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Early Hire Boat experiences


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6 hours ago, BEngo said:

Bustopher Jones was one of the Bridgwater Boats.  Operated out of Berko, next to the timber yard with totem pole, for years. Dont know if it went from somewhere else earlier.   All the boats were named  after TS Eliots cats.@J R ALSOP  may remember if Monica Emily was another one.

 

N

In our early hire boat days in the 1980'2 we had one of Bridgewater boats from Berkhamsted - I think it was Rum Tum Tugger - and I remember calling into the base to book the boat when passing through the area during a business trip.  I met Lindy Foster and was entertained to a cup of tea in her Fairground caravan while filling out the paperwork. As far as I remember it was a good  boat and we had a very pleasant holiday.

 

Our first experience of hiring was Pennine Line from Silsden - the first year with Craven Maid and the second year with Craven Queen. This was a year or two before Pennine Line changed to gas powered boats and by that time we had changed to IML, based in Bank Newton, and  we hired from them  for a number of years from their bases at Rugby and Anderton.

The quality of IML was superior to our previous experiences and we remained loyal to them for a number of years until they ceased the hire boat business and formed  Hebridean Island Cruisers with a small upmarket cruise ship - Hebridean Princess - in the Western Isles of Scotland which became a very successful company and is still going strong although now under new management.

 

Howard 

 

 

 

 

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Our first hire was in 1967, for our honeymoon (so long ago it was back in the day when something unique happened on your honeymoon LTRU!). wW had a small two berth from Canal Cruising in Stone (we were married in Keele Chapel so not far to go). We were looking for something a bit different. foreign holidays, esp for honeymoons, were in their early days and not much other than Clacton del Sol, which did not appeal. Not at all sure how we found about canal boat hires). 

 

Canal Cruising had already been going for a while and had a smallish fleet of purpose built boats, although not quite what you might expect today! As others have commented, spades were the common elsan disposal tool but our boat had a sea toilet. That was phased out soon after but the spade went on for a number of years (at least in the three years we were able to own our own small boat) CC are still in business.

 

The promoted route for two weeks was the main T&M/S&W/Shroppie ring with a side trip to Llangollen. We needed to call for help several times and the company were very good about it. The main problem was finding a red telephone box in the middle of nowhere! Looking, back it was amazing in a way that we completed the route and returned on time as we had very limited planning information to guide us! I think an annual canal guide was provided which really only helped with the number of locks ahead and some idea of distances!

 

One or two things we did on that trip that are no longer an option:

 

1. Right up to Horseshoe Falls at the end of the Llangollen - long been shorted to where the mooring basin now is.

 

2. Passing through the steel lock on the T&M Thurlwood

 

3. Passing right into the corner of the Stanton Iron and Steel Works just to the north of Stoke on Trent and experiencing the physical reality of such works.

 

4. We stopped for our first night at Salt and on the Sunday Morning walked across to the nearby church. In those days there was an expectation that you could turn up at 8 am for a service and be guaranteed. No rural area is like that now and Salt church has a service on twice in a month, at differing times.

 

5. Harecastle tunnel with the towpath still in place.

 

We obviously found places to buy food but I cannot recall much about how we located shops - no doubt many more village shops were still open then.

 

Also to note was that we had a very, very good introductory session and were shown down the first two locks with a very thorough, proper training session. I was taught to step across the bottom gates! The first few days were still a steep learning curve and we remember to this day our ability to get it wrong at times - never miss the chance to help a newbie.

 

We were thoroughly bitten and the next year we bought a small 20ft boat that had started life as part of the early BW hire fleet. It was really a day boat in modern terms but canal life was very different then. We made much use of it in the next three years whilst we were in Loughborough - some of our trips are quite a story looking back. But we did not know any different!

 

The canals themselves: towpaths were largely non-existent and generally impassable on foot. My recollection is of locks in much the same state as today - you never knew what you might find at the next one, but generally quite serviceable, more so with a bit of experience. Environmental protection and pollution regulations were still in the future and passing through the more industrial areas was very different from out in the sticks. Strangely, this all added to the attraction and over the years the industrial archaeology and history of canals has become an increasing fascination.

