We just returned from our official honeymoon and it was an awesome experience. The photo above is in the front cabin of our "narrowboat", which measured 6'10" wide by 62' long. I don't even remember exactly how and where, but I saw something about these boats and how you can rent and take one on "holiday". Since Missy has always wanted a houseboat I knew it would not take much to convince her to go for it. We found out what little info we could and booked our holiday through a travel agency in England. We flew to Liverpool, England (home of the Beatles), caught a train to Chester, and then on to a town called Ruabon. A taxi then delivered us to the marina in Trevor, England.
Well, they took us out to our iron maiden and spent about one hour going over the all the nuances of the diesel powered boat, the heating, cooling electrical systems, kitchen appliances, etc. The engineer rode upstream about 100 yards with us, wished us the best and then hopped off on the tow path. (Kind of reminds me the time I went out to rent a plane (prior to 9/11) at the airport for some aerial photography. They welcomed me, tossed me a clipboard with some keys and said good luck!) Anyway, taking a narrowboat on holiday over in England and France is a very common and very affordable vacation. We drove/piloted, ate and slept on the boat for 4 nights and 5 days.
It is not for the weak of heart or anyone looking for a lazy vacation. Even though the diesel motor propels you at 4-5 mph, the canals are only about 20-3o feet wide and even at that slow rate of speed, if you take your eyes off the front of the boat for more than a moment, you can get off course easily. Sometimes, the canal narrows down to less than 8' wide as you go under a bridge, over an aquaduct or through a tunnel! Or let me put it like this....it is kind of like trying to drive a telephone pole down a creek. It really makes you nervous to encounter another boat coming at you or moored on the side, especially with wind present. There was a pretty good number of boats on the canal, but we understand nothing like it is during the summer season. We spent about half of the time in Wales and the other half in England.
Have I mentioned yet about bridges that you need to raise up by a hand-crank or locks you must go through? Missy became an expert on the locks, though the first one we encountered was quite nerve wracking. Come to think of it, the mechanics of this deserve another topic and blog.
I probably spent more time working on a video rather than stills, but here are some photos that I just posted. Just copy and paste this into your internet browser http://gallery.me.com/jeffreydrogers#100049
I will post a link to the video after I get it completed.
Everyone we encountered was so nice and friendly. One lady even asked if it was our ship as we passed by, after being impressed that we slid between other boats go gently.
Anyway, it was a trip we will never forget. I thank God that we got to go and that I got to spend it with such an incredible woman. We had a blast in spite of the rainy weather each day. The whole experience was priceless.
The only thing more nerve-wracking on our Narrowboat trip than passing oncoming boats, going through small tunnels, and of course, aquaducts hundreds of feet above the ground, was going through the locks. These canals were constructed in the 1800s and they put locks in place that you had to navigate through. You have to get out of the boat, use a ratchet kind of tool that every boat has on board and hand crank them. Sounds easy but it is a little tense as you approach them. Fortunately, I got to handle the boat and Missy became a pro at how these things work, getting out and putting some muscle to it. Yeah for women's rights! The photo above shows a boat entering an 8' (deep) lock. Once you pull in, you pull the paddles to enclose you in. Then crank the mechanism to either raise you up or lower you to the level of the direction you are heading. The whole thing works pretty fast but it is a little tricky. You have to keep the nose of the boat almost up against the gate so the boat does not go back and get caught on the cill. So you keep the boat in gear at idle speed part of the time. On the other hand, you don't want to push too hard so as to damage the lock. We were there before school was out so there were not that many boats, but in the summer you could wait quite a while for your turn to get in a lock. All in a day's work, I mean fun!
