When did leisure cruising hit its peak

[Philip]

From when leisure boating really took off in the late 70s through to the present day, when would you say the peak level of leisure boating was? I know there are probably more boats on the canals now more than ever, but many are in marinas for long periods and sometimes don't go far when they do venture out, so what era (ie within roughly a 5-year timeframe) would you say that the canals and locks were at their busiest with boat movements, from your own experiences and observations?

Edited August 24, 2023 by Philip

[Momac]

Difficult to put  a year so it but I would say it was at a peak on the River Trent a few years ago , say about 2016 .

 

I thought there would be  return to busy days after the pandemic but it has't happened.

If folks dont have work commitments they have family commitments or both. The result is less time for boating.

 

 

[Tonka]

There is more boats now but less boatyards

[magnetman]

Is this specifically narrow boats or boats in general ? 

 

The Thames seems to have been a lot more busy in Edwardian days than it is in 2023. 

 

 

 

ETA I see its about canals specifically. 

[GUMPY]

It was nicest in the late 90s

 

[MtB]

56 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Is this specifically narrow boats or boats in general ? 

 

The Thames seems to have been a lot more busy in Edwardian days than it is in 2023. 

 

 

 

ETA I see its about canals specifically. 

 

It seems a lot less busy now then when I lived on it in the late 70s. Back then long queues at locks were commonplace. Even in the early 2000s we still had to queue for a lock cycle or two to get through Caversham.

 

Nowadays I'd say it is unusual to even be sharing a lock on the Thames. Weird. 

 

 

 

[alan_fincher]

As far as CRT waters go, the annual lockage reports would probably be a fairly good indicator.....

 

....as long as historic reports could still b obtained.

[Philip]

Did traffic at busy lock flights seem heavier and more common in the 90s compared with the last 10 years? 

[Tonka]

11 hours ago, Tonka said:

There is more boats now but less boatyards

Used to be far more hire boat bases as well

[cuthound]

17 hours ago, GUMPY said:

It was nicest in the late 90s

 

 

I agree. That was when the maintenance was at its peak, but the number of boats, especially those moored against the towpath was still relatively low.

[roland elsdon]

In the 1980s we had to use winches, shafts and devices for removing stuff of the blades far more.

There was more overt threat on the waterways, we had threats thefts assaults and vandalism from anglers.

Glue sniffers haunted the frequently locked and closed towpaths and there were known dont moor areas.

Banbury being one, Sutton stop away from the turn another, Autherley was dreadful and as for manchester…

many things improved when bwb encouraged towpath use .

There seemed to be a sweet spot from about 1995 on.

 

[Rob-M]

1 minute ago, roland elsdon said:

In the 1980s we had to use winches, shafts and devices for removing stuff of the blades far more.

There was more overt threat on the waterways, we had threats thefts assaults and vandalism from anglers.

Glue sniffers haunted the frequently locked and closed towpaths and there were known dont moor areas.

Banbury being one, Sutton stop away from the turn another, Autherley was dreadful and as for manchester…

many things improved when bwb encouraged towpath use .

There seemed to be a sweet spot from about 1995 on.

 

I remember seeing groups sat drinking meths on the Wolverhampton 21 in the 80's.  Boating round the BCN was totally different as access on and off the canal was very difficult, when a friend broke his ankle jumping off the boat it was miles before we found a point to get him off the canal to somewhere an ambulance could pick him up.

[IanD]

15 hours ago, roland elsdon said:

In the 1980s we had to use winches, shafts and devices for removing stuff of the blades far more.

There was more overt threat on the waterways, we had threats thefts assaults and vandalism from anglers.

Glue sniffers haunted the frequently locked and closed towpaths and there were known dont moor areas.

Banbury being one, Sutton stop away from the turn another, Autherley was dreadful and as for manchester…

many things improved when bwb encouraged towpath use .

There seemed to be a sweet spot from about 1995 on.

 

 

From the point of view of canal availability, I'd have said from 2000 on when more newly restored canals (e.g. HNC, Rochdale) had opened up new routes (for those brave enough to venture Oop North), but hadn't started to need much maintenance yet, and also many hire bases seemed to be in their heyday.

 

Don't know when other people think the failure/closure rate started to really accelerate but it it wasn't that much later, and was certainly hitting by 2010 with the L&L summer closure. The number of online moored boats was also going up by then, and even more rapidly so since -- but of course most of these don't do leisure cruising... 😉

 

So my vote would be that the early Noughties were the "golden years" for leisure cruising 🙂

Edited August 26, 2023 by IanD

[Alan de Enfield]

 

The OPs question is "when was the peak level of leisure cruising" and "when the the canals and locks at their busiest" not when were the canals at their 'most usable' or in the best condition.

 

Many of the replies seem to have read the question sa being when was the system in its best condition.

 

I'd suggest (from my experience) that during the 90's the numbers were still climbing but after 2000 the numbers actually cruising started to decline. The number of squatters and marina 'stay at homes' continued to increase. but fewer boats were actually cruising.

 

This may well have been due to the condition of the system as it started to decline in the early 2000s and those 'elderly folk' who had been boating during the 70's and 80's and into the 90's were now finding that age and infirmity were taking their toll.

 

New 'boaters' seemed to be a totally different 'breed' and just wanted to say to their mates 'we have a boat you know' and were happy to sit in a marina or tied up on the bankside having their chosen tipple with a bag of pork scratchings and a pickled egg.