 

We once more own a narrowboat and continue boating - last year we made it from Droitwich up to the top end of the Lancaster, despite the drought.

 

Anything else you would like to know?

Edited by Mike Todd
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On 19/05/2023 at 08:17, Tam & Di said:

I assumed you were talking about a rather earlier period. I did wonder how you'd been to Aylesbury, but also to Camden and Norwood Top as that's quite a spread. Adelaide Dock is just up a couple of miles from Norwood Top, and the guy we sold it to did start a hire business but it only lasted a couple of years. Monica Emily has been owned for perhaps 20 years by a woman with another boat she keeps at our Spikes Bridge moorings. I think she bought it from John Bolsom who had the yard at Iver on the bottom of the Slough Arm and another at Norwood on the Paddington Arm, but his Iver Boats hire fleet was back in the 60s. There was a hire fleet in Paddington Packet Boat yard at Cowley Peachey at some point and that might be where you are thinking of. They have a mooring basin on the main line and their marina entrance on the old BW dredging tip is just into the Slough cut. I am pretty confident that there were never any boats operating out of the BW Bulls Bridge yard.

 

Tam

 To clarify

 

1974 or 75, Monica Emily from somewhere around Southall - to Aylesbury and on the last day to the top lock on the Regents Canal and to Norwood Top Lock. Canal plan says that would take 9 days at 7 hours a say, mum and dad didn't do seven hour days, mor like nine or ten (as a child I was often in bed when they moored up for the night!) 

 

1999 - Sophia? Wide Beam from Adelaide Dock, went to Ponders End then returned via the Thames from Limehouse to Brentford edited to add - this was a Friday afternoon to Monday morning weekend hire

 

both trips were with mum and dad and @1st ade (first one me and Adrian were children) 

 

 

It's interesting and pleasing to know Monica Emily is still afloat after so many years - even as a child it seemed ridiculously modern compared to Tingay's boats only a couple of years earlier. 

 

This is also making me realise the importance of dad's slide collection - when we get to the right slides there will be pictures of the boats, and probably the bases we started from. 

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19 hours ago, buccaneer66 said:

This was my second hire, Whistling Swan from Swanline, I hired this one  few times.

DC3010.thumb.jpg.8e3ecf6bf9d501e9eed08b4ad851de79.jpg

 

A friend of ours owned a boat through Swanline - he had a very dry sense of humour and his suggestion for the name (which had to include "Swan") of "Roast Swan" didn't land well - he eventually agreed to "Broxted Swan" on which I had many happy holidays. Magpie the Elder (mine and @magpie patrick father) was still fit and well, if retired, so I had a few one way trips from Swanline to (say), Gloucester Docks - Mum and Dad would drive to Gloucester then I'd drive his car back to Swanline, collect my own car and go home

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I went with my dad as a kid, I'm unsure where we hired from but we hired a boat called morning star, I doubt she's in service now as that was in the early/mid 90s, probably around 92/93 as I remember gladiators being popular and we went past the bridge they used to film on. I'm pretty sure the marina was on a river though as I remember getting back early and my dad took us down the river, that night heavy rainfall meant the river swelled and we were woken up in the night to get up the lock above the weir due to the river flows. Somewhere below Birmingham I'd imagine as we are Wiltshire, the boat was fine but I remember the used condoms floating down the canal in Birmingham as we did a ring. 

 

I must admit despite my love of canals and this trip being the start of that I've never been on a boating holiday since. I had a friend who lived on a barge for around 8 years which fixed my itch a little. 

