My First Time on a Canal Boat

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My two friends and I decided to rent a canal boat and tour the waterways along the Ashby canal. We arrived armed with plenty of water, groceries, and enough alcohol for six days of fun! Our boat came with two double beds so we set up a schedule so that each of us got to sleep two nights by ourselves. The boat was fabulous and it came equipped with a toilet, a charming shower, fridge, cooker, TV, and a DVD player. There was a CD player as well but we came armed with phones that were loaded with tunes and a Bluetooth speaker.

We began our canal journey at Clifton upon Dunsmore on the northern Oxford Canal and navigated our boat for a short distance before we made our first stop in the town of Rugby. The town of Rugby is known as the birthplace of the exciting sport of Rugby and it was invented by a man named William Web Ellis. Rugby is a great place with lots of great pubs to visit, beautiful parks to relax in, and we really enjoyed our visit to the Web Ellis Rugby Football Museum. We were able to walk everywhere that we visited and our feet were aching by the time we returned to our floating home.

We headed back down the canal and successfully navigated through the stunning Newbold Tunnel that had great lighting for the photos that we took as we glided in and out of the tunnel. We next stopped in Brinklow and visited Brinklow Castle for an hour. We were thirsty again after exploring the beautiful fortification so we spent a few hours in a pub before heading back to the boat for the next part of our journey. It was dark out by this time and we wanted to navigate the lock in Hawkesbury in the light of day so we decided to go to bed early that night.

We were pretty nervous about parking the boat the first night but it ended up being pretty simple and we had no problem finding places along the canal to park our boat each night as we slept. The beds were comfy and we were warm and cozy every night that we slept on the boat.

We woke up and made ourselves scrambled eggs and bacon before we headed off across the Hopsford Valley Aqueduct to Hawkesbury where we successfully navigated the lock. We were quite proud of ourselves even though we discovered that it was the smallest lock on the system that only has a lift of six inches.

We turned left at Hawkesbury so that we could explore the Coventry Canal and stop in Coventry to see the remains of a 14^th century cathedral. We also really enjoyed exploring the Coventry Transport Museum and we did a bit of pub hopping before heading back to our floating home. We navigated on to the Ashby Canal where we found fewer boats and quieter waters. We stayed up late the second night and the view of the stars along the canal was really great to see before we headed off to bed.

The rest of our journey went pretty much the same. We explored the Ashby Canal thoroughly and we really enjoyed all of the small towns like the market towns of Market Bosworth and Hinkley where we spent a Saturday morning exploring Hinkley’s market that boasts to be the best in the country.



The journey was quiet and peaceful and the boat was really easy to navigate. All three of us really enjoyed ourselves and we are already trying to figure out which canal we want to explore next summer.

As much as we love travelling, sometimes just spending some time in our home country is really lovely.

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