inland waterways/canal

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tarik

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Evening all


Has anybody travelled up or down the canal system from Stafford to the Thames. Would like to give it a try to visit my daughter. Must be better than driving. Time is not too much of a problem.


As always many thanks for all replies.


David
 
tarik,

among things to consider are;

low speed power and a suitable engine

electrical charging to live aboard

personal security which may well involve grilles over hatches and padlocks - lowlives tend to gather around towpaths for some reason

If you're sure security isn't an issue investigate carrying pushbikes, cheap old untrendy mountain bikes are a good bet.

Air draft under bridges

Try reading ' Narrow Dog To Carcassone' - Terry Darlington, by a couple travelling the UK then French canals,brilliant and funny, no connection.
 
Last edited:
Hi,

Hope all is well with you. I still have the Colvic, but in moment of complete madness in September I bought a very much neglected Westerly Centaur - as a rebuild project. I thought I might have a wander up the Grand Union etc when she is match fit. The Colvic is still on her mooring, I have had odd days out in the summer after my abortive start to Gib in July. Bloody crew jumped ship in Brighton !


Compliments of the season etc.
 
tarik said:
Hi,

Hope all is well with you. I still have the Colvic, but in moment of complete madness in September I bought a very much neglected Westerly Centaur - as a rebuild project. I thought I might have a wander up the Grand Union etc when she is match fit. The Colvic is still on her mooring, I have had odd days out in the summer after my abortive start to Gib in July. Bloody crew jumped ship in Brighton !


Compliments of the season etc.
Click to expand...

What's your draft v the depth of the canal/s
 
tarik said:
My draught is 3 ft and beam 8'6 ashe is bilge keel.
Click to expand...

To get from Stafford to the Thames you'll need to use some narrow canals, max beam 6'10" (ok some of the older working boats were 7', but 6'10" is what CaRT say will get through the locks now, some of them have got a bit tight over the past 200 years or so). A draft of 3' might also give you a few problems in places, most leisure narrowboats draw between 2' and 3', but tending towards the former rather than the latter.
 
Not a cat in hells chance in a centaur

Even on the Grand Union, you'd struggle particularly when it comes to mooring (theoretically,the GU should be 5'6" deep but even that was in the centre of the channel and it hadn't been anywhere near that for more than a century
 
Not only draft and beam but a boat safety certificate will be required . Best of luck to you with that one with a centaur .!!
 
A friend of mine took an Fairy Atalanta from Digbeth Basin Birmingham to Paris via GU and London in the late 1970's. He had a great adventure but made it!
 
clyst said:
Not only draft and beam but a boat safety certificate will be required . Best of luck to you with that one with a centaur .!!
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As somebody who's recently done the Boat Safety Scheme examiners course (and hopefully will be able to start examining boats in the new year), I can't see any major reason why a Centaur shouldn't pass the BSS, indeed I can think of a few on the Broads that will definitely have passed, as it's a few years since it was introduced here.

Apart from little things like having enough of the right fire extinguishers, the two main areas I'd be concerned about when putting an old boat through the BSS for the first time are the gas system and the engine fuel supply. All of the relevant information on what you need to do to comply is available at http://www.boatsafetyscheme.org (although I'm not sure if they've updated it to the new regulations coming into effect on the 1st of January yet).
 
Bobobolinsky said:
It's just 7miles of narrow beam over the GU summit. Anyone know what width the inclined plane will be?
Click to expand...

The original was 14' beam but the replica ain't never gonna happen in my humble opinion. They've been on about it for years and I know most of the characters involved I might add. There really isn't the money and there are all sorts of issues which make the whole project of pretty dubious benefit

And in any case, building a replica inclined plane would only be less than half of the problem with creating a wide beam route between the South and the North (which is the only practical purpose behind the project)

At the other end of the Leicester Line of the GU you've got the grade 1 listed Watford Locks which are narrow. It had been intended to replace the locks with wide locks and to rebuild all the bridges over the summit but the failure of the inclined plane (it was not a success by any measure) and lack of finance led to the plans being dropped

The only sensible option there would be a wide bypass, probably to a vertical boat lift. The engineering is nothing out of the ordinary but the costs would be substantial and it would require the purchase of substantial tracts of land from less than enthusiastic landowners

And even THAT isn't the end of the problem because, as I've personally argued with considerable emphasis when discussing the use of wide beam boats on the GU North of Stoke Bruerne, it simply isn't a practical proposition to close the tunnels at Blisworth and Crick to bi-directional traffic on a regular basis. There is simply too much traffic and doing so on the rare occasions it is done now causes chaos

The simple fact is that North of Watford, even the original Grand Junction Canal was not actually a wide canal, it was in fact designed for pair working of narrowboats. In the 1930's the Grand Union Company started the process of improving the canal from London to Birmingham to wide gauge but the job barely got off the ground before the money ran out.

The only significant works that were completed was replacing the narrow beam locks between Calcutt and Knowle Hill with wide locks and replacing some, but not all, of the bridges (there is a notorious pinch point at the bottom of Stockton which has trapped more than one wide beam Dutch barge)

The total scheme would also have included rebuilding the locks between London and Braunston, substantially increasing the width and depth of the channel to allow two wide beam boats to pass when loaded and replacing most of the bridges (one or two did get done including the one right outside the home of Mr. Thomas W. Millner, the Manager and Engineer in charge of the Northern Section of the Grand Union Canal)

It is important however to note that Leslie Morton, General Manager of the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co (a wholly owned subsidiary of the GUCCo) was one of the prime movers and shakers driving the programme to rebuild the canal to wide beam standards and even he clearly didn't expect a substantial increase in wide boat traffic given that he personally ordered hundreds of new narrowboats for the GUCCCo fleet

(It is a matter of record that Mr. Morton stated later that he knew this was a short term measure at the time and that even as early as the mid-1930's he privately thought that the days of canal carrying were numbered. Never the less, he was almost single handedly responsible for keeping any subtantia trade on the cut at all by the 1960's but it was a rearguard action without massive investment in the track which was not forthcoming)

So whilst boats over 7' beam can penetrate as far North as the outskirts of Brummagem, once North of London there are all sorts of issues with the concept of them doing so in significant numbers.

And the prospect of opening up a wide route from the South to the North is about as likely as the chances of Brigantia out-sailing an Open 60!
 
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