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Maidbt1.jpg.1c3eb1b2448a1e8920fdff7fd924099d.jpgMaidbt.jpg.4c2f2f60c664f16825c59c05293d1e0e.jpgJSMaid65.jpg.b19a718565493c86da9eee56d7c6420c.jpgApart from some dabblings on the Thames in our neighbours Freeman cruiser, my first canal experience with my parents was in 1969, Maid Mary Shuna from Maidboats, Brinklow (now Rose Narrowboats and for many years there was a faded "Maid"...or was it "Boats" on the doors to their big shed) My father was in the Fleet Air Arm, and directly after the war hired "Windboats" on The Broads, 1946-1950, with my mother and a load of their mates. Some of his photo albums are works of art and really should be in the Broads Museum. After that I came along and their were epic camping holidays across Europe. Our neigbour at the time (the one with the Freeman) was a headmaster and took a lot of kids on school holidays on The Broads. We and another family were going to hire on the Broads in 1969, but following exciting tales of neighbours first school party holiday on the canals, my mate Ian convinced our parents to try the canals. My father, with his nautical background fancied a proper boat, so we opted for one of Lionel Munk's wooden narrow beam centre cockpit cruisers. All I can remember about the boat was it went like shit off a shovel, especially on the Thames. No photos survive of this trip, my father never could take pictures on his Pentax! It was a two week hire and we did the Oxford, Thames, GU ring, with time to get to Hawksbury and back. Couple of images of Maid Mary Shuna?? in 1999 on the Oxford and a piccy by Jim Shead of it in 1965.

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59 minutes ago, John Brightley said:

That would be Starline Narrowboats at Upton on Severn.

I’ve looked there and the company name does ring a bell but the memory of the river and the layout of the weir doesn’t match in my head. Neither does the marina but then it was 30 years ago!

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On 17/05/2023 at 08:22, davidwheeler said:

I am going to try to keep this subject going - there must be more early experiences out there.

We had twice used Canal Pleasurecraft's boats in the mid 1950s. We had another go in the late 1960s, this time in the two berth Water Rat. This was not the 22' Water Rat, the first boat built by Hot Abbot for a private owner in 1951. I wonder if that boat still exists. Do any Holt Abbot boats still exist? - in 1978 every one of them was still afloat. Has anyone  still got one? His boats were instantly recognisable.

 


Hi David, as far as I am aware there are still three existing and two if not all three  are used regularly. Silver Heron, Jemima and Tavy Cleave. The latter two are on the historic ship register.
 

It’s possible that others are in sheds somewhere but I’m not optimistic. would love to be wrong on that. 
 

Theres an excellent article in Waterways journal number 19 on Holt Abbott boats

 

(still available from Ellesmere Port mail order https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/enjoy-the-waterways/canal-history/the-waterways-archive/waterways-journal )


Your experience of  Holt Abbott and Ashley are similar to mine, though I was very young .

 

Here is Jemima pictured last year at the bottom of Bratch at a S&W society meet. 
 

IMG_1071.thumb.jpeg.2be708e124407581f7ce39120c687cfa.jpeg

 

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12 hours ago, SteveCourty said:

I’ve looked there and the company name does ring a bell but the memory of the river and the layout of the weir doesn’t match in my head. Neither does the marina but then it was 30 years ago!

 

Bates of Chertsey on the Thames names all their hire boats "xxxxx" star, but I suspect they may have gone by the date you mention, and they were all wide beam cruisers. The Thames generally does not react as fast as you imply to rain.

Edited by Tony Brooks
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Some fascinating stuff here - it's valuable to collect as much as possible particularly of recollections ("oral history"). It is worth noting that Mum and Dad first hired in 1959 when they would have been 26 (Dad) and 24 (Mum), before they had children, and although both lived to ripe old age they are now dead. Mum's sister went with them and is still with us so she may have recollections but increasingly for holidays in the 50's and early 60's we will be reliant on people remembering what they were told by older people who are no longer with us. Even for holidays in the 70's we may well be reliant on memories of people who were children at the time on family holidays 

 

Mum and dad''s first holiday started from the very end of the Bridgewater Canal in central Manchester - the Potato Wharf. They went to Nantwich and Back in a week. No slides of that, dad didn't start taking slides until 1960, there are a very few black and white prints of the holiday when I get that far through sorting dad's stuff. 