 

I'd put forward that the peak year was 2000 (using the OPs +/- 5 years critera)

[PeterF]

23 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

From the point of view of canal availability, I'd have said from 2000 on when more newly restored canals (e.g. HNC, Rochdale) had opened up new routes (for those brave enough to venture Oop North)

......

 

So my vote would be that the early Noughties were the "golden years" for leisure cruising 🙂

Having been based on Yorkshire in the noughties through to 2019 I go with IanD on this one. After 2015 our experience with increasing closures is what influenced us move the boat to Cheshire.

[IanD]

2 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

The OPs question is "when was the peak level of leisure cruising" and "when the the canals and locks at their busiest" not when were the canals at their 'most usable' or in the best condition.

 

Many of the replies seem to have read the question sa being when was the system in its best condition.

 

I'd suggest (from my experience) that during the 90's the numbers were still climbing but after 2000 the numbers actually cruising started to decline. The number of squatters and marina 'stay at homes' continued to increase. but fewer boats were actually cruising.

 

This may well have been due to the condition of the system as it started to decline in the early 2000s and those 'elderly folk' who had been boating during the 70's and 80's and into the 90's were now finding that age and infirmity were taking their toll.

 

New 'boaters' seemed to be a totally different 'breed' and just wanted to say to their mates 'we have a boat you know' and were happy to sit in a marina or tied up on the bankside having their chosen tipple with a bag of pork scratchings and a pickled egg.

 

I'd put forward that the peak year was 2000 (using the OPs +/- 5 years critera)

 

I suspect that it's later than that for hire boats, and there are an awful lot of them about and they generally spend far more time actually cruising than privately owned boats -- certainly back then the majority of boats coming the other way were hired, not private, and I suspect that's still the case for many popular canals where most of the cruising happens.

 

I'd say there was a peak in this betweeen 2000 and 2010 going by the number and quality of boats available for hire and how heavily booked up they were -- before 2000 it was quite easy to hire a decent boat for the summer at the start of the season, then it got to the point where if you wanted a "good" (popular, desirable) one at a particular time you had to book the year before.

 

I know a lot of boat owners look down on hire boaters, but I believe they were (are?) the majority of the boats actually out there cruising in many (most?) areas... 😉

Edited August 26, 2023 by IanD

[Mike Todd]

22 hours ago, IanD said:

 

From the point of view of canal availability, I'd have said from 2000 on when more newly restored canals (e.g. HNC, Rochdale) had opened up new routes (for those brave enough to venture Oop North), but hadn't started to need much maintenance yet, and also many hire bases seemed to be in their heyday.

 

Don't know when other people think the failure/closure rate started to really accelerate but it it wasn't that much later, and was certainly hitting by 2010 with the L&L summer closure. The number of online moored boats was also going up by then, and even more rapidly so since -- but of course most of these don't do leisure cruising... 😉

 

So my vote would be that the early Noughties were the "golden years" for leisure cruising 🙂

One of the issues with the restorations is that, with often a lot of 'assets' esp locks, they all wear out at much the same time". I am not sure that this aspect was fully recognised in longer gterm planning. Plays havoc with using averages.

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Mike Todd said:

One of the issues with the restorations is that, with often a lot of 'assets' esp locks, they all wear out at much the same time". I am not sure that this aspect was fully recognised in longer gterm planning. Plays havoc with using averages.

Exactly -- and both the Rochdale and HNC restorations will soon be 25 years old, which is the designed lifetime for a lot of hardware...

 

[pulls on asbestos underpants...]

 

I wonder if there are any figures showing what fraction of boat movements -- locks, distance -- are hire boats that get so much abuse from many (not all...) private boat owners?

 

My suspicion is it's the majority -- and if this is true then surely they (and the hire bases?) should have the biggest say in which canals are kept open for "real boaters", meaning those whose boats actually move round the canal system? 😉

[Arthur Marshall]

14 minutes ago, IanD said:

I wonder if there are any figures showing what fraction of boat movements -- locks, distance -- are hire boats that get so much abuse from many (not all...) private boat owners?

 

My suspicion is it's the majority -- and if this is true then surely they (and the hire bases?) should have the biggest say in which canals are kept open for "real boaters", meaning those whose boats actually move round the canal system? 😉

I think that's already happening - last year the southern end of the T&M was prioritised while the north but was shut because of the hire fleets. It'll just be applied on a wider scale. It's the "use it ir lose it" scenario.

[David Mack]

10 hours ago, IanD said:

Exactly -- and both the Rochdale and HNC restorations will soon be 25 years old, which is the designed lifetime for a lot of hardware...

I noted a couple of years ago that some of the Rochdale gates are now looking quite 'craggy' and showing their age, whereas some others still look like they were installed yesterday. So I reckon they won't all reach the end of their life at the same time.

[IanD]

7 hours ago, David Mack said:

I noted a couple of years ago that some of the Rochdale gates are now looking quite 'craggy' and showing their age, whereas some others still look like they were installed yesterday. So I reckon they won't all reach the end of their life at the same time.

Obviously not, but around 25 years is likely to be when more and more of them need replacing, it's the expected/design lifetime -- and this shouldn't come as a surprise, it should have been built into the CART budget.

 

Which of course it isn't, given that there isn't enough money to keep up with maintenence needs and an ever-increasing backlog, just like many other aspects of UK infrastructure... 😞