I love narrow boats and the freedom to go more or less anywhere on the waterways. We have shares in two different boats but some day the dream would be to own outright a boat of our own.
I especially love the rich social and industrial history dating from the time when whole families would live about in a living space of about 10 foot. They worked so hard moving loads around from town to town.
I like to see the remains of rope marks on bridges left by barges that were pulled by horses. The photo below is of one of the rare rope rollers which were occasionally placed to protect the brickwork from rope damage.
There's also the folk artwork that adorned the boats since they painted them with bright colours and designs of roses and castles.
Today I appreciate the peace and quiet of the canals and the wildlife. I've seen swans and ducks, moorhen and coots as well as kingfishers and herons and even the occasional water vole or bats at dusk. This picture is of a swan with it's nest, you can see there's an egg in the nest.
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New post to an older thread of yours, but I first stumbled upon the British occupation with narrow boating by pure serendipity one afternoon before covid when I came across the first videos of "Kevin" (Country House Gent) huddled with his remaining possessions in life in his van. He seemed a bit unhinged, his life having taken a certain turn, and he'd just spent all of his worldly money on a narrow boat Aslen, and was about to become fully invested as a complete cherry. The thing was.....I found myself getting totally sucked in with each episode. And I won't lie, I was wholly astounded by the length and breadth of these thousands of miles of canals and locks that travel like so many veins throughout UK. It became a very compelling piece to watch and I had watched from his beginning until some time after covid when, he had this go round with content and sponsors and all that rubbish....and I sorta fell away.... In all of that however, I have found it SO very cool. It's like this flotilla of water vagabonds and gypsies. They travel all over the country-side in their magnificent little narrow boats and I think it's the bomb really. So....all that said, I can identify with yer thoughts.
@Freeranger yes there are a lot of very interesting free spirited people on the canals and the thing I love most is that nobody is ever in too much of a hurry to stop and chat when the top speed is 4mph 🙂