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44 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

Bates of Chertsey on the Thames names all their hire boats "xxxxx" star, but I suspect they may have gone by the date you mention, and they were all wide beam cruisers. The Thames generally does not react as fast as you imply to rain.

I’d say it was the Severn or Avon. 

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My first experience of boating was watching the local BW boat at work. It was ex FMC Camel which was based in Loughborough. Our first boat hire was Larch from Willow Wren at Middlewich it was in September 1974. It was a 50ft wooden top with berths for 8 - there were 7 of us so it was cosy to say the least. We went to Llangollen and back. I remember being held up overnight at one of the locks on the Middlewich arm as a hire boat had sunk in it. They had trapped the rudder between the bottom gates. It was the first lock the hirers had done on their own!! The boat was raised overnight and we continued with our journey. We had a great time and became hooked on boating.

My next hire was of a very different kind, myself and a fellow leader took a party of 10scouts for a week on Lindsay a camping boat from Union Canal Carriers in October 1976.This was just as the canals were reopening after the big drought. I remember us going up Braunston locks to Norton Junction and then back down them the following day. We then went up the Ashby so avoiding locks apart from Hillmorton and Sutton stop. We had a good time.

We then had a few years break whilst our family was small but we returned to boating when the youngest was about 5. Initially we returned to WIllow Wren at Middlewich - they were one of our favourite boatyards. Over the years we hired Larch again, Pine, Beech, Oak, Willow and Holly. We rate Willow as the best swimming hire boat we ever had - it was a Roger Farringdon hull.  We spread our wings and started to hire from other bases but we always wanted traditional styled boats. So we went to Union Canal Carriers, Teddesley, Alvechurch on the K&A. The most unusual was a boat called Wake from Associated Cruisers at Wolverhampton. The worst was a little boat from Valley Cruisers at Atherstone - it would not go above 2mph and was badly ballasted so was always listing to one side.

In the end we had the bug quite badly and was hiring twice a year - Easter and October. Then the opportunity came to form a private syndicate to own Dasque a 54ft R&D boat, we had this share for 10years before we bought Tyto Alba. It was previously Watermark owned by the Bank of England social club and then a hire boat on Soar with the name Millstream. We've now had Tyto for over 10 years.

I have always wanted to own a Willow Wren/ Middlewich Narrowboats wooden top and restore it to its hireboat configuration. There is one moored on the Trent at Beeston that I covet!! I'm still interested in acquiring one.

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10 hours ago, Richard T said:

 

I have always wanted to own a Willow Wren/ Middlewich Narrowboats wooden top and restore it to its hireboat configuration. There is one moored on the Trent at Beeston that I covet!! 

I saw that very boat advertised for sale recently -I think it was on eBay but it's not there now.

Edited by John Brightley
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Mum had an older sister and every Saturday our family and my aunt's family would visit my grandparents. There was a board at my grandparents' house and they pinned postcards to it. My first encounter with canals was the postcards my aunt would send to my grandparents every summer holiday, of an Anglo-Welsh boat, looking very like @buccaneer66's picture of Tixall, usually from somewhere exotic sounding like Llangollen. My cousins were slightly older and I was very envious of their summer holidays, as my parents thought my brother and I would be bored on a canal boat so we went to places like the Peak District or South Wales to go walking in the rain, sitting on the beach in the rain, looking at ruins in the rain etc.

 

