25 of the best boating holidays in Europe

[Alan de Enfield]

25 of the best boating holidays in Europe | Travel | The Times

 

 

 

7. Go slow in Warwickshire

All set for a slow week of ever-changing diversity? Then hire Tufted Duck, a modern six-berth 60ft narrowboat, from Drifters’ new Springwood Haven base, to embark on one of Britain’s most varied canal circuits. Over 104 miles on the Warwickshire Ring you’ll chug beneath Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction (weirdly impressive) and slip through meadows, staying overnight near village pubs and negotiating the 21-lock stairway to heaven at Hatton. Mostly, you’ll remember how to relax. A top speed of 3mph is like a meditation in landscape. Getting in a car afterwards will feel like piloting a jet fighter.
Details Ten nights’ self-catering for six from £2,383 (drifters.co.uk). Train to Nuneaton

 

 

 

10. Caledonian canals

Twenty years ago the Falkirk Wheel lifted the first boats between the Union Canal and the Forth and Clyde Canal in an ingenious gargantuan cog. The world’s only rotating boat lift is one reason to take this trip. The slow chug across the second-longest and highest canal aqueduct in Britain, the Avon Aqueduct, is another. One further excuse to take a Duchess 4 narrowboat east towards Linlithgow Palace, the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots, is that you’ll only have to deal with locks at the start (and they’re manned by Scottish Canals). After that it’s plain chugging along the Union all the way to Edinburgh.
Details Six nights’ self-catering for four from £1,199 (black-prince.com). Train/fly to Edinburgh

 

 

 

17. Welsh eco-wonder

Meet Robin. By mid-October, the first eco-canal boat in the UK to enable charge-free cruising will have arrived in Wales from its workshop in Holland. The electric motor is not only silent and emissions-free, it’s powered by solar panels on the deck, so no more stopping to recharge. A heat pump provides hot water for showers and the washing up in a wooden interior as cosy as a cabin. And by happy coincidence, Robin becomes available for hire just as the loveliest canal in Wales, the Monmouthshire and Brecon, ripens into autumnal colours.
Details Three nights’ self-catering for two from £429 (beaconparkboats.com). Take the train to Abergavenny

 

 

 

 

22. Wiltshire waterways

Cross a cute cottage with a canal boat and you will get something not unlike Moonshine, a luxury widebeam barge based at Honeystreet. That sounds like hyperbole until you see the bedroom with a king-size bed and veranda in the bows, the Jacuzzi in the bathroom, the sofa, the wood-burner and the posh kitchen. Factor in hydraulic thrusters to help manoeuvring and the absence of locks on this bit of the Kennet and Avon Canal (both handy to curtail arguments in our experience) and you have all the ingredients for a romantic weekend in Wiltshire’s lush Vale of Pewsey.
Details Three nights’ self-catering for two from £1,440 (moonboats.co.uk). Train to Swindon/Trowbridge