Hello everyone. I am looking for suggestions for a canal holiday next June. We are from the United States, but we will be visiting family in London this summer. I hired from the Wyvern Shipping company two summers ago in August. I was a solo adult with my then 11yo and 13yo children. Thanks in part to the advice in this forum, we had a fantastic time for our four days --we didn't get very far (and had a few mishaps), but we enjoyed ourselves immensely and met a few lovely and friendly people along the way. We went north from Leighton Buzzard and did not quite get to Blisworth tunnel though if we had pushed ourselves harder, we might have made it.
I would like to return next summer. The kids will be even older (13 and 15) and thus even more able to help. Though honestly, even at 11 & 13, my kids actually grasped how to steer the boat and work the locks far more quickly than I did! However, I am not entirely sure where to go. We would like to have more time since four days wasn't quite enough. I am thinking more like 7-10. We enjoyed working the locks, but we don't particularly want or need a lot of them. Ahead of our trip, I thought we'd do a lot of eating at pubs, but we actually only ate out once. Instead, we cooked on the boat itself. Mostly, we just liked the gorgeous scenery and spending slow lazy time together as a family. Really we just read, chatted, played games, listened to music, went on a couple of walks, and watched the scenery go by. That plus learning to actually operate the boat was quite enough for our four days. Still, I do wonder if the kids might get bored during a 7-10 day trip and want some more variety beyond just cruising especially now that they will both be teenagers, but I don't really know.
Anyway, having tried to do some research, I was considering the following canals:
Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal --seems very scenic and pretty with not too many locks
The Llangollen Canal --again seems scenic. From what I read, it will be busier than the others, but still pretty quiet in June.
The Lancaster Canal --I like the idea of seeing the sea shore from the canal. Is that true?
But I am very open to suggestions. Part of me would like to try the South Oxford or the Stratford-Upon-Avon Canal or The Union Canal in Scotland just because all three of those might let us see places that we would enjoy visiting like Oxford, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Edinburgh. But it sounds like they all might be harder to navigate and it might be difficult to find places to moor. We have almost a month in the UK and maybe it is better to keep the narrowboat portion of our trip separate from the city sight-seeing.
I don't really know what I am asking here except advice for choosing a route now that we are no longer quite novices but still aren't experienced narrowboaters. We loved it enough to do it again, but we don't really know where. Maybe a route that offers a few places to stop and explore, but we don't need a lot. And as a woman alone with two kids, I do want to feel safe and I'd like to hire from a company that will be helpful and friendly. Wyvern was really great. We could also just do Leighton Buzzard again under the theory if it worked well once, why not repeat. Thanks!