Eventually by the mid-1980s my brother and I persuaded my parents to hire a Viking Afloat boat from Brewood and we headed south and our first encounter with a lock was the stop lock at Autherley. We were going to go down the S&W and Severn to Worcester, but the Severn was in spate so we went down the S&W, back up the Stourbridge (stopping to visit Thomas Webb and Stuart Crystal and before the canal was altered and the shopping centre was built) and then down the W&B to Worcester where we winded, coming back up to central Birmingham, passing Gas Street Basin and mooring by where the Sea Life Centre now is while the warehouses were still all standing, then back on the main line (and yes, 'Tojo the Dwarf' was already there on the bridge!) I don't remember the details fully, but I do have notes of the trip (and that was back in the days when if you visited Cadbury's you got to walk the production lines and you could eat as much as you liked!) We went again a couple of years later, this time round the outer loop of the Four Counties and Cheshire Rings. There were a few memorable parts to the trip, including mooring at Tixall Wide and watching the kingfishers as the setting sun created a red glow on the farm buildings opposite; the smell when passing the marmalade factory at Droylsden (which still had the golliwog logo on it); mooring on the offside against a derelict wall at the top of the Ashton flight and setting off at 5am due to the horror stories about passing through Manchester - we didn't see a soul until we got to the Rochdale lock keeper at about 8am and paid for our licence for the '9'; passing through the last lock of the '9' with the shortened balance beams and chains; seeing the lock down onto the Irwell and the ship canal; cruising down the Bridgewater with a sense of relief at having 'cleared' Manchester before 10am. Again, I have a diary from this trip somewhere.

 

I then hired for several years with University friends. The first trip was from Wootton Wawen (two friends on that trip are now married and have their own boat). Contrary to the recommendation of Anglo Welsh, we went down the Avon and up the Severn, based on my previous experience of not trusting the Severn. We were the only boat that went round the ring that way, and also the only boat that made it back to the hire base as the Severn and Avon went into flood and everyone else got stuck! I remember coming up Tardebigge with my brother steering the whole way up in the torrential rain, following which his German army parka was saturated and didn't dry out for the rest of the trip. Several more trips followed, including Great Britain from Union Canal Carriers with a large group of University friends, one of whom now owns FMC The King which we gave him a hand moving from Harefield Marina when he picked it up last year. As we came out of the marina, there was Great Britain moored on the towpath! Another two friends on those trips are also now married and also bought their own boat and my then girlfriend, now wife joined us on the later trips.

 

To complete the circle, in 2019 when we were thinking of trying a hire boat with the children, we hired Molly from Penkridge. It was a fully licenced hire boat but owned by an individual rather than a company - it turned out to be an ex-Anglo Welsh hireboat from the 1970s, complete with wooden top and original engine and internal fit-out, exactly like the boats my aunt, uncle and cousins had hired which had first inspired my interest in canals so I finally got to try one, and yes the children loved it so we finished up buying Oates.

 

Alec

Edited by agg221
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11 hours ago, Richard T said:

 

'I have always wanted to own a Willow Wren/ Middlewich Narrowboats wooden top and restore it to its hireboat configuration. There is one moored on the Trent at Beeston that I covet!! I'm still interested in acquiring one.'

A lot of the Willow Wren boats went up for sale a few years back including I think Willow. I remember seeing them @ Venetian when I was working nearby in Barbridge.
Fond memories of Willow. I had the back cabin to myself. Loads of pics. of that time which wasn't the first time of boat holidays but more of a return to them after many years. I first went boating with my parents in 1964!

 

Edited by Graham_Robinson
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On 21/05/2023 at 20:06, SteveCourty said:

I’ve looked there and the company name does ring a bell but the memory of the river and the layout of the weir doesn’t match in my head. Neither does the marina but then it was 30 years ago!

Don't they operate from Stourport basin, at least now?

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We hired from Anglo Welsh at Trevor in 1997, a little boat called Bluebell.  Today, near Welford Junction, we passed an ex Anglo Welsh boat called Bluebell.  Could it be the same boat? Having fished out a photo from back then, I think it could be.

3D56E816-8C5E-440B-9FEF-C83986DEA291.jpeg

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24 minutes ago, adam1uk said:

We hired from Anglo Welsh at Trevor in 1997, a little boat called Bluebell.  Today, near Welford Junction, we passed an ex Anglo Welsh boat called Bluebell.  Could it be the same boat? Having fished out a photo from back then, I think it could be.

3D56E816-8C5E-440B-9FEF-C83986DEA291.jpeg

The resolution on the photos posted isn’t quite high enough to read the registration numbers. If they can be read on the original photos then that would confirm whether it is the same boat.

 

Alec

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