breaks aboard a boat sleeping four from £505, or a week from £750, starting at Willowtree Marina, Yeading. It also has 34 other UK rental locations. the oneday VHF course at Chas Newens Marine (www.chastheboat.co.uk) costs £90. For safety advice on boating on the Thames, see www.boatingonthethames.co.uk
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More urban boating holidays
Venice
La Serenissima might be famous for its gondolas but few visitors realise it is possible to hire a live-aboard boat and explore the city’s waterways under their own steam, writes Jessica Abrahams. a vessel also allows easy access to the less-visited outlying islands of the lagoon. Boats sleeping up to eight cost from £1,890 per week. www.leboat.com
Berlin
Boating through Berlin’s canal network has become easier in recent years with an increasing number of places to moor overnight. Acraft sleeping two costs from €770 per week. www.locaboat.com
Bruges
A week on the canals of Flanders lets you visit Bruges and Ghent, and with more time you could add Brussels. Starting in Eeklo, a six-berth boat costs from €1,014 per week. www.houseboat-hire.com
Amsterdam
From Warmond you can travel through the Dutch “lake district” to Amsterdam. a “supercruiser” for 12 costs from €2,850 per week. www.olympia-charters.nl
<a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7307415c-cca2-11e0-b923-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rsstag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7307415c-cca2-11e0-b923-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rssFri, 26 Aug 2011 20:59:33 GMT 00:00″>A narrowboat escape
