Derby narrowboat tours to launch

[Alan de Enfield]

Derby narrowboat tours to launch - BBC News

 

City centre river boat trips for passengers are due to launch after being delayed due to the pandemic.

The trips, which will run between Phoenix Green, opposite the Museum of Making, and Darley Abbey, in Derby, will start on 21 August.

The Derby and Sandiacre Canal Trust Ltd (DSCT), which is behind the trips, said they would operate at weekends on a specially-built boat, the Outram.

The trust said they were delighted passengers could finally get on board.

The boat is a traditionally-built steel hulled narrowboat measuring 50ft (15m) by 8ft 6in (2.59m) and is designed to carry 12 passengers and crew.

The trust said its trips would take about 50 minutes travelling slowly upriver, turning and returning downstream to the mooring point.

 

Mike Wingfield, vice chairman of DSCT and designer of the Outram, said: "We knew we had to design a boat from scratch and this allowed us to build it with disabled access and environmental credentials.

"The boat is also environmentally friendly - it runs on electric power, with batteries recharged from solar panels and topped up by a fast landline charger - and provides a composting toilet."

The trust said the boat had been ready to go in 2020, just as the pandemic struck, causing major setbacks.

[Orwellian]

Is 8ft 6ins beam really a 'narrowboat'?

[Jen-in-Wellies]

58 minutes ago, Orwellian said:

Is 8ft 6ins beam really a 'narrowboat'?

Journalists don't forget. Deadlines to meet. Misheard what they were told? Not worried about what canal fact nerds will think of their reporting. Hard to tell from the photo. If I'd not been told otherwise, I'd have said 7' narrowboat. Could be 8'6" in reality and built thinking ahead to doing restored Derby Canal, Erewash T&M loops perhaps, but I'd bet money on mistaken journo.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

More photos here.

https://www.derbycanal.org.uk/outram-outing-at-shardlow-inland-port-festival/

It does look like a fatty, so 8'6" it probably is.

[Higgs]

Well, it's more canal than river boat. I come from Derby and know the museum to Darley Abbey stretch. Have yet to see the boat, but sounds like a worthwhile effort. 

 

 

[nickd]

Built that width for wheelchair access

[magpie patrick]

2 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Journalists don't forget. 

 I though that was elephants?  

 

On a more serious point "narrow boat" now defines a style of boat as much as the actual beam, what we now call "wide beams" were advertised as "wide beam narrow boats" in the 1990s